The Trabant was the only car of choice in the DDR (East Germany) for the
general population. It had a noisey (sounded like a lawnmower) 2 stroke
engine. The average wait for one was 10 years, of course you had paid for
it before it arrived. They were a bare bones car to say the least. No
heaters, windscreen wipers, or fuel gauges. The body was wood frame, while
It was mentioned on the list they had a fiberglass body I believe that
originally they had a wooden body. It came in any number of colors but you
got what you got! I saw plenty of them when I was stationed in West Berlin
in the 80's, and of course they were frequent visitors to the West when the
wall came down in 89 (I was stationed in Bavaria at the time). if they are
still being produced I would hope thay have been modernized somewhat,
because no one in their right mind would really want to drive one on a
regular basis otherwise. (they were really a polution machine)Nor would I
imagine they would be considered legal (polution provention wise) in most
developed countries!
Here are the URLS for a couple of sites if anyone is really interested in
finding out more! I guess there are actually some of these cars running
around in the UK!!
http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~cjs/trabby.html
This URL gives a much better explanation than I have. Although I received
mine from a German some 20 years ago!!:
http://www.team.net/www/ktud/trabi.html
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