Midlands hosts Eastern Bloc
Appropriately, in the 60th year of the Trabant, the annual Red Oktober Wartburg Trabant IFA Club meeting was dominated by the little two-stroke wonder. As ever, owners were kept busy defending its revolutionary recycled wool/cotton fibre panels – “No, it’s NOT cardboard!” – its all-independent set-up, transverse front-drive engine, allsynchro gearbox with freewheel and steel unibody construction. Saloons, estates, roadsters, Kübels, police and Feuerwehr-liveried examples were all in attendance.
Škodas, Wartburgs and MZ motorcycles were also out in force in the impressive setting of Millennium Place outside Coventry Transport Museum on 14 October, along with much rarer Barkas vans. A great attraction, freshly imported and still on its Russian registration plates, was a Zaporozhets ZAZ-968 with 1197cc air-cooled V4 engine in the back. Vladimir Putin is the proud owner of an identical car dating from 1972, immaculately restored and kept at the Kremlin.
Ivor Burgess brought his spotless one-previous-owner Wartburg towing a rare QEK Junior caravan, believed to be one of just three in the UK. This glassfibre-bodied van with lifting roof was built in East Germany from 1974 to ’90 and, at 300kg, is light enough to be pulled by a Trabi. Only one Lada was spotted, although it was a pick-up.