President Ronald Reagan viewed the Berlin Wall while standing on a balcony behind two panes of bullet-poof glass and uttered his famous words: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
On Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down, thawing the Cold War between East and West Germany.
And then on Nov. 10, a stream of cars 25 miles long passed through Checkpoint Charlie en route from East to West Germany. Their two-stroke engines created a tremendous din and the cars belched out an acrid smoke making the new breath of freedom almost unbreatheable.
Almost all of these cars were Trabants, a small utilitarian vehicle that had come to symbolize communism.
There were 3,096,099 Trabants produced in East Germany from 1957 to 1990 by VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau. There was never a design change.
The name Trabant has the same meaning as the Russian word Sputnik, or companion. But almost all owners referred to car as a Trabi.
Today the Trabant is often vilified as being among the worst cars ever made, but during German communism, it was a status symbol. If you wanted to buy a new Trabi the waiting period was between 11 and 18 years. And it cost as much as one year’s salary. Which seems pretty darn expensive, but the Trabi had an average lifespan of 28 years because if you were lucky enough to own a Trabi you took meticulous care of it
The Trabant was made of what East Germans referred to as Zwickauer Rennpappe (Zwickai racing cardboard). The manufacturer would tell you that it wasn’t technically cardboard. It was made from cotton waste from the Soviet Union and resins from the East German dye industry with fibrous reinforcement. The technical name for the amalgam was Duroplast.
Duroplast is also used in the manufacture of deluxe toilet seats. And Duroplast is also edible. Many Trabis were abandoned in fields when the wall came down. Some owners returned to their cars a few weeks later only to find that most of their Trabi had been eaten by pigs or goats.
You can tell a Trabant is coming from a long way off. The small two-stroke, two cylinder engine produces a “pocketa-pocketa- pocketa” racket and a plume of noxious smoke. Imagine your uncle’s 1964 Toro riding lawn mower with a blown head gasket. The Trabi produces eight times the amount carbon monoxide emissions of the average European car.
The 26 horsepower Trabant goes from 0 to 60 in 21 seconds with a top speed of 62 mph.
By comparison the top speed of a Stasi PSZH-IV armored personnel carrier with 120 mm mortars, 100 mm antitank guns and ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns was 64 mph.
But the Trabi got better gas mileage than any heavily-armed secret police vehicle. The Trabi gets about 34 mpg. That’s an approximate number because Trabants don’t have fuel gauges.
Matthew Annen is with Trabant USA. The club has 96 members. Annen estimates that there are fewer than 200 working Trabis in the U.S. His father has bought several German Trabants on eBay and has them shipped overseas. He buys run-down Trabants for about $500. It cost $2,000 to ship them to Baltimore.
There’s been a resurgence lately in Trabant popularity in former European communist countries. Trabi club members give the cars NASCAR paint jobs, drop in Suzuki super-bike engines and reach speeds of 150 mph.
A pristine Trabant P50 sold at an auction in Madison, Georgia went for $25,000.
The Trabi is sacred in Bulgaria. In 2005 their National Historic Museum added a display featuring the foreign minister’s Trabant 601.
After it had been blessed by the Pope.
