Not terribly far from the local Ferrari/Maserati dealership, and a few blocks over from where I took spy shots of the not yet released Porsche Panamera test mule (story and photo HERE), I spotted this by the side of a repair shop. Fans of the band U2 may also dimly recall these cars hanging over the stage on their Zoo TV world tour. It's a Trabant, a car made in the former East Germany continuously, with very few modifications or changes, from 1957-1989. In those times (before the wall came down) the waiting period to purchase these cars when new was around 10 years! By any standard, this was a primitive car: an ear-splitting, heavily polluting 18-horsepower 2-stroke (think snowmobile or chainsaw) engine for most of its life under the hood (1990-1991 Trabis had a small modern VW engine), and the car bodies were made with something called "Duroplast," an East German invention that was a byproduct of dye-making chemicals and resin, reinforced in varying degrees by things like cotton or wool (whatever was available at the time). This particular example has been modified-- there was no such thing as a Trabi convertible, and the "spoiler" on the rear is definitely an aftermarket product. While I have yet to see any actual Trabants on the streets, Germans have come full circle to embrace these oddities. While used Trabis could be had for (literally) just a few Deutsch Marks immediately after German reunification, a fully restored prime example these days can be sold for upwards of 10,000 Euros. We'll see if this comes to pass, but before the economy got twitchy, there were plans afoot to do a limited run of "modernized" Trabants with BMW engines, in the vein of the New Beetle and New Mini. The proposed price tag may be a little too dear for the exclusivity though-- 50,000 Euros. We'll see if the company shows their prototype at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show. For pictures and story of this New Trabant, click HERE.
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