Top Ten Trivia
Our spotlight of trivia is turned on the much-maligned Trabants.
Ask 100 motoring enthusiasts to compile a list of the ten worst cars ever made, and the chances are that 99 of them will include the Trabant on it somewhere. Simon Goldsworthy feels that this is grossly unfair, and wonders how much these critics really know about the East German people’s car. Here is a little background, and some trivial facts that may well surprise you.
The Trabant made perfect sense in the 1950s and early 1960s. When most people’s transport options consisted of walking or riding a moped, the prospect of affording a small car with seating for four was tantalising indeed. And that’s exactly what the Sachsenring factory in the East German city of Zwickau produced with the P70 in 1955, a car which was so stylish that Nissan copied it for their Figaro retro- car some 35 years later.
The P70 evolved through the P50 and P60, until arriving at the P601 in 1964. Powered by a twin- cylinder, air- cooled, two-stroke engine of 594cc, the P601 was still in production when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. As the world watched east Berliners streaming across the newly opened border in their Trabis, the cars came to symbolise communism: anachronistic, inefficient and depressingly durable. All of which rather obscures the Trabant’s many merits. Compared to the other microcars that flowered briefly in the 1960s, it was bigger, better, faster and more enjoyable to drive. Just because political stagnation kept it in production until 1991, it is hardly fair to compare it with a VW Polo of that era.
Despite this, even today a good Trabant is surprisingly good fun to drive, something which few critics either know or are willing to acknowledge.
The Trabant design didn’t come out of nowhere – Sachsenring had been building small front-wheel- drive DKWs decades before that genre was popularised by the Mini, and the Trabant followed this space-and-weight effective layout. In fact,
Zwickau in Saxony had a long and proud motor industry heritage, dating back to 1904 when Augustus Horch founded his eponymous company there. After being ousted from that business in 1909, he set up Audi (essentially a Latin translation of the German ‘ horch!,’ which means ‘listen!’). Audi added the small, FWD, two-stroke DKWs to their portfolio from 1931, but from 1932 Horch, Audi, DKW and Wanderer joined forces as Auto Union.
Zwickau was captured by the Americans in 1945, but was then handed over to the Soviets who stripped the factories bare and took the production machinery as reparations. In 1946, ownership of the company was assumed by the state, which became the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, or in English usually just East Germany) from 1949. Under the new communist rulers, the pre-war DKW F8 re- emerged as the IFA F8, those letters standing for Industrieverwaltung Fahrzeugbau (the centralised Industrial Vehicle Construction Department). This was followed by the IFA F9, before production shifted to Eisenach in 1953, where it was developed into the Wartburg.
Back in Zwickau, they built the upmarket 2407cc, six- cylinder, four-stroke P240 until 1959, but by then they had already introduced the smaller P70, the first car with Duroplast bodywork, in this case screwed to a wood frame. The first Trabant was the P50 of 1957. The name means ‘satellite,’ and was chosen in honour of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite that had been launched into space by the Soviet Union. In order to facilitate increased production of the new Trabant, VEB Sachsenring (formerly Horch) and VEB Automobilwerke (formerly Audi) were merged in 1958 to create the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau.
The P50’s engine was enlarged from 500cc to 600cc for the P60 of 1962, but that was short-lived because the P601 was about to make its bow. This represented the final stage of evolution, originally not expected to last beyond the 1960s but which soldiered on essentially unchanged for the next 24 years. I say ‘essentially,’ but there were certainly improvements along the way, such as dual circuit brakes, 12-volt electrics and a switch from leaf springs to coils. There was even a fourstroke version as we shall see later, the Trabant 1.1 which went on sale from May 1990. On 21st May that year a 1.1 became the 3 millionth Trabant to be produced, but on 30th April 1991 time finally caught up with the Trabi and all production ended.
Today, although it is often ridiculed, the Trabant makes a great daily driver. The steering (via a rack and pinion) is light and positive, as are the brakes (big drums all round). With proper CV joints and a modest 26bhp to play with, torque steer is never an issue. There is synchromesh on all four gears, plus an automatic freewheel on fourth in two-stroke cars to aid economy and smooth coasting on light throttle. Being a two-stroke you do need to keep the revs up through the gears to keep it all running smoothly and it is certainly happier on A and B-roads than on the motorway, but wherever you go it will put a smile on your face and on the face of anybody you pass along the way. Here are few facts that will hopefully raise a smile or two as well.
1
The biggest fallacy about Trabants is that they are made out of papier mache. In fact the outer panels are made of Duroplast, originally a concoction of wood pulp, cotton waste and PVC, but later a mix of phenolic resin reinforced with cotton fibres. Many of those cotton fibres came from recycled clothing, allowing the Trabi to stake a claim to being green long before anybody else thought of the idea. The material arrived at the factory in rolls, and was turned into solid panels using heat and pressure in what looked like a giant panini press. Once formed and hardened, the panels were trimmed to size with a band saw. Duroplast itself is a wonderful compound – immensely strong and far superior to brittle fibreglass. But underneath it all the Trabant has a steel chassis and inner structure, so don’t believe sellers who claim they can’t rust – cars can look great, but be rotten underneath.
2
The first Trabant engines ran on a 33:1 mix of petrol and two-stroke oil, but the introduction of needle roller bearings for the camshaft in April 1974 stretched this to a more socially-acceptable 50:1. Having said that, no Trabi should smoke unduly once it has warmed up if the engine is in good condition and you use a good quality two-stroke oil. If a previous owner has been using too much oil, a good thrash at the correct ratio should clear out any sludge.
3
Two-stroke engines don’t take kindly to long-term storage, especially if they are started occasionally for short bursts. The resulting condensation can cause the roller main bearings to rust and then grumble, although the big ends last better. For the novice, deciding whether a two-stroke engine sounds OK or is on its way out can be hard.
If you are desperate, have a listen to Crazy Frog (remember him?) – that started out as an attempt to imitate the ring-a- ding- ding sound of a twostroke moped.
4
If you don’t fancy a two-stroke engine, some Trabants were built with VW’s 1043cc four-stroke Polo engine for the Hungarian market. A VW engine in the commie Trabant? Yes, because work had started in 1984 on a new engine plant in Karl- Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in cooperation with VW, to build these engines for the West German company. Unfortunately, by the time that VW engine appeared in the Trabant 1.1 in 1989 and went on sale in 1990, it was too little, way too late. One unkind nickname for it was ‘the mummy with a pacemaker.’
5
If you want to take a test drive to see whether the Trabi is for you, then once we are allowed to travel again, you can do it by grabbing a cheap flight to Berlin or Dresden and taking a self- drive tour of the city in one. Check it out at www.
trabi- safari.de – 75-minute self- drive Trabi Safaris currently start from just €49 per adult, with under 18s going free.
6
The Trabant saloon car is officially known as the Limousine in its native Germany, but don’t let this fool you into thinking that the company had ideas above its station because that is merely the German term for ‘saloon car.’ The estate version was officially the Universal, but more frequently known as the Kombi, and its rear seat folded down to create a surprisingly spacious load-lugger. There was also the Tramp, a kind of Mini Moke style utility vehicle that was a civilian version of the military-inspired Kubelwagen.
7
The P601 was available in three levels of trim: Standard, Special Edition ( Sonderwunsch) and DeLuxe. The DeLuxe came with a contrasting colour roof, chrome bumpers and a better interior as well as spot lights, a radio and opening rear side windows. Waiting lists to get a new Trabant of any sort reached as long as 14 years, and babies were often put on the list from birth. Comrade Karl Wappler got lucky on 22nd November 1973 though – he had worked at the factory for 36 years, and was given the millionth Trabant, which came down the line that day.
8
Hopelessly out- dated and widely ridiculed by the 1990s, the Trabant still enjoyed an initial celebrity status in West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was even voted their ‘Car of the Year’ in 1989, proving if nothing else that Germans do indeed have a fine sense of irony.
9
The Trabant had a surprisingly strong presence on international rallies up to the 1980s, winning many class honours. In his book Duroplast in Plastic Colours: The Trabant, author Jürgen Schiebert says this led to one listener asking a radio station: ‘Is it true that the Trabant can reach a top speed of 200km/ h?’ ‘In principle yes,’ came the answer, ‘it just depends what height you drop it from.’
10
Several attempts were made to create a modern successor to the P601, but none got financial or political support. These included prototypes with four-stroke engines, modern styling and even Wankel motors. Not all of them were destroyed, and some can be found today in the August- Horch- Museum in Zwickau.