Burned up on re-entry.
Surely no other car — be it the rear-engined Skoda, Fiat-based Lada, the Austin Allegro, Edsel, Yugo or the Fiat Multipla — has been the subject of more jokes, ridicule and scorn than the unfortunate Trabant. While some of this was undoubtedly deserved, the Trabant was not as backward as it has often been portrayed, at least not in the first decade-and-a-half or so of its existence. It served as the Eastern Bloc people’s car in providing some freedom of movement — albeit in a strictly supervised and limited form — to its owners. The Trabant maintained its trajectory for as long as the East German centrally planned economy supported it, but could not survive re-entry(1) into the modern automotive landscape.
The story of the Trabant can be traced back to the AWZ P70, born in 1955. Built by VEB Automobilwerke Zwickau, formerly the property of Auto-Union(2), this small two-door saloon with its twin-cylinder two-stroke engine and Duroplast bodywork — making it the first volume produced car in the low-price segment to feature a composite material for its body — provided the basic template on which the Trabant would build further.
After slightly over 36,000 units of the P70 had been produced, it was replaced by the Trabant P50 in the autumn of 1958, made by the now renamed VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau. The first Trabant mostly stuck to its predecessor’s recipe, including the Duroplast body. Development of this material had started during World War Two in an effort to compensate for raw material shortages. Duroplast is made by mixing phenolic resin (a by-product of the chemical dying industry) with cotton fibre, heating several layers of it and forming panels in a press. The result is hard-wearing and resistant to heat, with properties somewhat similar to other early plastics such as Bakelite and Formica. It is also relatively light and surprisingly sturdy(3), although a serious disadvantage is that Duroplast is not easy to recycle and emits toxic fumes when burned.
With the exception of its air-cooled 499cc two-stroke engine, the P50 was also quite modern in most respects, especially when compared to vehicles performing similar roles like the Volkswagen, Renault 4cv and Fiat 500/600: the Trabant’s engine was transversely mounted and drove the front wheels, the body was a monocoque and suspension was independent on all four wheels. The 3.36 metre (132″) long car was also quite light at 620kg (1,367 lbs). Performance was never more than marginal however, with a top speed of around 100km/h (62mph) and even a bit less in the case of the heavier station wagon version. In 1962 a larger 594cc powerplant improved the figures somewhat, the car now badged Trabant P60. In total, almost 240,000 P50s and P60s were made between 1958 and 1965.
March 1964 saw the introduction of the car that comes to the mind’s eye for almost everybody when hearing the word ‘Trabant’, the 601. In its technical specification it again was, for the most part, a repeat of previous practice, but the Duroplast body was now of a more squared-up style that may have taken the Peugeot 404 and BMC Farina cars as an inspiration, albeit in reduced and shortened form. Still, the 601 was 200mm (8″) longer than the P60, which would continue to be produced alongside the new model for almost two years.
Not only did the 601 offer a bit more room for passengers and their luggage, the production process had also been streamlined substantially, resulting in a claimed 60% reduction in the time it took to complete a 601 compared to the P60. Maximum speed was slightly improved at 110 km/h (68mph) but the now 25bhp strong two-stroke engine had been retained, a fact that was starting to become a bit of an anachronism in the automotive world by that time, notwithstanding the continued use of the same method of propulsion by DKW and SAAB. Of course, the East-German ‘customer’ enjoyed little or no choice.
Being the only car realistically available to aspiring motorists in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, and then only if the authorities deemed you worthy of even joining the queue, waiting lists were up to ten years long. When one finally acquired a Trabant, it was kept indefinitely(4). Luckily, its relative simplicity made for ease of repair and business for replacement parts was brisk.
The colours in which the Trabant was offered seemed like a reflection of the status the authorities imposed on its underlings; while the names of the colours sounded attractive the reality was different: ‘Papyrusweiss’ was in reality a dull, pale light brown, ‘Champagnerbeige’ appeared more like coffee with some milk in it than France’s prestigious bubbly drink, ‘Baligelb’ was a bileous green and ‘Schilfgrün’ a flat, pale and difficult to describe hue. Only ‘Delphingrau’ could claim to be an accurate description. Despite its almost wilfully dull image, the Trabant 601 cut a surprisingly good figure in international rallying competition. Entered in the sub-850cc class the specially prepared 601RS with a 55hp, 800cc powerplant achieved class victories in several major events such as the Monte Carlo and Acropolis rallies during the 1970s.
Originally, the Trabant’s design team, led by Werner Lang, was planning to have a successor for the 601 ready by around 1970, and had indeed been given the green light in December 1966 by the Politbüro of the SED(5) to do just that. Several different prototypes of the upcoming new Trabant, codenamed P603, were constructed. They were powered by a variety of engines including a four stroke engine sourced from Skoda. The three- and five door hatchback configuration, with clean styling totally different from its predecessor, was quite modern for the day and could have transformed the Trabant into a viable proposition to also be sold for export, provided the two-stroke engine was consigned to the history books.
Unfortunately, Günter Mittag, responsible for economic issues at the Politbüro, ultimately decided against a new Trabant as the cost of development was deemed too high. The council of ministers agreed with him and, in November 1968, Zwickau was ordered to stop all development work, destroy the prototypes and hand the relevant design documents over to Berlin. Werner Lang suspected that cost was not the real issue, and was quoted in a television interview: “Mittag was of the opinion that the Trabant in its existing version was good enough for the population. We development people disagreed, but unfortunately we could not prevail.” Lang did thus not leave it at a silent protest, and made his misgivings public. As a result, he was side-tracked and transferred to another company for two years.
The SED Politbüro did enter into a cooperation with Czechoslovakia as part of the COMECON(6) partnership, with the aim of developing a new car together, thus sharing the development costs. However, even this deal apparently still left the projected costs too steep and the project was cancelled in 1973. This left the Trabant 601’s development virtually ossified and limited to only minor changes such as a new dashboard, a switch from 6 to 12-volt electrics, better seatbelts and a two-stage carburettor. The only ‘new’ 601 variant would be the 1978 Tramp, a civilian version of the 601F or Kübel already in use by the army and border guards. This was an East German Citroen Méhari of sorts that was also offered in Denmark and Greece(7) but was only produced in limited numbers.
Engineers being engineers, more or less covert attempts to develop a more modern successor to the 601 continued in Zwickau until, on November 6, 1979, the SED Politbüro decreed an immediate stop to all automotive development in East Germany. Günter Kleiber, onetime member of the Politbüro, declared in an interview after the fall of the Berlin wall: “The general opinion within the SED was that there were still so many orders for the 601, so it must still be popular!” The Trabant was henceforth sentenced to being offered indefinitely(8) to a captive buyer pool without any real alternative.
The walls were, however, closing in on East Germany by the end of the 1980s. In a too little, too late move(9) Günter Mittag finally made a deal with Volkswagen for the production under licence of EA111 series 1.1-litre engines with 41bhp (as used in the VW Polo) in Zwickau to replace the outdated two stroke powerplant. In April 1990, the first Trabant 1.1 models went on sale, but by that time the old East Germany had ceased to exist and its now freed inhabitants had access to a wide range of much more up to date automotive products — even when second hand — than the 26 year-old Trabant. While the Trabant 1.1 looked almost the same as its two-stroke predecessor from outside(10), it actually shared few parts with it because the vehicle was structurally different to accommodate the new water-cooled engine and transmission, as well as a new suspension with MacPherson struts and disc brakes at the front. The fuel reservoir was also moved from the front to the rear of the vehicle.
While the four-stroke VW engine may have transformed the Trabant into, in theory at least, an almost passable car, the world had moved on and the Trabant, while quickly becoming one of the main popular symbols of the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany, evidently did not possess enough endearing charm to be considered by any Western German buyers either. Production of the Trabant 1.1 ceased in April 1991 after 38,122 had been produced, while the two-stroke 601 had been built about 2.8 million times in over a quarter of a century.
The Zwickau Sachsenring factory was sold to Volkswagen; while some ex-Trabant workers were employed in a new VW factory on the outskirts of Zwickau, those that remained at the old plant played a part in an interesting refurbishing scheme. Over 400 unsold Trabant 1.1’s exported to Turkey had been returned to the factory; they were refurbished, updated and offered in a limited edition of 444 cars that, unlike the original 1.1-litre model, sold out in no time.
The old Zwickau factory was subsequently refitted to produce Volkswagen engines. The rest of the old company became HQM Sachsenring GmbH, which manufactured components for the automotive industry and is still active today. The opening up after the reunification unearthed interesting evidence that a mildly restyled Trabant 601 had been in development in the late 1980s, but it never got past the prototype phase. An unusual Trabant with a rounded, streamlined nose and recessed headlights — designed by controversial industrial designer Luigi Colani — also surfaced.
After the discontinuation of the classic Trabant, there have been two attempts at a revival. HQM Sachsenring GmbH presented the UNI 1 in 1996, a diesel-electric hybrid MPV with modern styling and an all aluminium body and spaceframe. The necessary financial backing to further develop and produce it was never found. Herpa, a German producer of miniature vehicles for model trainsets, acquired the rights to the brand name Trabant and displayed the Trabant nT (for new Trabi) at the Frankfurt Motor Show- first as a scale model in 2007, and two years later as a full-size prototype made in cooperation with the German specialized auto parts manufacturer IndiKar and the automobile engineering specialists IAV. The Trabant nT was to be an electric car powered by an asynchronous motor and lithium-ion batteries. As with the UNI 1 however, investors failed to materialise and the Trabant nT — nice looking as it was, at least to these eyes — faded away into obscurity, as did the name Trabant itself.
(1) In the German language, Trabant is an astronomical term for a moon (or other natural satellite) of a celestial body.
(2) Auto-Union comprised Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. In 1958, AWZ was merged with the former Horch factory to become the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau and the AWZ P70 was renamed the Sachsenring P70.
(3) The Duroplast bodied Trabant 601 proved unexpectedly crash-worthy: in the 1990s, German insurance company Allianz crash-tested a new Trabant. Allianz was concerned about the sheer number of Trabants it was forced to insure following the German reunification. Expecting the car to be deemed unfit for modern traffic conditions, it was crashed against a wall at 55 km/h- with results superior to those of the then new Fiat Cinquecento (in fairness not exactly a paragon of crash safety itself if memory serves, but still).
(4) The author is not sure if it was allowed to re-sell a car second hand freely in the DDR; perhaps someone among the DTW readership can shed light on this?
(5) Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the East German Communist Party).
(6) Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; an economic organization active between 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of socialist states elsewhere in the world.
(7) The regular Trabant 601 was offered in East Germany and other Eastern Bloc countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria), and also in the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Norway. No Trabant was ever exported to the Soviet Union, likely so as not to hinder the sales of that country’s own small cars.
(8) Engineers had calculated that critical parts had to be replaced every seven years or so, and that you could do this about three times. Thus, the calculated lifespan of a Trabant was about 28 years. It also meant that the production of spare parts became big business. In the 1980s, the share of spare parts production in the total output at Sachsenring Zwickau was 30 percent.
(9) As early as 1984 Zwickau already had been offered the possibility to purchase four stroke engines from Volkswagen.
(10) The interior however was mostly new with a more modern dashboard and steering wheel and seats with headrests.
much thanks for this, Bruno. a fascinating story.
I must recommend the charming film, Go Trabi Go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Trabi_Go
An old GDR joke said that at the day your child was born you ordered a Trabant for it to make sure the car was available when the child left school.
The colour selection was theoretical because when your were told to pick up your car you had to make do with whatever was available then. If the factory was making frog green cars that week your car was green.
The only thing that was sure was that you had to pay a deposit the day you signed your contract. This led VEB Sachsenring into the fatal situation that after the fall of the Berlin Wall they had thousands of signed contracts and according deposits so they built the cars and customers would not meet their contractual obligation and simply wrote off the deposit and didn’t pick up their car, leaving the factory with a fast growing pile of new Trabants nobody wanted to own.
West German post order companies like Neckermann and Quelle had long running business contracts with GDR manufacturers who were so eager for western currencies that they sold their goods for significantly less than the manufacturing costs just to get some Deutschmarks (West). Quelle sold men’s shirts they bought in for less than five Deutschmarks (two-and-a-half Euros) a piece.
Neckermann in particular had all kinds of Eastern mobility devices in their catalogue from MZ to Jawa and CZ motorcycles which were sold at ridiculously low prices. An MZ 125 bike was sold for around 1,000 DM, about the price of a proper pedal bicycle. In case you ordered an MZ you could specify a ‘westification kit’ at an extra 40 DM which saw all ‘VEB Ruhlau’ bulbs in the bike replaced by Western products, a new Bosch spark plug instead of the refurbished original item (sandblasted isolator and a new side electrode welded on) and -most important- a drive chain made by IWIS or Renolds that was more durable than the notoriously defect prone GDR item.
Around 1980 they tried to sell Trabants at 4,000 DM and Wartburgs at 8,000 DM (a Golf with a bit of options was around 12,000 at that time) but if I remember correctly there were no Trabants at all and nearly no Wartburgs sold.
For the last Wartburgs and Trabants the VW engines were produced by VW and delivered into the GDR as short block versions without any ancillaries which then were sourced locally. The result was that water pumps, alternators, starter motors and ignition distributors were notoriously unreliable and mostly were replaced by VW parts over time.
An old GDR Trabant joke said that cars made from cardboard need drivers made from steel (Autos aus Pappe brauchen Fahrer aus Stahl).
VAG absolutely took the trousers off IFA with the pre-Wende deal to make EA111 engines at the Barkas-Werke. They got an old design about to be superseded, and were hit with the full capital cost of tooling.
The only possible justification was that even if there was the technical capability within the Comecon countries to produce a decent modern engine (even with design help from some western and possibly eastern friends) the system had become so abstruse and obstructive that the only hope of making something happen was to outsource it, whatever the cost.
Fascinating stuff, thank you Bruno, a great choice for your ‘Book of the Dead’ series.
Strangely, as a car-obsessed young child I was given a model Trabant 601 as a toy. It was blue, made of plastic and around 15cm (6″) long. I assume it was made in the GDR but how it ended up being sold in a Dublin toy shop is a mystery to me.
Morning Daniel – it was almost certainly the result of a deal struck at one of those dodgy trade fairs in Leipzig regularly attended by apparently upright businessmen who were definitely not spies…… A surprisingly diverse range of iron-curtain country motor vehicle scale models found their way into these islands at that time – some even clearly stamped “Made in the GDR”. Pity you didn’t keep it.
Thank you Bruno, too. I’m really enjoying this series.
Another great article, Bruno!
Here’s that famous video showing final, ehm…, “adjustments” at Trabant’s assembly line. I’m sure most of us have seen it before, but still, it’s a good watch and only about 4 min long:
https://youtu.be/2_1FPdUeG9g?si=dnKU74k54fbamdLC
Yikes! 😲
I’m not sure which is more shocking, the ‘adjustments’ or the mullets!
Thanks for posting, Cesar. 🙂
Great video. I hadn’t realised Daryl Hall and John Oates were such sticklers for panel gap alignment in the ‘80’s.
Ah yes, the mullets are formidable!
Re footnote 4, I believe you could sell your car and at a tidy profit, too. Mind you, the likelihood of anyone wanting to must have been small.
Incidentally – I came across the channel below which might be of interest to those who wonder what life was like in East Germany.
https://www.youtube.com/@eastgermanyinvestigated/videos
Period Hungarian joke : A Trabi meets a donkey in the street. “Hello Car” says the donkey. “Hello Donkey” says the Trabant. “Hey!” says the donkey “I called you Car, so you could at least call me Horse”
Possibly only the DAF comes close to the amount of ridicule the Trabi received, I reckon. Other similarities: small country, limited resources, parents/caretakers who have other things on their mind (the spread of Socialism (Marxist/Leninist) in the case of the DDR, trucks in the case of DAF). Those earliest pre-Trabant models have a certain Borgward-look to them in my eyes.
I seem to remember that shortly after the Wall fell, there were ‘safety concerns’ about the Autobahns where East Germans enjoyed their new found freedom at a smokey 100 kph, while West Germans regularly aspired to twice that speed.
Overall, though, I find it remarkable how comprehensively the failure of Communism (as practiced by the Soviet Union at least) has pervaded our culture. Only Skoda successfully balanced its pre Iron Curtain history, notorious Czech headstrong independence and new VW-sourced respectability (and VW’s handling of SEAT makes me suspect that Skoda itself had a significant hand in that) to become a post-communism success. Apart from that, anything to do with communism and especially East Germany is better left dead, apparently, including Trabant.
“..notorious Czech headstrong independence…”
Yep. I had a Czech mate like that. One day in high school we had an Asian history teacher spouting the glories of communism at us. Libor got up, backhanded the teacher across the face, and proceeded to tell the class what life under communism was really like. That teacher was suspended.
The ‘safety concerns’ made the Minister of transport sign off a decree that all vehicles registered in the GDR would be exempt from type approval regulations in West Germany. Therefore Trabants and Wartburgs didn’t need hazard lights and did not need to pass the then new exhaust emission test at the regular TÜV/MOT inspections and GDR registered mopeds were allowed to do 60 kph instead of the 40 kph for Western mopeds which makes them attractive for young drivers until today.
I remember well the endless queues of Trabants in a cloud of two stroke smell rolling along the East-West-oriented autobahns where their drivers sought for the next DIY shop to buy radiator thermostats, single lever faucets and many other stuff that suddenly was in short supply because the shops made the business of their lifetime.
And yes, passing such a queue was really dangerous when someone suddenly developed a death wish and pulled into the fast lane at 80 kph with his Trabant directly in front of S Classes or similar doing their usual speed there.
Peter: excellent. Stand up for your convictions.
By the way, was “Czech mate” intentional? 🙂
Nothing wrong with a bit of precision manual adjustment.
Back then, a lot of us in the West assumed that Iron Curtain car makers were just too ignorant or stupid to make decent cars. As Bruno mentions, there certainly were ignorant and stupid people, but they were just the ones in charge of the country. It must have been hugely frustrating to work in an industry producing concepts that went nowhere
I must disagree with TomV on one point. It’s a real shame that in a world that still tolerates the 911, its far more practical second cousin thrice removed, Tatra, no longer exists.
Bristow, I’m glad you raised this. I was going to say the same thing, but you were more… tactful. I had no idea (but should have guessed) that Trabant actually had engineers. ones capable of redesigning the car to (or even ahead of) Western standards. What a shame an outsider, a mere politician, could put the stop to this.
Thank you Bruno, for this Book of the Dead entry.
On one hand there was the DKW diaspora, of engineers who headed west at the first opportunity, not all to the new Auto Union in Ingolstadt, but also DKW exiles August Momberger and Martin Fleischer who set up the INKA operation in Hude, near Oldenburg, and are credited with the engineering of the Lloyd and Goliath powertrains. Lots of other examples, from Chemnitz, Zschopau, Frankenberg, and Eisenach. Probably thousands more went to Ford, Opel, VW, NSU, Mercedes-Benz et. al.
On the other hand there were the utterly loyal people who stayed in on the DDR. Look at what Wartburg, AWZ, MZ, Framo, etc. were doing in the ’50s and they were almost as progressive and prolific as their counterparts in the west. The late ’50s AWZ P50 and P70 look visually right up to the minute when compared with designs from Borgward, Glas, Ford, Opel and NSU. Of course these engineers and stylists “corresponded” across the divide. It’s widely held that the West German government turned a more than slightly blind eye to the ‘soft espionage’ as they wanted to see the Thuringian / Obersächsische “Automotive Crescent” remain an industrial power-base, in the expectation that it would come their way sooner than it actually did.
It’s probably just coincidence, but there’s more than a hint of Citroën Visa about that 5-door hatchback prototype, isn’t there?
When the East Germans were looking into joint-projects for Trabant and Wartburg, should those opportunities have been used in hindsight to absorb the former into the latter? One gets the impression the GDR were more focused on various white elephant projects outside of the car and motorcycle industries instead of attempting to cultivate more competitive offerings that are at least closer to Skoda.
Since have read to the effect the Trabant was loosely related to the DKW F8 and the Wartburg in turn either closely or in essence the DKW F9 prototype.
In theory it should have been possible for both the Trabant and Wartburg to initially share the same 3-cylinder two-stroke engine in different displacements, essentially a road-going version of the Trabant 800 RS (supposedly a reduced Wartburg motor) or akin to may have presumably occurred at neighbouring DKW / Auto Union with the Junior and 1000 as a prelude to a shared four-stroke engine design and dual replacement.
Did the P603 share much with the Wartburg 353 beneath the surface or the Wartburg 355 prototype, which were said to have been planned to use Dacia-sourced Renault engines? Heard to the effect Wartburg and Trabant near the end were considering Renault E-Type engines as they were considerably cheaper than the Volkswagen EA111 engines.
Is it known if the East Germans were offered or considered purloining the likes of the air-cooled four-stroke NSU 2/4-cylinder engine. Read elsewhere the Müller-Andernach V6 motor was offered to VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE), where it was named MA 1300. However poor emissions of the two-stroke offset any gain in power it would have had in the Wartburg 353, which matched its gearbox and could be integrated into the front of the car due to its compact length.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200221134927/http://www.wartburg-signale.de/Signale69-90/Prototypen
In the mid 1970s I was stationed in West Germany, and worked in one of the largest US Army motor pool facilities in Europe. Our job was to maintain a full Brigade’s worth of vehicles should WW3 happen and the USA send over troops who would pick up their equipment from us. In addition to the enlisted men working in shop #1, in shop #2 the workers were made up of mostly Polish and West German mechanics.
Because the West German Army used the 4X4 DKW Munga* as it’s equivalent to the US Army Jeep, with it’s 3 cylinder 2-stroke motor, and the East German [DDR] Army used a military version of the Trabant, sans doors and roof, with the normal 2-cylinder 2-stroke Trabi engine. The Polish mechanics always claimed we would have advance notice of an attack, along with the initial response by the West German army, because of the huge blue cloud emanating from around the Fulda gap, the logical avenue of attack.
*In the early 1980s I found and bought a 1958 Munga, still in possession of the original owner, a hunter who wanted a cheap 4X4 to use when he went hunting in rural PA forests. He ordered it from the DKW dealer in the Philly area, and it was equipped with a MPH speedometer. That Munga was very scary to drive above about 35 mph. With really sensitive [twitchy] steering, it felt as if it would roll over just changing lanes.
About 1989 I was in England and had made a trip to the Reliant Cars factory in Tamworth, to visit a fellow Tatra owner who happened to be the chief engineer at Reliant. I was shown a “like new” tan colored Trabant that had been used to test the possibility of adapting the Reliant’s lightweight 4 cylinder engine from the Robin, to work in the Trabant. Apparently nothing moved forward on that concept, and the Trabant had been sitting in the corner of a storage room for several years. I could have bought it for almost nothing, but after making a quick phone call to a friend in the US DOT legal office, I was told the car was too new to import, and it would be impossible to make it conform to the DOT safety regs, [not to mention the EPA regs concerning the 2-stroke engine’s emissions], so sadly I had to decline the offer.
The cow killing Trabant:
In 1996, 7 years after the fall of the DDR, a Long-time West German friend and I were deep into the former DDR, searching for old cars, automobilia, oil & petrol station items, posters, literature, etc. We would come into a town and walk into an older Gasthaus [Pub] and ask who we might talk to about old cars, [Pub owners and barbers always seem to know these things!].
One retired farmer said he had an old Trabi that he stopped driving after he got a Mercedes, and it was sitting in his field. His friend asked if that was the Trabant that killed his cows, and he said yes. Well of course we had to ask what they meant.
Trabant bodies were made out of recycled cotton fabric from DDR clothing factory cut-offs that were combined with resin crystals, then hot-pressed into body panels. These panels, if not kept waxed, would rapidly crack and delaminate from harsh weather, allowing grass seeds to accumulate in the cracks and germinate.
Well it seems this forlorn Trabi, having sat outside in the field for a few years, began to sprout grass at various points in the body. His cows, always preferring fresh new shoots of grass, would nibble at the body and tear off chunks of the panels along with the succulent shoots. This exposed more cracks and edges, and of course more grass to munch on. They said the cows became sick from all the undigested resin pieces in their stomachs, and several died as a result!
The Trabant was the car that powered the GDR. When the politburo of the SED saw that motorbikes alone could not be enough for their people and were runing away to the West Berlin.
The inspiration from Borgward’s Lloyd 300 and 400 two-strokes is more than obvious, both in appearance and technical solutions.
Even an East Germaner in the GDR culd get a Trabant without a waiting list. When it was paid for by friends in West Germany for western currency.
The Duroplast bodied Trabant 601 was unexpectedly crash-worthy. It was the Duroplast on the steel skeleton. But in fact, when crashed real, the front fuel tank inundated the engine and the car very quickly burned.
The production of the body was from cheap duroplast, but with increasing production it would be more economical to use a sheet metal body. However, with more involvement in Comecon ruled by Soviet Union, the finances were not there.
The production of the body was from cheap duroplast which was in development by DKW from 1930´ to have a cheaper car than Volkswagen. But with the ever-increasing production, it would be more economical to use a sheet metal body. However, with more involvement in Comecon, there was no money left for it. This will be the reason why the new Trabant codenamed P603 was not produced in series. The development of other vehicles and the use of four-stroke engines ended equally. Volkswagen engines ended up being cheaper, perhaps also because they were from compatriots from the West. West Germany partially subsidized East Germany even before the fall of the “Wall”.
As the Trabant 601 was very simple to manufacture, it also had simple maintenance, which a skilful person culd easily handle himself. It saved the state car service network. However, no one knew when something would break down and what would need to be replaced. And since the supply of spare parts was irregular, almost everyone preferred to have everything at home if possible. This was another reason for the excessive production of Trabant´s spare parts that on the other hand decresed the production of complet cars.
The Trabant gets used as a symbol of all that was wrong with a planned economy. It should have been replaced sooner, and could have been developed more, but couldn’t it’s contemporaries the Mini, Citroen 2CV & Renault 4?
I understood that the Duroplast on steel construction was partly a continuation of DKW themes, they had been developing Duroplast and building cars using plywood and leathercloth pre WW2; and partly a result of the division of Germany into occupied zones which left the DDR short of steel making capacity. The Allies had planned to de industrialise Germany after the war after all.
I had thought that the AWZ P70 was more related to the DKW F8 with a water cooled 2 stroke twin and a part plywood body, whereas the Trabbi was developed from that and air cooled.
It was a car with the running costs of a motorcycle and as such I would rather have a Trabbi than a BMW bubble car. Was it any more dangerous than a glassfibre three wheeler was then? Or an electric quadricycle is now?
There’s something of the Honda 1300 about the AWZ P70’s powertrain:
https://i.imgur.com/KTeb6yx.jpg
I wonder if Soichiro was aware of it. (A man like) Takeo Fujisawa would at least have approved of the cooling arrangements.
The coupe’s a delightful thing; it would have made a great Goliath or Lloyd.
Thank you Bruno for a detailed and insightful article, enjoyed it.
As the article was positively factographic, I’d like to add a few remarks:
–The (now highly sought after) Tramp, which was produced in 962 units in the 13 years it was produced, was also available in Yugoslavia, not only Denmark and Greece as in the article (It was imported in YU in two model years:
1983 (7 units) and 1987 (19 units).
–The 800 RS model was actually a two-cylinder engine, a highly tuned version
of the 601 engine, and did not resemble the Wartburg 353 triple.
As for the general impression on the Trabant, you are completely right – due
to various socio-political and economic circumstances, the public tended
to underestimate it more than a fair bit. Still, certain technical features
it had were particularly advanced, even exotic – the Motorsport application
of the Trabant in ex-GDR, later on, showed that with very minor mods
the chassis/suspension was actually very competent handling-wise:
-the suspension design features a very clever transverse-leafspring setup
(similar to a Corvette’s), whereas the leafspring ends do double as a virtual
upper wishbone (front suspension was hence a quasi-double-wishbone one,
as the lower wishbone was made immensely sturdy for a car with a Caterham-like wet weight).
-the leafsprings (as opposed to the ubiquitous Coil / McPherson with their vertigo-inducing CoG-height implications), were positioned relatively
low, espec.at the rear, making wonders for the CoG.
-the way the leafspring is connected to the uprights, makes it act (to an extent)
as a virtual front ARB as well.
-rear suspension employs triangular semi-longitudinal arms, which are almost
an ideal solution for light cars, and on the 601 they were designed very sturdily
for the given weight, similar to the front wishbones (Dante Giacosa employed roughly the same type of rear arms for the Fiat 600, as did F.Porsche for the 901/911, and a very similar solution can be seen in the relatively recently
filed patent documents for G.Murray’s T25 micro-car).
The rumours/myth that it was actually Citroen who supplied the basic susp.design to the GDR for the P50 (as a “technical support” thru some unusual channels in the late ’40s – as a project which Citroen abandoned due to unsatisfactory ride quality) have been confirmed by certain political
personalities in the ’90s, yet it is still hard to validate.
-the engine was innovative at the time, as it was the first engine worldwide
to employ rotating discs (so-called kidneys) over the inlet ports in the
crankcase, later used widely in the motorcycle industry. This produced,
apart from the benefit of higher efficiency, also an unusually sharp throttle feel/response.
-generally, the car featured many parts that were cleverly engineered so as
the part to perform more than one function (hence they achieved a 610kg dry weight in spite of an unusually high torsional rigidity).
-the outer skin being made of the rather sturdy Duroplast, made the body strength / torsional rigidity significantly higher than most other small cars
from the era, esp. the French and most Italian cars. Based on some Motorsport rumours, only the Fiat 600 could probably approach the Trabant in terms
of torsional rigidity in stock form.
-the Ackermann angles were designed to be very close to the front tyre contact patch intentionally, for good traction in snow/mud, as opposed to high-speed stability which the 100km/h top speed made redundant.
Hence, with its diminutive wheelbase and a rugged handbrake, in the right hands it was actually very fast on snow, and with snow tyres it was practically unstoppable. This was possible as the engine power is diminutive, and the throttle response/feel (2-stroke with rotary discs!) was very sharp, making throttle modulation on snow (hence traction) a satisfying experience. Literally unstoppable on snow, and very competent on mud/wet grass (which
was necessary in the development brief, due to the need for the 601F (Forst) / Kuebel, for their border-control, military and forestry services’ needs). The 601F / Kuebel / Tramp were factory fitted with rugged, Pneumant M+S tyres, which
made them surprisingly capable off-road (630 kg without roof, side & rear glass, doors and sides – this goes to show that the body reinforcements on the F/ Kuebel / Tramp were 110-120 kg (!).
This same geometry characteristics, had the side effect of an extremely
feelsome brake pedal – namely, the relatively oversize drum brakes
are anyway more feelsome then a disc brake, and, in conjunction
with said susp. geometry trick, obtained a possibility to brake safely
even with the front wheels turned, such was the feel and precision
of the braking system.
All of the above can be felt if one simply replaces the factory diagonal tyres
for a decent set of Michelins or any grippy, modern tyre – the car transforms
and all of the above dynamic qualities can be clearly felt in the first mile
of driving it ‘pedal-to-the-metal’.
-gearbox design was a technical jewel – with only 900gr. of gear oil inside,
and a freewheeling 4th gear to enable less risk of engine oil starvation on
the “Highway”, it featured a unique gearlever, which enabled shifting gears
without removing a hand from the steering wheel – this was facilitated
both ergonomically, and because of the precision of the gearshifting itself
– the gear selection is so positive and precise, it reminds of a current-gen
vehicle indicator stalk (a delight to use).
-the short wheelbase, combined with a rather direct steering rack (2.9 turns lock to lock), made for a fun handling where even the wildest of lift-off oversteers
can be corrected in a blink of an eye.
The above explains the relatively massive tendency in Eastern Europe to swap
the remaining Trabis with the engines from Suzuki Alto triple, from W353 Wartburg, or, in many cases, with Polo 1,3 / 1,6 VW SOHC as well.
It was a car with way more potential that it was (is) given credit for.
Especially fun to drive are the ‘Tramp’ versions, which (due to not having any roof, pillars or doors) were endowed with massive, double-thickness floorpan sections, which (combined with the drastically reduced weight over the rear
axle – effectively making the rear spring rate race-car like!) made the handling
endlessly more fun.
I used to own a 1985 Tramp with only two modifications: bucket seats and Michelin MXL tyres, all else was stock. It is still one of the most fun cars
I ever sampled, literally bucket loads of smiles per mile.
An underrated gem of a car, that was perceived as anachronistic, in spite
of its many advanced, innovative qualities – proving that our society
is based on the power of perception, which can cast a shadow
on any facts.
Happy new year to all.
The Tramp was also sold in Spain. I remember the press ads, they said something like “The cheapest car in Spain is built in Germany!”.
Here it had potential as a fun, sunny weather runabout car for the beach, but I don´t think I´ve ever seen one.
Yes, Trabant had certain technical features particularly advanced, even exotic.
The rotating discs that the Trabant engine used above the intake ports in the crankcase gave it slightly better low-end torque. However, the rotating discs had to be replaced and the crankcase opened very frequently.
The Trabant’s small engine did not have much torque, so the transmission could be very small with little gear oil and could be easily operated. But then again, with the low torque it needed to be shifted quite often.
The small engine and gearbox provided plenty of room for the suspension design at the front, and the front-wheel drive Trabant also had plenty of room at the rear for the suspension design.
The Trabant was a virtue out of necessity. After the nationalisation of DKW, the renamed IFA moved production of the IFA F9 to the former BMW plant in Eisenach and sought to develop a cheaper, mass-produced successor to the IFA F8.
Volkswagen’s use of four-stroke engines in more than just the Trabant had its way. The GDR’s cooperation with Volkswagen began as early as 1977. It involved the delivery of 10,000 Volkswagen Golfs, which appeared mainly in East Berlin. It was a barter deal, balanced by sheet metal presses, various machines, coal, heating oil or Carl Zeiss optics. Volkswagen wanted to penetrate the eastern markets.
Thank you all for the extensive extra information about the Trabant and Eastern Germany- it is greatly appreciated and, I think, what makes DTW unique among its more influential peers 🙂
b234r, thank you. Yes, Spain was definitely a Tramp “market”. There is even one example that migrated to South of France, and is still being used in Nice (although a rare sight).
Bruno, thank you – for me it was a pleasure to share, as I happen to have a rather extensive first-hand experience & technical literature of these cars (a close relative of mine had a managerial role in the company that was the main importer for IFA for the entire ex-Yugoslavia).
Thanks for a very interesting article!
I hate to be that guy, but just one note – Yugoslavia wasn’t in the Eastern Bloc, it was a non aligned country.
Boarezina,
although it is debatable to an extent, in formal terms you are right. Still, it does not change in any way
the essence of information supplied in Bruno’s article.
What is essentially peculiar about Tito’s Yugoslavia, though, is the historical timing of its existence/disintegration:
it coincides (almost to a T) with the existence/disintegration of the Berlin wall…