‘MODEL T OF THE COMMUNIST WORLD’
East German answer to Volkswagen was a plucky little ride that many remember fondly
WASHINGTON Growing up in Communist-controlled Hungary in the 1980s, Judit Csonka remembered her hair blowing in the wind as the compact, cream-coloured sedan cruised down the highway from Budapest to her parents’ lake house.
From the back seat, the then-fiveyear-old observed trail of nearly identical cars lining the road all the way to the beach — much like the Parade of Trabants that sprang up in Washington earlier this month.
“It used to be the custom that going down the highway from Budapest to (Lake) Balaton and you would see people jam-packed in them,” she said, as her fouryear-old son Andras climbed on a Trabant nearly identical to her parents’ outside the International Spy Museum. “When it was really hot summer we rolled down the window and that was your air conditioning.
“We used to call them paper cars.”
The comparison wasn’t far off. Made of Duroplast, a heat pressed mix of cotton fibres and resin, with materials sourced from textile industry waste, the jalopies are relics of an era when time all but stopped. Produced in East Germany from 1957 to 1991, with few modifications over three decades, the car was the Communist answer to the Volkswagen Beetle. It sped off the lot at a maximum speed of 100 km/h, pushing 26 horsepower in a two-cylinder, two-stroke engine. It ran on a mix of oil and gas that was standard in gas pumps in East Germany, but has to be mixed by hand by owners and collectors now.
A line of Trabants was on display last Saturday outside the International Spy Museum in Washington for the 11th annual Parade of Trabants. More than three million of the cars were produced in Zwickau, East Germany, according to collectors, and distributed across the Eastern bloc and elsewhere in Europe. Collectors estimate there are about 200 in the United States; about 20 were showcased in Washington.
“These cars are really the Model T of the Communist world,” said Roger Fuller, 60, of Northborough, Mass.
At the parade, owners congregated and shared their appreciation for the hapless little cars.
“It was a ‘people’s car’ … (built) to allow people to move — but not too far,” said Trabant owner Caleb Montgomery, 28.
Once someone signed up, it could take upward of 10 years to receive one of the cars. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the sudden access to brands like Volkswagen and BMW, many abandoned their Trabants. But for children and one-time owners, a certain appreciation developed over the years.
“For some people, their youth, their heritage is all wrapped up in this,” Fuller said. “They loved them and they hated them at the same time.”
In recent years, a collector industry has sprouted in the United States. Easy access to parts online has allowed it to thrive, owners say.
Mike Annen, who owns more than 20 of the cars, remembers watching scores of the vehicles streaming across the border after the wall fell as he watched news coverage on TV in Maryland.
“I said, ‘Wow I gotta get one of these’” recalled Annen, of Whitehall, Md.
Annen said he was intrigued by the simplicity of the car.
Trabant engines, for example, have only five moving parts, making them easy to work on and nearly “indestructible,” in his mind.
“It’s kinda like driving a go-kart,” Annen said. He compared the whirring of the engine to a “weedwhacker in a cardboard box.”
But the cars have been called an environmental nightmare. That much was evident when a baby blue sedan chugged away leaving a trail of similarly coloured smoke.
Compared to the average mid2000s European model, the cars produce nine times as many hydrocarbons and five times the carbon monoxide. And the body material, which collectors likened to “cardboard,” is somewhat indestructible — but not in a good way. Burning it produces toxic pollution, collectors noted.
George Newman, 73, of Great Falls, Va., pulled up to the parade Saturday in his “all original” creamcoloured 1963 model, with a blue stripe running down the side.
“I call it my Cold War trophy,” said Newman, who served eight years in Europe during the Cold War. “It’s like all the old cars in Cuba — they really didn’t have a source of parts so they kept these things running through their workarounds, (and) that’s what we do kinda in a way.”