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The 'Trabant' is an automobile formerly produced by East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, Saxony. It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to other countries in, but also outside the communist bloc. The main selling points were that it had room for four adults and luggage, and was compact, fast, light and durable. Despite its poor performance and smoky two-stroke engine, the car has come to be regarded with affection as a symbol of the more positive sides of East Germany (in former East Germany) and of the fall of communism (in former West Germany, as many East Germans streamed into West Berlin and West Germany in their Trabants after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989). It was in production without any significant change for nearly 30 years.
The name Trabant means "fellow traveler" (Satellite) in German; the cars are often referred to as the 'Trabbi' or 'Trabi', pronounced with a short a.
Since it could take years for a Trabant to be delivered from the time it was ordered people who finally got one were very careful with it and usually became skillful in maintaining and repairing it. The lifespan of an average Trabant was 28 years.^[1] Used Trabants would often fetch a higher price than new ones, as the former were available immediately, while the latter had the aforementioned waiting period of several years.
There were two principal variants of the Trabant, the 'Trabant 500', also known as the 'Trabant P 50', produced 1957-1963; and the 'Trabant 601' (or 'Trabant P 60' series), produced from 1963 to 1991. The engine for both the ''Trabant 500'' and ''601'' was a small two-stroke engine with two cylinders, giving the vehicle modest performance. At the end of production it delivered 25 horsepower (19 kW) from a 600 cc displacement. The car took 21 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and the top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph). There were two main problems with the engine: the smoky exhaust and the pollution it produced.
The Trabant was a steel monocoque design with roof, bootlid, bonnet and doors in Duroplast, a form of plastic containing resin strengthened by wool or cotton. This helped the GDR to avoid expensive steel imports, but did not provide much crash protection, although in crash tests it has actually proven to be superior to some modern small hatchbacks. The Trabant was the second car to use Duroplast, after the "pre-Trabant" 'P70' (Zwickau) model (1954-1959). The duroplast was made of recycled material, cotton waste from Russia and phenol resins from the East German dye industry making the Trabant the first car with a body made of recycled material.^[1]

More than three million Trabants were made.^[3]

Contents

History

Models

Prototypes

Trabants in popular culture

Gallery

References

See also

External links

History

Originally planned as a three-wheeled motorcycle, the decision to build a four-wheeled car came late in the planning process. The name ''Trabant'' was chosen in an internal contest in 1957, the year of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Previous motorcycle production at Sachsenring had been under the aegis of ''AWZ'' (Auto-Werke Zwickau).
The Trabant was not a particularly advanced car when it was launched; by the late 1950s small cars in western countries mainly used cleaner and more efficient four-stroke engines, as employed in the Volkswagen.
The Trabant's designers expected production to extend to 1967 at the latest, and East German designers and engineers created a series of more sophisticated prototypes through the years that were intended to replace the Trabi; several of these can be seen at the Dresden Transport Museum. However, each proposal for a new model was rejected by the GDR leadership for reasons of cost. As a result, the obsolete Trabant remained in production unchanged; in contrast, the Czechoslovak Škoda automobiles were continually updated and exported successfully. The Trabant's production method, which was extremely labor-intensive, remained unchanged, and much of the work was carried out by Vietnamese guest workers.
In 1989, a smaller version of the Volkswagen Polo engine replaced the elderly two-stroke engine, the result of a trade agreement between the two German states. The model, known as the 'Trabant 1,1' also had minor improvements to the brake and signal lights, a revised grille and replaced the coach spring-suspended chassis with one using MacPherson and Chapman struts. However, by the time it entered production in May 1990, German reunification had already been agreed to. The inefficient, labor-intensive production line was kept open only because of government subsidies. Demand plummeted, as residents of the east preferred second-hand western cars. The production line closed in 1991.
Although Trabants had been exported from East Germany, they became well-known in the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall when many were abandoned by their Eastern owners after migrating westward. News reports inaccurately described them as having cardboard bodies. This is likely due to the fact that the body of the Trabant was Duroplast, a material that, in East German production, often made use of varying quantities of different fibers, such as cotton, or occasionally paper.
In the early 1990s it was possible to buy a Trabant for as little as a few marks, and many were given away. Later, as they became collectors' items, prices recovered, but they remain very cheap cars. Green Trabants are especially popular as they are said to bring good luck.
In the late 1990s, there were plans to put the Trabant back into production in Uzbekistan as the Olimp.^[4]. However, only a single model was produced. ^[5]
In 1997, the Trabant was celebrated for passing the "Elchtest" ("moose test"), a 60 km/h swerve manoeuvre slalom, without toppling over like the Mercedes-Benz A-Class infamously did. A newspaper from Thuringia had a headline saying "Come and get us, moose! Trabi passes A-Class killer test".^[6]

Models

★ Trabant P50 - later called Trabant 500 (Limousine and Universal [Combi])

★ Trabant 600 (Limousine and Universal)

★ Trabant 601 (Limousine, Universal and Tramp (Cabrio))

★ Trabant 601 S & Trabant 601 De Luxe (With optional equipment including rear and front fog lamps, rear white light and an additional odometer)

★ Trabant 601 Hycomat (Made for users with missing or dysunctional left leg. It had included an automatic clutching system)

★ Trabant 1,1 (Limousine, Universal and Tramp (Cabrio))

Prototypes

★ Early P50 (Now in Sachsenring Museum. Built in 1954)

★ Trabant 603 (Build with the Eisenach factory that produced Wartburg. Built in 1979)

★ Trabant 601 (Whole body was made from steel. Never went in production because of costs of production. Built in 1982)

★ Trabant Hatchback ( Working with skoda ,a czechoslovacian car company,they made the car. You can see it in Sachsenring Museum)

★ Trabant Diesel (It used a small (about 900ccm) diesel engine. Many of the improvements where further used in the production model of Trabant 1.1 . Built in 1986, you can see it in Sachsenring Museum)

★ Early Trabant 1.1 (It had a various body style than the producion model. Built in 1988)

Trabants in popular culture

The rock group U2 used Trabants as props on their Zoo TV Tour, including several vehicles suspended from the ceilings of concert halls. These cars can now be seen suspended from the ceiling at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. A Trabant also appears on the cover of their album ''Achtung Baby'', and in the music video for "One."
A feature film about the Trabant, Go Trabbi Go, a comedy about an East German family making their way across Europe released shortly after reunification. In it, they highlight the performance gap between it and newer models, but it was regardless a film laced with admiration.^[7]
A bright blue Trabi features in ''Good Bye Lenin!'', the award-winning German film made in 2003 about the fall of the wall.
A scene in the movie ''Black Cat, White Cat'' by Emir Kusturica shows a Trabant being eaten slowly by pigs. This is referred to by the Serbian rock group Atheist Rap (Ateist Rep), which has a song named "Wartburg limuzina" in which they mention that pigs ate a half of their "Trabant". They also have a separate song, "Blue Trabant".
In the 1996 Czech film ''Kolja'', the protagonist is ecstatic at finally getting a Trabant.
The American movie ''Spy Game'' (2001) features a car chase involving a Trabant being driven by the spy Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt), who is trying to smuggle an East German from East Berlin over to West Berlin.
The name of the Czech band Traband is an obvious pun, also name of Icelandic electro-rock band Trabant, just like the Polish rock band Los Trabantos.
The Trabant can also be seen several times in the videogame ''Half-Life 2'' produced by Valve Corporation.
The Trabant also appears in the videogame Interstate '82 as a secret car, the Stein PappKarton. According to the game, the PappKarton was made in an East German refrigerator factory. The German word ''Pappkarton'' translates to ''cardboard box''.
A long-running parody in the U.S. automotive magazine ''Car and Driver'' in the late 1980s (before the Berlin Wall opened) showed its competitor ''Motor Trend'' fawning over the Trabant and declaring it "Car of the Year."
The Trabant was affectionately known in West Germany as "Spark Plug with Roof" (Zündkerze mit Dach) because of its small size.
A blue Trabant can also be seen throughout the film ''Everything Is Illuminated'' starring Elijah Wood. [1]
In the sixth leg of the US television series The Amazing Race 6, taking place in Hungary, the teams were required to use Trabants that were decorated as racecars. Several teams were delayed by the notable unreliability of the cars.
The Trabant has also appeared in the music video for ''Texas'' by Chris Rea.

Gallery

References

1. http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript402.htm#4
2. http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript402.htm#4
3. "Trabant Canada"
4. http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/1997/08/16/050.html
5. http://courses.wcupa.edu/rbove/eco343/040Compecon/Soviet/Uzbek/040900autos.txt
6. http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=9663
7. http://www.dvd-live.de/phpBB2/reviewlist.php?id=441

See also

★ Barkas

★ Dacia

★ FSO_Polonez

★ Lada

★ Microcar

★ Ostalgie

★ Škoda

★ Yugo

★ Wartburg

★ Examples of jokes about the Trabant

External links

★ www.601.pl - 601 PASSIONS website - interactive presentation of Red Pearl Trabant 601z

★

★ [ftp://ftp.team.net/ktud/pictures/Eastern.cars/Trabant/p50.jpg A picture of Trabant P50]

★ Technical details and pictures

★

★ Trabant Driver, blog of a Scottish Trabant Owner

★ Possessing a car in Eastern Europe

★ A sort of official site (in German, but with many pictures)

★ Another site (with the noise of - presumably - its engine!)

★

★ History of the Trabant

★ Sachsenring Trabant site

★ Trabant history and prospects

★ www.rallye-trabant.de

★ BBC news Your pictures: Trabants around the world

★ Trabi-UK UK based parts specialist