Communists still believe in personal property which is what a car and stuff is. Just not private property which is what a business or large amounts of property would be.
I once owned a Trabant and one night I accidentally left the garage unlocked and to my horror and dismay, in the morning I discovered someone had left another Trabant in my Garage.
Two Trabbi facts missed: 1.) It's made of duraplastic (sort of budget fibreglass). 2.) To buy one new, you had to apply to be on a *TEN YEAR WAITING LIST*
You should know the Ronald Reagan joke about this. When someone was getting their car after putting up the money in advance the dealer said "come back in ten years" and the buyer said "morning or afternoon?". The dealer said, "well in ten years- what difference does it make?" And the buyer said, "Well the plumber is coming in the morning."
@@logan-df5vm The regular waiting was 13-15 Years on average. My Grandma told me, her Mother (so my Grand-grandma) set her on the waiting list as she was 6.
I was in Germany shortly after the wall fell, and Trabannts were coming over the border. The west-German autobahns were littered with Trabbys that had expired while trying to keep up with traffic. The used-car market in Germany was going wild.
My parents were artists around that time and bought literally dozens of Trabbys for a few Mark. My Dad removed the roof of one of them to make a improvised cabriolet for a summer vacation.
That’s crazy talk. You’re lucky that you didn’t get that entire car seized. If the wrong person found out, your trusty luxury Trabant would have been taken away. Imagine that... a Trabant with a rear ashtray. Btw... did the extra weight from the ash tray make a dent in the overall top speed?
The fuel valve translates as follows: Z= Zu= closed A= Auf = open R= Reserve = reserve This was mandatory due to the fact that there was no fuel gauge. You run the car in the A/open position until you recognize it starting to cough and starve. That's the time to put it in R=reserve so you can drive with a remaining liter or so to the next filling station.
My dad owned 7 of these cars one after the other. He also swapped engines from better ones with low or very low mileage. He had a handbook specially made for the Trabant in which the author pretty much shared all his knowledge on how to upgrade or forge parts for the car if needed. All in all the Trabant wasn't fantastic, but was able to run okay.
Lots of the eastern bloc cars were made to be easily disassembled with a few tools and a little knowledge. They also came with their full service manual, which you use to be able to get in the west too.
In fact, like many small iconic cars, the Trabant has undergone very little changes in its exterior design. However, the 1963 and 1990 Trabant are not the same.
The same happened in Russia where there is at least a model that is still in production since the soviets and had just minor modifications. I don't know other car manufacturers but Romanians had at least decency to modify the 1300 making the lights different, improving the car a little and modifying the interior at least 4 times in that car's life.
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp the trabant engine? No idea. Small update about why these cars were hated by almost everyone who had it. Because the car is not made of metal and in their development costs were cut everywhere, there were tremendous difficulties in opening/closing the doors/trunk. For example, I remember my father going fishing with a friend who had a Trabant and the car was left half in the shade and half in the sun. The problem was that the drivers door was in the sun and expanded so hard that it was impossible to open (and the passenger door does not have an outdoor lock). Many times you had to break into your own car by messing with the windows.
this one is 2 stroke, just by the end of production of this cars (mid 90's) they stick a 4 stroke 4 cylinder 1.4 litre engine from VW polo, also the reason you don't see a rust on this car is simple , all panels , except the roof , was made from cardboard
WRONG wrong wrong! Its production run ended in 1991, and its panels were never made of cardboard- - but cheap thermosetting plastic(which cannot be recycled) that was reinforced with recycled cotton or wool fibers. In the last 2 years of its production (East & West German merger) they made numerous upgrades like you mentioned, but too late to save the line.
John Smith you have been also wrong "cotton 68%, plastic powder of all plastic what could not be recycled 7%, Mix of Metalpowder (alluminium, zinc, copper, lead) 3% and 23% naturel softwood resin"
I started my three year assignment in West Germany the day the wall came down. I got to witness the shock on East Germany faces when they came over to West Germany. The poor Trabays were in many accidents(mostly fatal). The E.G. people were coming out of a fifty year time warp. Very interesting times.
Hi I'm from Hungary. We had to wait for 5 years to buy our first car the Trabant. 600cc 2 stroke air cooled engine ,top speed i did 120 km/h. Front wheel drive manual steering column gear shiftier. It always started even in -20 C cold. It had a Reserve tap inside ,for the fuel tank,never had to measure the fuel level. It was a great car. I was a TV Tech ,i could fit 3 CRT type TV-S ,when i took the front passenger seat out. It was great on Snow ,cause it was light and front wheel drive. It never broke down in the 10 years i was driving, just had to replace CV Joints once .
Kicsit úgy érzem, az 1000-es Suzuki Swiftek a mai Magyarország Trabantjai:D Ugyanúgy minden körülmények között IS elindul, alig kell szerelni, megy rendesen, kicsi, könnyű, OLCSÓ, alkatrész tonnaszám... Apámnak van egy 98-as évjárata. Kb 10 éve kínozza és mustrálja napi 50-150 km-rel, és mostanában kezdett el csak baszakodni kicsit. De nem vészes.
Finally, someone to clear up the stereotype of them being unreliable! I mean, if someone’s ever seen the engine bay of one, they would know what I mean, how would such a simple car be unreliable?
They worked,easy to fix,and got you from point a to point b isn't that what transportation is supposed to do, love nice cars but we have become too obsessed with them, a guy with a horse drawn cart or a poor man with a bicycle would think of this as a limo.
You are not the only one who despaired of the gear shift. As a "West German", I had the chance to drive one in a parking lot. A colleague of mine drove an old Trabant, and I didn't dare drive it on the street. It was a strange, funny experiment, though! There were waiting lists in East Germany, where you had to wait up to 15 years for a Trabant. Used, ancient cars were sold at black market at almost new car prices, because otherwise it was almost impossible to get a car. Welcome to communism! I was born in 1988 and could hardly believe such stories. When the wall fell and Germany was reunited, even East Germans came all the way to us in the very northwest of (formerly) West Germany to buy the used car market empty, because the whole GDR was fed up with the Trabant and wanted "modern, western" cars - You couldn't blame them.
It must be indeed a basic modell without any or with only a view "Sonderwunsch" (special request) options - it surely is not the "deLuxe" or the "Hycomat". The "S" doesn't stand for "Sport", by the way, it stands for "Sonderwunsch".
I grew up in Romania and when I was 16 one rich kid get a Trabant for his 18 birthday. We race every day and he won only when my bicicle chain felt off. When I turn 18 he let me drive the beast and I notice the fourth pedal. He said it' s the latest model with an airbag pump.
Why don't you join the elite cycling team? Either you are super human, the car was old heap of trash or you made it all up incluiding the airbag. As a joke your comment may e great as an assessment of Trabant no value whatsoever.
Looks are deceiving. The Yugo would break down 4 times before the Trabant does once, and even when the Trabi fails you can fix it with a tie or a coin or other household item. :) It's a tremendously simple and resilient thing - as long as you don't kick the side, because it's made of a very thin & weak wooden panel. But you can also lift the car with a handful of stronger people present, it's only ~600kg. :)
@@Steve-es3fc in Egypt we had Naser128 car which is Fiat 128 clone and it was very famous me myself own one 1987 model which is far far advanced than this turban it's 4 stroke engine deliver about 40 hp ,capacity 1100cc going from 0 to 100km/h in about 13s and drive at maximum speed of 140Km/h note that legendary Fiat model was originally designed in 60th and yogu model was based on this model but with 1300cc engine comparing to tarbant this is shows how far the communist germany lift behind
In 1992 I slightly rammed a VEB Sachsenring trabant station wagon with a VW Passat variant. Nothing was to be seen on the VW, the fender of the Trabant was broken, the bonnet was rammed into the windshield like a knife. Luckily nothing happened to anyone. I bought the same Trabant in the next village for 100 German marks and gave it to the people.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 dont even have to go far to find many of the features. Late 90s early 2000s cruisers still had twist fuel valves, no fuel gauge, no tacho, air cooling. Ofc they arent 2 stroke anymore but still lot of similarities
@@STEAMRADIO Uhmm if you ever owned a2=stroke motor bike you will know that the oil mixed into the fuel burns white and makes smoke...... ie: they ALWAYS smoke.
A true Trabant enthusiast would never let his Trabi be so neglected. By the way, this car can be made into a really chic "racing cardboard" with little effort. Here in Central Germany there are still some very well-preserved and well-maintained Trabant 601s that are quite capable of surprising with great looks and impressive driving characteristics.
Went on a Trabant tour of Berlin once: car broke down, tour company didn’t have a mechanic. I’d read about how easy these cars were to take apart and fix so I took the front wing and panels off, stripped the air filter and throttle out and fixed it with no tools. I am not a mechanic. I’m still a legend at work to this day.
Well... This (and few other) cars were known for their super easy maintanance. When engine belt broke, you just used womens stocking tied as a belt to replace. Could make like 50-100 kilometers with that. And that isnt urban legend... This little car (we call it Rintintin because of the sound it makes) is cute, sweet, bad and forever... There is no way it can break to the way you wont be able to fix it.
@@carachan3073 I actually am East German and I know the Trabant was never regarded as a luxury car. A luxury car would have been something like this: th-cam.com/video/0meH8-75eBs/w-d-xo.html or that: th-cam.com/video/gyxha5YX_Po/w-d-xo.html.
@@jefref4826 😀 That's why it was luxury - noone could afford it, only party bigwigs had those. Friend of mine got himself one after 1990. Amazing car! Pozdrav z Berlína
My dad bought me one of these in 1991, I guess as a practical joke. I drove it for two years. On the last journey I broke down on the autobahn near Kaiserslautern and a drunk driver in a big Merc stopped, turned around (on the motorway) and tried to jump start us. When that failed he towed me off the motorway at (literally) 100km/h. I almost shat myself because the car had never driven that fast before, especially not at a distance of 2 metres to the car in front. I survived. We scrapped the Trabbi after that.
@@obamalore some made 120km/h some just 90.Depended very much on the engine quality and how careful you treated it and how easy you made the first kilometers and if you put enough oil in the benzin,better a bit more.This video is just shit,this idiot making communist cars worthless,just saw a video about a Volga and wrote an angry comment.
@@sven471111 I thought only the ones with the new 4-step engine (or however it is in English) could go faster, the old ones with the 2-step engine could not climb a steeper hill (and that is a fact, you had to have some speed before reaching the hill or you were stuck halfway)
@@abhishekrao1525 actually its quite the opposite. a trabant could be fixed what we call "panzertape" ( its this greyish heavy tape). i once saw someone fixing his trabant with this tape in front of my school back in 1991 after a crash on a crossing, while the "westgerman car" had to be pulled off to the workshop - the trabant driver fixed the holes in his chassis with the tape and went driving on ^^
"A man driving a Trabant suddenly breaks his windshield wiper. Pulling into a service station, he hails a mechanic. 'Wipers for a Trabi?' he asks. The mechanic thinks about it for a few seconds and replies, 'Yes, sounds like a fair trade." - Found that on Wikipedia
Here's another one, quite fitting here. A German guy takes his Trabant to America. He drives to a gas station, rolls down the window and asks for a refill. The attendant looks at the "car" and says: "Yes sir, shall I also fart up the tires?"
It could go 110 km/h. The maximum speed allpwance was 120 km/h on the highway. Acceleration was better than BMW or Audi had at starting. I was the first when we started from traffic light even I did not want. :-D
I drove through East Germany to visit West Berlin in 1964. I remember seeing a lot of these things belching blue smoke. Always wondered what they were.
@@ArtifactSkyline just a quick update my father and grandfather and my cousins father had a trabant as their first or second car , these cars are unkillable , my uncle said in early nineties when the new BMWs and Mercedes Benz rolled in to ex communist Hungary , he pulled a couple out of a ditch with this 28hp car , they were fun to drive and they were also used as race cars , this car is so special to me btw Trabant was made by IFA and ifa made a motor oke called the simson which I drive every day 100-600km I get 120mpg and altho my top speed is 80kph so 50mph , it's again a very reliable motorbike and I assure you as a 16 year old boy , I make use of all my 6 horsepower and redline the heck out of my bike , been going strong for the last 3 years and I've driven it like 30 thousand km with barely any problems ( besides when the engine siezed up )
@@teutonalex Or graffiti...almost no rape or murder, no homeless people. The real reason is because the country was over-policed, combined with an amazing sense of Prussian self-discipline, and you could always count on someone knowing your business, something not unique to Communism in Germany. I lived there. I know. Better than we have it now with smash and grabs, attacks on old people, lazy, fat parasites collecting money for NOT working. I would gladly take the Wall and the lack of 'western luxuries' for the safety and security we had back then. You don't have to be a socialist to appreciate the value of close personal relationships between neighbors and citizens. We lost that in exchange for iPhones and Teslas.
I'm disappointed you didn't mention that the body was not made of steel but of some strange kind of resin, which was quite innovative in the 1960's when the Traband was first released.
Yeah, it was fiber-reinforced plastic made with cellulose, usually from scrap wood or paper. That’s where all the lovely nicknames like “angry guitar pick” or “cardboard boy” come from.
@@neuro.weaver Messerschmitt bf109 and me 262 worked without very well. Whilst 70s american cars were and partly are pretty shit. Get your soldiers out of germany!
@@neuro.weaver As you can see money isnt everything to succeed. See america. And none cant achieve anything see Russia. So inovation is needed. German engineering
This car can actually do close to 70 mph if it's really well maintained and the ignition is freshly calibrated. And it can do up 75 mpg when you're just cruising around at 45 mph, and it's close to impossible to get less than 25-30 mpg out of it.
As a 2-stroke motorcycle rider (Suzuki RH599) and pilot, i immediately loved this car when it saw it in Berlin. NO COASTING ? No problem! The “no coasting, except in neutral” is exactly like a motorcycle (where you hold the clutch and just downshift) if you want to coast. NO GAS GAUGE? Correct. Same as an RG500 and other early bikes ! DOOR LOCKS: The right door that only locks from inside and outside lock only on the left side? Sounds crazy until you’ve flown Cessna airplanes like C172/182. Fun to see & probably drive!
my aw11 mr2 I can lock the drivers door from the inside when the door is closed but not when it's open so it forces you to lock the door from the outside.
I remember these cars on the Autobahn when the wall came down. The families had all their earthly belongings in and on the car driving slow as hell, it was sad and funny at the same time as we watched familial generations who had no clue what freedom was attempt to navigate a truly new beginning and a testament to the abject failure that is communism.
Poland used to export Polski Fiats, so called because they were Polish versions of old Fiats, later called FSOs. These weren't as desperate as Trabants, but were still horrible cars with engines like tractors, terrible handling, awful build quality and bare metal everywhere.
I live near by where they were produced. You were often told to wait up to 10 - 15 years or so to get one. My 86 year old neighbour even drives one till today, and it runs perfectly fine I guess!
It'll probably still run in 50 years, it's easy to repair and there's not that much to break in the first place, no complex electronics and not that much metal(can't remember if they mentioned it in the video but most of the outer shell was plastic)
"OK sir, your car will be ready in 10 years" "Morning or afternoon?" "...why does that matter?" "the plumber's supposed to finally come by that morning."
ist schon schrecklich dass im kommunismus qualität und quantität der wirtschaft so hart leiden. und das auch noch während umweltschutz stark vernachlässigt wird.
Wow, that sucks, here in Hungary the waiting time for a Trabant was usually 6-8 years. My grandfather was a high-level comrade, so he managed to get one within about 2 years.
I travelled a full country ( like every city and interesting place in Hungary ) in a 1978 simson s50n ( same company who made trabant , it was a 20k km trip I did it once a week I got 2.2l/100km or above 100mpg , it was the time of my life I still drive this bike everyday , these were really reliable machines , my dad and grandpa also praised the trabant
@@jimby_vokk3110 They were really beautiful. They weren't tin snails like the 2cv. Also, there are very few intelligent people here who will take your sensible comments seriously.
I rented one on my last trip to East Berlin. The reverse gear was so confusing that my two buddies and I would just half pick up and half shove it into the parallel parking spots. It was so terrible that we took it back after a couple of hours and walked/rode the bus everywhere else we went. Good times...
@@arnepianocanada I am amazed I lived in Czechoslovakia and I never knew that Czechoslovakia , East Germany and I guess the rest of the east block were part of USSR 😂😂😂😂
@@charlesloko7698 you‘re really one salty chap, aren‘t ya I know you‘re mostly right, but most of the people here don‘t care to educate themselves about Soviet History and most of them won‘t so don‘t bother to waste your time on them
Fun fact: The panelgaps on an new Trabant were always perfect because they were routed AFTER the doors were applied. Watch th-cam.com/video/mv3wnQXRHzc/w-d-xo.html at 22:15. I assume the doors on Dougs Trabant were repaired with panels or a whole doors from another Trabbi which would result in crappy gaps, because the were routed on an different car.
@@latinumbavariae Thanks for the link, video is AWESOME, I wonder how many workers died because breathing plastics particles and painting without mask, and how many fingers took the saw used to cut the plastic pieces :/
@@latinumbavariae Cars with faulty panel cavities were rare when they left the factory. I went to a Mercedes dealer today and the Coupe had some very bad faults, the panels were uneven, and then I said someone is unfairly disparaging cars like the Trabant.
We still have those driving around in Bulgaria. As well as the good old Wartburg as well. There's even a joke about it: - What is the longest car in the world? - A Trabant... if you count the smoke behind it.
I just saw one last week in Brno, but then I thought "When was the last time I saw one of these?" Thinking of it you're probably more likely to see a Porsche or even a Ferrari on our streets. Guess we're getting somewhere. :D
Our family had one of these in 1980’s Hungary, in the same colour even. My dad still speaks fondly of this little car. I remember taking many road trips in it. I can still remember the exhaust smell like it was yesterday. Thanks for reviewing this little gem. I will make sure to forward the video to my parents!
We had one too, but i was very young. The only thing I remember about it is that it was one of the best cars we ever own. I dont care what anybody says, its a good car!
As _Un om ordinar_ mentioned, they used different materials depending on availability. That's why I decided to use _fiber_ instead of a definite material. After all, this was the same socialist nation that bought burial shoes with paper-thin soles from foreign nations for people to waer as actual daily shoes. The nation that couldn't build houses after they spent all their bricks and mortar imprisioning their people. Planned economies with all their faults and that. I might not have been alive at the time, but I live in the former GDR. It was shit back then.
@@Cr-lw3ky Most likely I will die it depend on situation. :-) But I most likely will die on a pedestrian cross... I have never have accident with my Trabant, but an idiot hit me on the pedestrian cross.
I remember seeing those while I was in Germany from 89-91.They ran terribly but those East Germans were masters of Repairing them also in ingenious ways.
Yep. My dad claimed that his best time of getting the engine out, fixing it (I think it was the carburetor that needed constant recalibration, but I'm not sure, may also have been the ignition) and putting it back in was 26 minutes. Try doing that with a real engine.
Fuel petcock knob: Z = zu = closed A = auf = open (which is the one you should be using) R = Reserve = reserve (when you run out of fuel on A, you can switch to R and quickly search for a fuel station) (older models have 1, 2 and 3 or just a handle) By the way, to start it when it's cold, you should pull the knob next to it (choke), start the engine, half-push the knob (you should feel it locks), drive off and after a few minutes (when the engine is warm) push the knob entirely. Think of it as a two-stroke motorcycle with another pair of wheels and a roof. Awful? Yes. Ridiculous? Definitely. Worst car ever made? Not at all. Trabant is extremely simple which means you can literally fix most problems with the tools you saw on that shelf (a spanner, a plug and a fuse), you can even fix its bodywork just like a fibreglass canoe with some cloth and resin, both quite important features when living in East Germany. There is a group of Czechs that travelled across whole continents (Africa, Asia, South America, now heading for Australia) in two Trabants, mainly because they did not have much money when they started but also because how easy it is to keep it going. Trabant was not the only car made in East Germany. They also made Wartburg which was quite similar but much larger. And there were different types of Trabant: Trabant Universal (combi), Trabant Kübel (off-road-ish with no doors), Trabant RS (Rallye Special with 64 hp which is incredibly fast given Trabant's tiny weight). Of course you usually just ordered Trabant and after short wait of 10 to 20 years (really!), you got one. Colour was not chooseable, you got what you got.
Jan Sten Adámek i like that. Thats really cool you know that much about this car .i take it u had the pleasure of driving 1 or know someone who did? I didnt even know about this car till now.lol
Very good recollection of the Trabant. They were awful, but as long as they had fuel in the tank and you had basic tools, they kept going. Today i still own a Schwalbe myself, a small scooter which goes up to 40 mph, very simple vehicle and easy to keep it going on the road. Greetings from Germany.
Grown up in East Germany I find it hilarious that you tested the Trabant. And I understand that you kind of have to look down on it, coming from all the luxury car tests. But believe me, this car was loved and admired by the average people, because it gave them at least some kind of freedom. And don't forget, there was barely an alternative. If you wanted a new Trabant, you had to put your name on a list and wait 16 to 18 years (yes!) till it was your turn, and it cost about two year's earnings. We called it 'Trabi' and it was holy. (And all that changed after 1989/1990 drastically - thank God)
Oh shut up. The car sucked. It was better than no car I'm sure, but that is not saying anything good about the car. A fucking skate board is better than nothing. That doesn't make a skate board a good mode of transportation. This car is a piece of shit and it exists because a few communist assholes took over a country and forced the citizens to live in a world where this was the absolute best they could get. Every one of those people were happy when the wall fell and they could actually make real money and buy real cars for a smaller percentage of their income that this turd cost.
Agree, no matter how weird or crappy it looks today it's just more than a car. It's an icon that deserves -not appreciation maybe but- respect at least. Just like Isetta and Yugo etc.
Gerlach Christoph watch out, a priveliged american kid will come in and say that you're wrong, and that communism is a good system. Because a College kid knows more about Communisms terror, then 1 that has lived in it? Nah, lmao
Doesn't change the fact that it's an awful disgusting car. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Doesn't change the fact that the man is missing an eye.
What the fuck are you on? West Germany was already a thing, and already very advanced by the time the wall fell. If you actually look at regions what was east Germany is backwards compared to west Germany.
It wasn't an awful car. It was a good microcar, comparable with microcars in Western Europe and Britain, but it was built too long. That was the fault of the socialist economy, not of the car.
Indeed, someone tried to stole mine once, and couldn't figure out how to connect the wires of the ignition... and also he still had the steering wheel lock to figure out. And he tried all the buttons and switches as well in the process...
Its a classic. You can switch the engine with a single person. The record is 15 min. (I am east German) This car is reliable like no other and easy fixable.
Ich war in Göttingen '89. Da ging die Mauer auf und ich glaub es waren 100 DM für jede Familie oder so um in der BRD Güter zu kaufen. I was in a small town near the east german border and i saw live the visit of the east germans. Mehr oder weniger Übrigens habe ich damals von den Zigeunern ein gebrauchtes kühlschrank aus der DDR gehabt...der war guut. (Sorry for my german it becomes schlimmer)
I'm 13 always wanted a trabant dad says might as well buy a riding lawnmower without an engine and it would work better but I told him the Same thing it's easy to fix fun to drive and it's a neat little car I'm from Scotland btw
and yet it's incredibly cute. The Trabant is like the old grandma of cars - she smokes too much, doesn't have AC at her place, doesn't go very fast, goes to see the doctor often, and has very fragile bones, but you love her anyway :)
I've owned a Trabant in Connecticut for almost 2 years, and absolutely love it. As long as you're not in a rush to get anywhere, it's a lot of fun to drive. It will get you where you need to go, which is basically what a car is for, but without all the frills we've become used to in the West. It's simple to work on, and thanks to the German Trabi clubs, parts are readily available. I encourage others in the U.S. to own one!
When I lived in Germany in 1995, I was in the East, and Trabis were still everywhere. As they were integrating into western society, kids at school told ossi wessi witze (east west jokes). In one of them, there's an Ossi (east german) farmer, a Wessi (west german) farmer, and an American farmer, all boasting about how big their farms are. The Ossi says, "my farm is so big, that it takes me over an hour to walk all the way around it." The Wessi replies, "That's nothing--my farm is so big it takes all day to walk around!" The American replies, "Yeah, well it takes me a whole day just to to DRIVE around my farm in the USA." The Ossi replies, "yeah, I have a car like that, too!"
@@ShadowViewsOnly It was 3 years in Hungary, that's what people who lived back then say at least. Of course if you displeased the party, you waited untill '89 and didn't get your money back.
@@theblancmange1265 I'm hungarian. My parents overlived WW2.. They know what actually happened. You got your Trabant within AT THE VERY MOST 2 years, but the VAST majority of the requests were complete within half a year. So, whoever told you 14 years, is a liar.
These cars were used at the time on really ,crappy extremely poorly maintained roads. Trabants were tough , affordable , and got you from A-B .....and could be repaired with a pair of pliers and some gaffa tape and maybe a bit of chewing gum .... by even the most basic mechanically minded person ..yes they were rubbish but in Soviet communist era they were a neccessity for the ordinary folk and they did their job well all things considered . Yes they were just about one step up from a donkey and cart ....but tough times made this car and it deserves it's place in car history .
"for the ordinary folk" you say, unfortunately it still wasn't affordable for ordinary folk where my parents used to live, middle-sized city in Poland, so it wasn't a poor country-side, there was one car per 20 families tops back then, only the best paid employees could afford a car (coal miners, doctors, etc.) and still they waited long months to buy it. My grandpa worked at a coal mine and he bought a Wartburg in 1970s, he waited like 2 or 3 years after he applied to get one until actually he could buy it, and then he drove it for 28 years :)
(un)fortunately I don't remember those times, I only heard from my parents :) anyway, I agree with the rest of your comment - people couldn't afford anything better, actually western cars weren't even available, so Trabants, Wartburgs, Ladas, Skodas, etc. were the only option, and yet I heard about many people who drove that kind of cars 2000 kms to Bulgaria for holidays :)
I live the simplicity of this car. I love being able to maintain the whole thing myself. Imagine if they made a modern version of it. You know, one that fixed all the critiques (like the wiper position). I bet the smoke problem with this is because it's so old.
Hi, do you still have it? Something was wrong with your engine. If you run it at 1:50 gas/oil mix it will not smoke that much. Have you forgotten to disengage the choke or is there a trouble with choke linkage? Also might be a problem with the carb float. Then, also check ignition timing. May be a bit late? Unless on the highway, the Trabant feels very agile and quick. 55 mph top speed is ridiculously low too. Something wrong! My Trabant Universal (wagon) did 115 km/h (~70 mph). Lovely lil screamer.
I had one of these back in Hungary in the early 80's, served me all right for about a year and for the amount I sold it in 1986 I could by an airline ticket to the USA where I live ever since . best exchange I've ever made!
i grew up in Hungary and when i was a child, that car was the only available option as a new car for my family, so my parents bought a new Trabant in 1989. The car type was completely same like in the video, except the car body - we had a "station wagon" with 3 doors. Today we couldnt imagine that a 5 member family (i have 2 younger brother) can live with this car but we (and more 100.000 family in europe) could. I can't feel any nostalgic shit or can't say i miss it, but we always reach or target with it (hungary is a little country). We sold it 10years later with 100,000 mile in the clock. Tha car has never had any serious problems, the engine was original, i can't remember any brakedown, however my father always take care of it, and fixed it in our apartment's parking lot lying a towel. If you have empty 1,5hour watch the film "Go Trabi Go". at /watch?v=hbAoQqwOCU0&t=99s
@Adam @Pandik. I am from Poland too. I sat only ones in Trabant, as I was a small child in the mid 70s. Believe or not, I thought to myself, what a comfort! We compare Trabant to modern cars. It is insane!
somehow i got a hold of a maisto 1/64 trabant... instantly fell in love with the body style.... learning about the extended history of this car was quite a journey.... Doug, I am so happy you found one, and gave us all a really good look at one!!!
@@serra102 In italy, where no roads are straight and most cities have roads meant for motorcycles (when the 500 came out), that thing would've been a rocket.
@@serra102 the only good 500 through the vintage ones the modern ones are absolute unreliable dogshit along with literally every single company involved with Fiat AHEM ( Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Cadillac )
No need for lock because
Not your stuff
Our stuff
In america you own stuff
In soviet russia stuff owns you
Hahahahahaha
Communists still believe in personal property which is what a car and stuff is. Just not private property which is what a business or large amounts of property would be.
LOL
@@ercushkakulmetov7458 heck off, commie.
Drove one in Berlin last year. Great fun. Had a race against a bicycle at a green light, nearly lost.
If that was the case, you didn't do it right! 😜
phone4R that's a slow cyclist haha
If the exhaust didn't choke the cyclist, you WILL lose. :D
Lamborghini aventador does not even have rear seats.
Horny Pervert least they managed a glove compartment.
I drove one of this in Romania. We say this is the longest limo in the world. 1% car and the rest is the smoke.
LOL
It took me a minute to get that. Haha! Cheers!
This car made me laugh so hard
Hahahaha 🤣🤣
Bunicul meu avea una galbena.
I once owned a Trabant and one night I accidentally left the garage unlocked and to my horror and dismay, in the morning I discovered someone had left another Trabant in my Garage.
Free spare parts!
@@witchcraftanditsconsequenc4280yay
@@kev3d your house’s value halved that night.
Were you able to tell the two apart? 😂😂
You are aware that used ones were more expensive than new ones, right? Talking 15 years delivery time.
Still waiting for the AMG version.
with an astounding second hand civic engine with 60 hp and cardboard trims to reduce weight
@@mrducky179 it basically comes with cardboard trims from factory...
0-60 in 0.003 seconds
Although they both suck at design, I'm afraid Mercedes and Trabant aren't really the same company...
@@miljororforsprakpartiet290 its a joke -_-
How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gas.
hyzercreek Or attach the fuel dipstick to the cap
hyzercreek or put 3 grand in the trunk
you mean $30
hyzercreek so funny, you dipshit!
how to triple its worth put a banana on the backseat.
Two Trabbi facts missed:
1.) It's made of duraplastic (sort of budget fibreglass).
2.) To buy one new, you had to apply to be on a *TEN YEAR WAITING LIST*
Beefheart Vandercrease and some people waited upwards of 20 years
You should know the Ronald Reagan joke about this. When someone was getting their car after putting up the money in advance the dealer said "come back in ten years" and the buyer said "morning or afternoon?". The dealer said, "well in ten years- what difference does it make?" And the buyer said, "Well the plumber is coming in the morning."
Beefheart Vandercrease yes very important facts! and they used to warp in the hot weather
@@logan-df5vm The regular waiting was 13-15 Years on average. My Grandma told me, her Mother (so my Grand-grandma) set her on the waiting list as she was 6.
And it was worth the wait!
I was in Germany shortly after the wall fell, and Trabannts were coming over the border. The west-German autobahns were littered with Trabbys that had expired while trying to keep up with traffic. The used-car market in Germany was going wild.
LOL!!!
My parents were artists around that time and bought literally dozens of Trabbys for a few Mark.
My Dad removed the roof of one of them to make a improvised cabriolet for a summer vacation.
I was stationed in Germany at the time. I remember.
Driving something that slow on the autobahn must have taken extreme bravery. Stay to the right and pray.
Its very lucky it was trabant not tanks.
What is a Trabant on top of a hill?
A miracle.
What are 50 Trabants on top of a hill?
A Trabant factory.
th-cam.com/video/VSZ9MJdcs_I/w-d-xo.html do you know them? :D
So, I guess if you want to get on top of a hill, you hired some big guy named Boris to push you up the hill?
Producing ahead of, in hopes of hyping demand?
@@MadCapMag And they never do it again
@@chesucat If there is no road, yeah, a big guy named Boris should be enough to pick it up and get it to the top.
Here in Iceland we had the deluxe edition which had a rear ashtray.
😂
"Luxury"
That’s crazy talk. You’re lucky that you didn’t get that entire car seized. If the wrong person found out, your trusty luxury Trabant would have been taken away. Imagine that... a Trabant with a rear ashtray. Btw... did the extra weight from the ash tray make a dent in the overall top speed?
Do you see them driving much?
@@eligeidel9357 there used to be a lot of them but now only a few during the summer.
The fuel valve translates as follows:
Z= Zu= closed
A= Auf = open
R= Reserve = reserve
This was mandatory due to the fact that there was no fuel gauge. You run the car in the A/open position until you recognize it starting to cough and starve. That's the time to put it in R=reserve so you can drive with a remaining liter or so to the next filling station.
Well that's how many carburetted motorcycles still operate: most of them have a fuel petcock with a reserve position.
Put it in H!!!
My dad owned 7 of these cars one after the other. He also swapped engines from better ones with low or very low mileage. He had a handbook specially made for the Trabant in which the author pretty much shared all his knowledge on how to upgrade or forge parts for the car if needed. All in all the Trabant wasn't fantastic, but was able to run okay.
Lots of the eastern bloc cars were made to be easily disassembled with a few tools and a little knowledge. They also came with their full service manual, which you use to be able to get in the west too.
You wouldn't be able to share this handbook would you? I'm sure it's long gone but as a Trabant owner I must ask
"The exterior design changed very little..."
Well, as we all know - you can't improve upon perfection!
Exactly and when you even don't have enough steel to build cars
you don't waste it for new press forming tools every 5 years 🤣
In fact, like many small iconic cars, the Trabant has undergone very little changes in its exterior design. However, the 1963 and 1990 Trabant are not the same.
🤣🤣🤣 Thanks for the laugh!!
correct :-)
The same happened in Russia where there is at least a model that is still in production since the soviets and had just minor modifications.
I don't know other car manufacturers but Romanians had at least decency to modify the 1300 making the lights different, improving the car a little and modifying the interior at least 4 times in that car's life.
My Czech parents had to wait 14 YEARS to get one of these back in the day :D
Wow
In Bulgaria you could get a Trabant with no waiting but nobody wanted it. 10 year waiting list for a Lada.
Yes, and many families became much larger while waiting the typical 10+ years and the car was too small to haul the family.
Why didn't they order a Skoda ? Skoda was way better than this cardboard thing.
Did they ever put you in the back seat? Jk I would take off my seatbelt all the time as a kid
I had a friend who replaced the engine in this car with a golf 3 gti engine. Man, at 150km/h you feel like death is just around the corner, and it is.
That's the most funny/scary sentence I've read all week.
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp the trabant engine? No idea. Small update about why these cars were hated by almost everyone who had it. Because the car is not made of metal and in their development costs were cut everywhere, there were tremendous difficulties in opening/closing the doors/trunk. For example, I remember my father going fishing with a friend who had a Trabant and the car was left half in the shade and half in the sun. The problem was that the drivers door was in the sun and expanded so hard that it was impossible to open (and the passenger door does not have an outdoor lock). Many times you had to break into your own car by messing with the windows.
this one is 2 stroke, just by the end of production of this cars (mid 90's) they stick a 4 stroke 4 cylinder 1.4 litre engine from VW polo, also the reason you don't see a rust on this car is simple , all panels , except the roof , was made from cardboard
WRONG wrong wrong! Its production run ended in 1991, and its panels were never made of cardboard- - but cheap thermosetting plastic(which cannot be recycled) that was reinforced with recycled cotton or wool fibers.
In the last 2 years of its production (East & West German merger) they made numerous upgrades like you mentioned, but too late to save the line.
John Smith you have been also wrong
"cotton 68%, plastic powder of all plastic what could not be recycled 7%, Mix of Metalpowder (alluminium, zinc, copper, lead) 3% and 23% naturel softwood resin"
I started my three year assignment in West Germany the day the wall came down. I got to witness the shock on East Germany faces when they came over to West Germany. The poor Trabays were in many accidents(mostly fatal). The E.G. people were coming out of a fifty year time warp. Very interesting times.
mostly fatal 😢
“I wouldn’t buy one, but I’m glad he did.”
The ideal friendship.
Touché
Indeed.
I'll buy you one johne boi
;)
Usually said about a boat
Something something boats
Hi I'm from Hungary.
We had to wait for 5 years to buy our first car the Trabant.
600cc 2 stroke air cooled engine ,top speed i did 120 km/h.
Front wheel drive manual steering column gear shiftier.
It always started even in -20 C cold.
It had a Reserve tap inside ,for the fuel tank,never had to measure the fuel level.
It was a great car.
I was a TV Tech ,i could fit 3 CRT type TV-S ,when i took the front passenger seat out.
It was great on Snow ,cause it was light and front wheel drive.
It never broke down in the 10 years i was driving, just had to replace CV Joints once .
Kicsit úgy érzem, az 1000-es Suzuki Swiftek a mai Magyarország Trabantjai:D Ugyanúgy minden körülmények között IS elindul, alig kell szerelni, megy rendesen, kicsi, könnyű, OLCSÓ, alkatrész tonnaszám... Apámnak van egy 98-as évjárata. Kb 10 éve kínozza és mustrálja napi 50-150 km-rel, és mostanában kezdett el csak baszakodni kicsit. De nem vészes.
gec kovetkezo az ezres suzuki lesz xddd
ANDY KERI na vegre valami reasonable response itt. Nagyon jo kis auto volt ez, de ezt nyugaton nem fogjak soha megerteni, de nem is baj:)
Finally, someone to clear up the stereotype of them being unreliable! I mean, if someone’s ever seen the engine bay of one, they would know what I mean, how would such a simple car be unreliable?
They worked,easy to fix,and got you from point a to point b isn't that what transportation is supposed to do, love nice cars but we have become too obsessed with them, a guy with a horse drawn cart or a poor man with a bicycle would think of this as a limo.
The car we all paint as kids does really exist.
And it's called the Volvo 740
😂
Tri Poloski
be thankful to the communists they brought you this
Mercedes W123
You are not the only one who despaired of the gear shift. As a "West German", I had the chance to drive one in a parking lot. A colleague of mine drove an old Trabant, and I didn't dare drive it on the street. It was a strange, funny experiment, though!
There were waiting lists in East Germany, where you had to wait up to 15 years for a Trabant. Used, ancient cars were sold at black market at almost new car prices, because otherwise it was almost impossible to get a car. Welcome to communism! I was born in 1988 and could hardly believe such stories. When the wall fell and Germany was reunited, even East Germans came all the way to us in the very northwest of (formerly) West Germany to buy the used car market empty, because the whole GDR was fed up with the Trabant and wanted "modern, western" cars - You couldn't blame them.
*This must be the basic model. The expensive model had the fuel dipstick built into the fuel cap* 👍
Also, you didn't mention the most important thing; the whole body is plastic
Nope, cardboard.
That is a must have feature mate!
It must be indeed a basic modell without any or with only a view "Sonderwunsch" (special request) options - it surely is not the "deLuxe" or the "Hycomat". The "S" doesn't stand for "Sport", by the way, it stands for "Sonderwunsch".
Flame Beats LMAO
I grew up in Romania and when I was 16 one rich kid get a Trabant for his 18 birthday. We race every day and he won only when my bicicle chain felt off.
When I turn 18 he let me drive the beast and I notice the fourth pedal. He said it' s the latest model with an airbag pump.
LOL so you're telling me its faster to bike than to drive a trabant
The trabant makes the Dacia 1300 look like a luxury car :)))
Why don't you join the elite cycling team? Either you are super human, the car was old heap of trash or you made it all up incluiding the airbag. As a joke your comment may e great as an assessment of Trabant no value whatsoever.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
@Sebastian Guevara One way that I know of is that if you have family in the communist party, you were one step above the rest of the population...
This makes the Yugo look like a luxury vehicle
Looks are deceiving. The Yugo would break down 4 times before the Trabant does once, and even when the Trabi fails you can fix it with a tie or a coin or other household item. :) It's a tremendously simple and resilient thing - as long as you don't kick the side, because it's made of a very thin & weak wooden panel.
But you can also lift the car with a handful of stronger people present, it's only ~600kg. :)
@@Steve-es3fc in Egypt we had Naser128 car which is Fiat 128 clone
and it was very famous
me myself own one 1987 model which is far far advanced than this turban
it's 4 stroke engine deliver about 40 hp ,capacity 1100cc
going from 0 to 100km/h in about 13s
and drive at maximum speed of 140Km/h
note that legendary Fiat model was originally designed in 60th
and yogu model was based on this model but with 1300cc engine
comparing to tarbant
this is shows how far the communist germany lift behind
It made the Polski Fiat 126p look great and reliable.
It was a lot better car than shit boxes like Pinto,Gremlin,Chevette or Vega for that matter.You did not see a lot in your life my friend !
@@Steve-es3fc You can fix the Yugo the same way.
In 1992 I slightly rammed a VEB Sachsenring trabant station wagon with a VW Passat variant. Nothing was to be seen on the VW, the fender of the Trabant was broken, the bonnet was rammed into the windshield like a knife. Luckily nothing happened to anyone. I bought the same Trabant in the next village for 100 German marks and gave it to the people.
"What gear am I in right now?"
"Let me feel it, I can't tell by looking"
This killed me.
This is how (many?) motorbike gears are in my experience. The aircooled 2 stroke engine and twist fuel valve are also normal on older motorbikes
@@rexsceleratorum1632 dont even have to go far to find many of the features. Late 90s early 2000s cruisers still had twist fuel valves, no fuel gauge, no tacho, air cooling. Ofc they arent 2 stroke anymore but still lot of similarities
I drove one today and yes, each gear has its own unique feel 😂
It is a sound gear device, simple no!
Best line in the whole video 😂
The smoke was known in East Germany as "Trabbifurz" or Trabant fart.
They only smoke badly if poorly maintained.
@@STEAMRADIO which they normally are
😂
@@STEAMRADIO Uhmm if you ever owned a2=stroke motor bike you will know that the oil mixed into the fuel burns white and makes smoke...... ie: they ALWAYS smoke.
They have an atmosphere of their own: Literally!
Z = Zu (Close)
A = Auf (Open)
R = Reserve
Indeed, Doug just went for the R as in reserve, everything is just a learning curve
Rückwärts
Or am I getting whoooshd?
Reverse?
William Jordan reserve gasoline
Reserve is the gear you have in reserve (reverse) when it won’t go forward
A true Trabant enthusiast would never let his Trabi be so neglected. By the way, this car can be made into a really chic "racing cardboard" with little effort. Here in Central Germany there are still some very well-preserved and well-maintained Trabant 601s that are quite capable of surprising with great looks and impressive driving characteristics.
Remember - if the Trabant does not have it as "basic" or on the list of "options" you do not need to have it.
You mean east Germany?
@@zwoelfventilerCentral Germany, Mitteldeutschland.
Went on a Trabant tour of Berlin once: car broke down, tour company didn’t have a mechanic. I’d read about how easy these cars were to take apart and fix so I took the front wing and panels off, stripped the air filter and throttle out and fixed it with no tools. I am not a mechanic. I’m still a legend at work to this day.
Well... This (and few other) cars were known for their super easy maintanance. When engine belt broke, you just used womens stocking tied as a belt to replace. Could make like 50-100 kilometers with that. And that isnt urban legend... This little car (we call it Rintintin because of the sound it makes) is cute, sweet, bad and forever... There is no way it can break to the way you wont be able to fix it.
Using pantyhose as a temporary fix for a fan belt wasn't exactly unheard of in the West.
I had some family who lived in east Germany. They were unfortunately not rich enough to own this type of luxury car.
luxury Car?
@@lightshineministries3549 in eastern countries any car was a luxury
@@carachan3073 I actually am East German and I know the Trabant was never regarded as a luxury car. A luxury car would have been something like this: th-cam.com/video/0meH8-75eBs/w-d-xo.html or that: th-cam.com/video/gyxha5YX_Po/w-d-xo.html.
@@spakkkomat for the tatra i have no idea how they even got their hands on a v8 (im slovak)
@@jefref4826 😀 That's why it was luxury - noone could afford it, only party bigwigs had those. Friend of mine got himself one after 1990. Amazing car! Pozdrav z Berlína
My dad bought me one of these in 1991, I guess as a practical joke. I drove it for two years.
On the last journey I broke down on the autobahn near Kaiserslautern and a drunk driver in a big Merc stopped, turned around (on the motorway) and tried to jump start us. When that failed he towed me off the motorway at (literally) 100km/h. I almost shat myself because the car had never driven that fast before, especially not at a distance of 2 metres to the car in front. I survived. We scrapped the Trabbi after that.
🤣🤣🤣
That's a great story.
What’s the maximum speed?
@@obamalore some made 120km/h some just 90.Depended very much on the engine quality and how careful you treated it and how easy you made the first kilometers and if you put enough oil in the benzin,better a bit more.This video is just shit,this idiot making communist cars worthless,just saw a video about a Volga and wrote an angry comment.
@@sven471111 I thought only the ones with the new 4-step engine (or however it is in English) could go faster, the old ones with the 2-step engine could not climb a steeper hill (and that is a fact, you had to have some speed before reaching the hill or you were stuck halfway)
* slaps roof of trabant
"this baby can go from 0 to 60 going downhill"
xD
*slaps roof of Trabant
*Trabant falls apart.
😂😂
Btw, a perfect maintained Trabant runs up to 125 kmh (around 80 mph)
@@abhishekrao1525 actually its quite the opposite. a trabant could be fixed what we call "panzertape" ( its this greyish heavy tape). i once saw someone fixing his trabant with this tape in front of my school back in 1991 after a crash on a crossing, while the "westgerman car" had to be pulled off to the workshop - the trabant driver fixed the holes in his chassis with the tape and went driving on ^^
"A man driving a Trabant suddenly breaks his windshield wiper. Pulling into a service station, he hails a mechanic. 'Wipers for a Trabi?' he asks. The mechanic thinks about it for a few seconds and replies, 'Yes, sounds like a fair trade." - Found that on Wikipedia
Hahhahahaha
😂😂😂😂
A gas cap for my Yugo?
Here's another one, quite fitting here. A German guy takes his Trabant to America. He drives to a gas station, rolls down the window and asks for a refill. The attendant looks at the "car" and says: "Yes sir, shall I also fart up the tires?"
I've heard a similar joke about Trabants. How do you double the value of a Trabant? You fill the gas tank.
Q. How do you make a Trabant go faster?
A. Call a tow truck.
I would have answered with "push it off a cliff"
💀💀💀💀
💀💀💀💀
It could go 110 km/h.
The maximum speed allpwance was 120 km/h on the highway.
Acceleration was better than BMW or Audi had at starting. I was the first when we started from traffic light even I did not want. :-D
Q. How do you double the value of a Trabant?
A. Fill it up
I drove through East Germany to visit West Berlin in 1964. I remember seeing a lot of these things belching blue smoke. Always wondered what they were.
“This car can get up to 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene”
“What country is this from”
“It no longer exists”
PUT IT IN H!
+Michael Essa
Hahahaha! A HECTARE??? A hectare is 100 acres and a measurement of square footage. I get where you were going though.
@Milquetoast Eugenicist Or I don't watch it???
@Milquetoast Eugenicist latveria man what
@@olrikparlez3152 He meant tot say, "It can FUMIGATE 300 Hectares on a gallon!"
“What is zero to 60?”
“It doesn’t go to 60”
Edit: damn 3.4k likes? Also, it’s been a year already?????
“What’s the zero to 55?”
“Yes”
pugg productions lol
Not even in free fall.
It will go 60 on a hill
My father's friend did 80 with it after a bit of tuning.
You don’t need to lock the doors on a trabant because the car itself is the anti-theft device
Even if they stole the car, they wouldn't get anywhere.
@@ArtifactSkyline just a quick update my father and grandfather and my cousins father had a trabant as their first or second car , these cars are unkillable , my uncle said in early nineties when the new BMWs and Mercedes Benz rolled in to ex communist Hungary , he pulled a couple out of a ditch with this 28hp car , they were fun to drive and they were also used as race cars , this car is so special to me btw
Trabant was made by IFA and ifa made a motor oke called the simson which I drive every day 100-600km I get 120mpg and altho my top speed is 80kph so 50mph , it's again a very reliable motorbike and I assure you as a 16 year old boy , I make use of all my 6 horsepower and redline the heck out of my bike , been going strong for the last 3 years and I've driven it like 30 thousand km with barely any problems ( besides when the engine siezed up )
Also there was zero car theft in east Germany
Exactly 😁😁😁
@@teutonalex Or graffiti...almost no rape or murder, no homeless people. The real reason is because the country was over-policed, combined with an amazing sense of Prussian self-discipline, and you could always count on someone knowing your business, something not unique to Communism in Germany. I lived there. I know. Better than we have it now with smash and grabs, attacks on old people, lazy, fat parasites collecting money for NOT working. I would gladly take the Wall and the lack of 'western luxuries' for the safety and security we had back then. You don't have to be a socialist to appreciate the value of close personal relationships between neighbors and citizens. We lost that in exchange for iPhones and Teslas.
I'm disappointed you didn't mention that the body was not made of steel but of some strange kind of resin, which was quite innovative in the 1960's when the Traband was first released.
Yeah, it was fiber-reinforced plastic made with cellulose, usually from scrap wood or paper. That’s where all the lovely nicknames like “angry guitar pick” or “cardboard boy” come from.
Doug’s future teenage kid: “Dad I want a German car”
Doug: “THIS...”
This what "German engineering" produces without the American Marshal Plan.
Doug: thiiiis is my money saver
hes better off with a much realible toyota and honda
@@neuro.weaver Messerschmitt bf109 and me 262 worked without very well. Whilst 70s american cars were and partly are pretty shit. Get your soldiers out of germany!
@@neuro.weaver As you can see money isnt everything to succeed. See america. And none cant achieve anything see Russia. So inovation is needed. German engineering
"What's the 0-60 time?"
"No."
"Oh, ok."
This car can actually do close to 70 mph if it's really well maintained and the ignition is freshly calibrated. And it can do up 75 mpg when you're just cruising around at 45 mph, and it's close to impossible to get less than 25-30 mpg out of it.
Or, wait 2 Revolutions and a military coup... 😜
@@james64ibm the only way to get less is to try to do burnouts, and fail miserably
I laughed out loud at this one
Its does 100kmh, i think it takes about 28 seconds
very old comunistic joke: What is the longest car in the world? Trabant - 15 meters with the smoke!
*"3 метра лима, 5 метери дима"* 😂
Seat belts in Trabant ??
What a waste of money ... you hit anything in 20 miles/h and that plastic car is in 1000 pieces .
But comrade, a zil limo with smoke is 20m at least
How can you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it up.
@@King_Fred_II What's the best theft deterrent for a Trabant? Don't give it more fuel than you need in a short period.
As a 2-stroke motorcycle rider (Suzuki RH599) and pilot, i immediately loved this car when it saw it in Berlin.
NO COASTING ?
No problem! The “no coasting, except in neutral” is exactly like a motorcycle (where you hold the clutch and just downshift) if you want to coast.
NO GAS GAUGE?
Correct. Same as an RG500 and other early bikes !
DOOR LOCKS:
The right door that only locks from inside and outside lock only on the left side? Sounds crazy until you’ve flown Cessna airplanes like C172/182.
Fun to see & probably drive!
Fun fact: its exterior does not rust because it is made of plastic.
Sorry, but plastic was out, it was made of cardboard
@@dirkprivat5106 heated plastic between papers.
old jeans actually
@@antoniosalvatore7986 the only true answer it's like carbon fiber without any benefit
@@adv5755 Comie Fiber*
The lock system is low key genius, impossible to lock your keys in the car.
No.. no..
This car has manual transmission, so US idiots can't stole it.
RH ÜÜ generalization of a country’s population... not cool
@@luc-perrin wahh
my aw11 mr2 I can lock the drivers door from the inside when the door is closed but not when it's open so it forces you to lock the door from the outside.
You only needed two people to build a Trabant - one to fold and one to glue!
Bruce Lee its true ..u can see visioracer chnnel
the advantage, cheap construction and cheap labor! more money for food... oh wait 😂
and it still took them 14 years to complete your order! hahaha
and one who cuts
Only one is able to build a Trabbi. His name is SATAN.
I remember these cars on the Autobahn when the wall came down. The families had all their earthly belongings in and on the car driving slow as hell, it was sad and funny at the same time as we watched familial generations who had no clue what freedom was attempt to navigate a truly new beginning and a testament to the abject failure that is communism.
Poland used to export Polski Fiats, so called because they were Polish versions of old Fiats, later called FSOs. These weren't as desperate as Trabants, but were still horrible cars with engines like tractors, terrible handling, awful build quality and bare metal everywhere.
$3000....? It's about $80-100 in my country (Hungary)
Well most of that is probably shipping cost.
@@MadasIII Yeah, you have to pack something into that Trabant first.
wait a few years. when i was little here in italy the old fiat 500 was like 500 dollars. now is more like 5000 plus, depending on how broken it is.
Amúgy tényleg annyi
The taxes are for cleaning the container
A common Trabant joke.
- How do you double the value of a Trabant?
- You fill it up with gas.
So you drive one around, and then its value gets halved?
@-- clearly not if you watched the video
Another Trabant joke:
-What means a Trabant on top of the hill?
-A miracle. 🤣🤣
@-- 3:21 4:26 Dude he is literally showing us that it‘s bad.
@-- No it wasn't
Do you really need seatbelts when everyone else was driving a Trabant?
Not everyone was driving Trabants. There were Wartburgs, Skodas, Ladas, Polski Fiats and a few others.
The seatbelts were to keep you from leaving the car
@@avada0 dont forget the worst of all.... Dacias
@Patrik Ratter
Was it? Trabants have an equally low regard. (Though I saw lots more of them around in the nineties)
@@avada0 At least the trabant's steering wheel didn't lock up on turning.
In Germany enthusiasts like to say:
"Only men out of steel drive cars out of cardboard".
Z = closed
A = open
R = reserve
You normally use A, if the engine stops, you turn to R, then you have 5 litre left.
Zu, Auf, Reserve
@@bernhardbregen217 rückwärts* mein bengel
@@David-hn6dy How does the petcock go backwards?
Put it in H!
@@David-hn6dy nein tankreserve
this is a perfect car for a bad naighborhood
why?
cuz noone will steal it
and if he does you can catch him on foot
NERFRig yeah if they can even figure out how to start the car XD
You can’t catch him.... The smoke in your face will kill you.
a thief will think, *uck where is the gear stick and why turn signal indicator is too big.. :P
hahaha omg im dead
Bhahahahahahahahah
"What gear is this in?"
*SLAP*
"WE will ask ze questions!!"
Lol
Doug: "What's the 0-60"
Robert: "Uh, we'll, it doesn't exist"
That killed me! 🤣
The seatbelt is used to find the bodies more quickly...
Doomer
Youre the single romanian grandpa that know english
Oof
I live near by where they were produced. You were often told to wait up to 10 - 15 years or so to get one. My 86 year old neighbour even drives one till today, and it runs perfectly fine I guess!
Hahaha the Old Guy probably rocks the Old Grumpy Zwickau styles.
It'll probably still run in 50 years, it's easy to repair and there's not that much to break in the first place, no complex electronics and not that much metal(can't remember if they mentioned it in the video but most of the outer shell was plastic)
"OK sir, your car will be ready in 10 years"
"Morning or afternoon?"
"...why does that matter?"
"the plumber's supposed to finally come by that morning."
ist schon schrecklich dass im kommunismus qualität und quantität der wirtschaft so hart leiden. und das auch noch während umweltschutz stark vernachlässigt wird.
Wow, that sucks, here in Hungary the waiting time for a Trabant was usually 6-8 years. My grandfather was a high-level comrade, so he managed to get one within about 2 years.
Fun fact, some dudes tried to go round the world trip with Trabants, I think they actually succeeded.. partly because you can fix it with a hammer
I travelled a full country ( like every city and interesting place in Hungary ) in a 1978 simson s50n ( same company who made trabant , it was a 20k km trip I did it once a week I got 2.2l/100km or above 100mpg , it was the time of my life I still drive this bike everyday , these were really reliable machines , my dad and grandpa also praised the trabant
@@jimby_vokk3110 They were really beautiful. They weren't tin snails like the 2cv. Also, there are very few intelligent people here who will take your sensible comments seriously.
Dont forget a sickle
if it has a 2 stroke, you can fix it with wire and duct tape :))
Should be up there in Jeremy Clarkson's favourites, then!
I rented one on my last trip to East Berlin. The reverse gear was so confusing that my two buddies and I would just half pick up and half shove it into the parallel parking spots. It was so terrible that we took it back after a couple of hours and walked/rode the bus everywhere else we went. Good times...
What a livello car!
Don't forget that the engine come from DKW and it is easy to elaborate, hats off for 2 strofe!!!
The letters on the fuel valve probably mean: Z - Zu (closed). A - Auf (Open). R - Reserve (Reserve)
@@bbal4616 nein
Oh, German - clever you! Yes, they were likely built for other nations (e.g. East Germany) within the then-USSR.
Ne,er redet vom Benzinhahn also R=Reserve
No, he's talking about the fuel valve so R=Reserve
@@arnepianocanada I am amazed I lived in Czechoslovakia and I never knew that Czechoslovakia , East Germany and I guess the rest of the east block were part of USSR 😂😂😂😂
@@charlesloko7698 you‘re really one salty chap, aren‘t ya
I know you‘re mostly right, but most of the people here don‘t care to educate themselves about Soviet History and most of them won‘t
so don‘t bother to waste your time on them
Doug is the type of guy who complains about the panel gaps on a Trabant.
TBF he did the same thing with a Maserati. True equality for a communist car. I like it :)
Fun fact: The panelgaps on an new Trabant were always perfect because they were routed AFTER the doors were applied. Watch th-cam.com/video/mv3wnQXRHzc/w-d-xo.html at 22:15.
I assume the doors on Dougs Trabant were repaired with panels or a whole doors from another Trabbi which would result in crappy gaps, because the were routed on an different car.
@@latinumbavariae Thanks for the link, video is AWESOME, I wonder how many workers died because breathing plastics particles and painting without mask, and how many fingers took the saw used to cut the plastic pieces :/
He is a fool.
@@latinumbavariae Cars with faulty panel cavities were rare when they left the factory. I went to a Mercedes dealer today and the Coupe had some very bad faults, the panels were uneven, and then I said someone is unfairly disparaging cars like the Trabant.
We still have those driving around in Bulgaria. As well as the good old Wartburg as well.
There's even a joke about it:
- What is the longest car in the world?
- A Trabant... if you count the smoke behind it.
i love to hear that :D have you ever seen a wartburg sport (313)? saw a restored one some weeks ago in Leipzig :D
in hungary there are lots of them we had a trabant 601 L . i think it isn't a shitty car.
Lol they were legendary in the Czech Republic too... still got some drivin' around here
I just saw one last week in Brno, but then I thought "When was the last time I saw one of these?" Thinking of it you're probably more likely to see a Porsche or even a Ferrari on our streets. Guess we're getting somewhere. :D
Lol ani tak ne, u nás je tak max. jedno Ferrari ročně :D
12k communists disliked his video
this car is a soviet piece of trash
Q: why is it called the trabant 601?
A: because it has seating for 6, comfort for 0, and you always need 1 person to get out and push it.
yeah lol
600 people ordered it and only one person got it...
Seating six what? Gerbils?
@@aarongranda7825 Less food -> smaller people *. . .*
"What's the longest car in the world?"
"It's the Trabant. 2 meters of the vehicle and 10 meters of smoke."
WRONG!!! Reverse lights not an option.. The Soviet Union never traveled backward!
lol
obsolete professor indeed comrade
I know it's sarcasm but it still smells like shit.
Do you want me to laught to death? If you Do: you nearly succeded.
At least now i know how the Wehrmacht felt when they where attacked by shermans.
„Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer!“
How fast does this thing get from 0-60? Answer: No
0s
Faster than a normal family car because its 2 strokes
∞ seconds
Your answer is false, normal highspeed 65-70 mph
Why does the Trabant have a heated rear window?
To keep your hands warm when you push it.
Our family had one of these in 1980’s Hungary, in the same colour even. My dad still speaks fondly of this little car. I remember taking many road trips in it. I can still remember the exhaust smell like it was yesterday. Thanks for reviewing this little gem. I will make sure to forward the video to my parents!
bojler eladó
We had one too, but i was very young. The only thing I remember about it is that it was one of the best cars we ever own. I dont care what anybody says, its a good car!
And they are not that rare here
We had one too i was very young when my father sold it for 10 000 forints.
It was yesterday.
"Isn't this car harmful to the environment?"
Tribant: The what?
DMichael Kimbley 😂😂😂😂
No more so than MILLIONS of lawnmowers.
@Number Nine i love the Trabant so Yes
The environment didn't exist back then.
CO2 is what makes the grass grow.
What do you call a trabant with twin exhaust pipes?
A wheelbarrow.
This jokes an old one..the answer is actually a reliant robin, ...except the Robin was luxury to the trabant
@@stevedickson5853 also used on ladas
underrated.
In 1982 west germans were driving,Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Volkswagen.......east germans were driving that........thats Communism for you.
Should have mentioned that most of these were actually made from fiber-reinforced polymers.
Cardboard?
similar yes... People who owned these had reported that if the car was left near a farm Cows would eat the car body's.
+Un om ordinar lol
As _Un om ordinar_ mentioned, they used different materials depending on availability. That's why I decided to use _fiber_ instead of a definite material.
After all, this was the same socialist nation that bought burial shoes with paper-thin soles from foreign nations for people to waer as actual daily shoes. The nation that couldn't build houses after they spent all their bricks and mortar imprisioning their people. Planned economies with all their faults and that.
I might not have been alive at the time, but I live in the former GDR. It was shit back then.
Dick SteeleTheDick
Q: Whats the longest car in the world?
A: Trabant, 2 meter car, 10 meters of smoke.
Q: How to stop a Trabant?
A: Just put a gum on the road...
@08srt8charger A joke? Do you know some?
omg im dying rn
How do you double the value of a Trabant? You fill it up with gas.
Trabant:full speed 55
Bugatti:me on neutral
Why have seatbelts in a car that can’t even outrun the neighbours dog?
“Because safety is number one priority”
-CrazyRussianHacker
Because otherwise you wont survive the collision with the neighbours dog. But the dog will at least.
Because it could go with 110km/h on the highway.
What if you get hit by a speeding car
@@Cr-lw3ky Most likely I will die it depend on situation. :-) But I most likely will die on a pedestrian cross... I have never have accident with my Trabant, but an idiot hit me on the pedestrian cross.
7:28 Love how that car in the back was like I dont want none of that and dips
I remember seeing those while I was in Germany from 89-91.They ran terribly but those East Germans were masters of Repairing them also in ingenious ways.
mike mathews the Soviet way is not to buy a reliable or good car, but a car that is easy to fix. Seriously! They built the T-34’s the same way
fast track to being a great mechanic -drive a shitty car/motorcycle.
It looks like a car you can keep running forever with basic tools, WD 40, duct tape, and maybe a little JB Weld.
Yep. My dad claimed that his best time of getting the engine out, fixing it (I think it was the carburetor that needed constant recalibration, but I'm not sure, may also have been the ignition) and putting it back in was 26 minutes. Try doing that with a real engine.
Improvise, adapt, overcome.
Fuel petcock knob:
Z = zu = closed
A = auf = open (which is the one you should be using)
R = Reserve = reserve (when you run out of fuel on A, you can switch to R and quickly search for a fuel station)
(older models have 1, 2 and 3 or just a handle)
By the way, to start it when it's cold, you should pull the knob next to it (choke), start the engine, half-push the knob (you should feel it locks), drive off and after a few minutes (when the engine is warm) push the knob entirely.
Think of it as a two-stroke motorcycle with another pair of wheels and a roof.
Awful? Yes. Ridiculous? Definitely. Worst car ever made? Not at all. Trabant is extremely simple which means you can literally fix most problems with the tools you saw on that shelf (a spanner, a plug and a fuse), you can even fix its bodywork just like a fibreglass canoe with some cloth and resin, both quite important features when living in East Germany. There is a group of Czechs that travelled across whole continents (Africa, Asia, South America, now heading for Australia) in two Trabants, mainly because they did not have much money when they started but also because how easy it is to keep it going.
Trabant was not the only car made in East Germany. They also made Wartburg which was quite similar but much larger. And there were different types of Trabant: Trabant Universal (combi), Trabant Kübel (off-road-ish with no doors), Trabant RS (Rallye Special with 64 hp which is incredibly fast given Trabant's tiny weight). Of course you usually just ordered Trabant and after short wait of 10 to 20 years (really!), you got one. Colour was not chooseable, you got what you got.
Jan Sten Adámek i like that. Thats really cool you know that much about this car .i take it u had the pleasure of driving 1 or know someone who did? I didnt even know about this car till now.lol
Very good recollection of the Trabant. They were awful, but as long as they had fuel in the tank and you had basic tools, they kept going. Today i still own a Schwalbe myself, a small scooter which goes up to 40 mph, very simple vehicle and easy to keep it going on the road. Greetings from Germany.
The Kübel was sheet metal from the windshield back, had a cloth drop top and was and is a good car for forestry.
Grown up in East Germany I find it hilarious that you tested the Trabant. And I understand that you kind of have to look down on it, coming from all the luxury car tests. But believe me, this car was loved and admired by the average people, because it gave them at least some kind of freedom. And don't forget, there was barely an alternative. If you wanted a new Trabant, you had to put your name on a list and wait 16 to 18 years (yes!) till it was your turn, and it cost about two year's earnings. We called it 'Trabi' and it was holy. (And all that changed after 1989/1990 drastically - thank God)
Oh shut up. The car sucked. It was better than no car I'm sure, but that is not saying anything good about the car. A fucking skate board is better than nothing. That doesn't make a skate board a good mode of transportation. This car is a piece of shit and it exists because a few communist assholes took over a country and forced the citizens to live in a world where this was the absolute best they could get. Every one of those people were happy when the wall fell and they could actually make real money and buy real cars for a smaller percentage of their income that this turd cost.
Agree, no matter how weird or crappy it looks today it's just more than a car. It's an icon that deserves -not appreciation maybe but- respect at least. Just like Isetta and Yugo etc.
Gerlach Christoph watch out, a priveliged american kid will come in and say that you're wrong, and that communism is a good system. Because a College kid knows more about Communisms terror, then 1 that has lived in it? Nah, lmao
Doesn't change the fact that it's an awful disgusting car. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Doesn't change the fact that the man is missing an eye.
What the fuck are you on? West Germany was already a thing, and already very advanced by the time the wall fell. If you actually look at regions what was east Germany is backwards compared to west Germany.
It wasn't an awful car. It was a good microcar, comparable with microcars in Western Europe and Britain, but it was built too long. That was the fault of the socialist economy, not of the car.
The car being terrible for a valid reason doesn't make it any better of a car
Literally impossible to steal. They wouldn't have any idea how to drive one
Indeed, someone tried to stole mine once, and couldn't figure out how to connect the wires of the ignition... and also he still had the steering wheel lock to figure out. And he tried all the buttons and switches as well in the process...
Nobody even wants that car
The only reason a person would steal this was if jennifer lawrence was inside. Which ofcourse she never was/will.
In Poland we make fun out of it to this day.
Just push the car down the hill. It weight like 400 kg or something like that.
Is this car legal here?? This is Contrabant
Oh God, Noo...
@@kukuc96 Yeah the trabant is like american houses. Made of cardboard :)
@@computerjantje theres a Movie in Hungary where the biggest joke is a pig that is slowly eating a Trabant
@@lordzorddan8971 I think the movie is Yugoslavian
Black cat,white cat
@@computerjantje as opposed to Mexican homes made with shit.
He never gave it a Doug Score. I guess that his scale doesn’t go below zero.
Nah it’s cus it don’t go over 100
@@Calz-hi3cnthats right, this car is pure culture and a symbol of freedom. He should be proud of being allowed to drive this
@@monkeman966 Symbol of freedom? More like the opposite.
He retroactively gave it one when he started doing doug scores.
DougScore wasn’t a thing yet.
7:22 DOUG SAID A NO NO BAD WORD
Its a classic. You can switch the engine with a single person. The record is 15 min. (I am east German)
This car is reliable like no other and easy fixable.
And you had to work hard to persuade him NOT to will it to you.
I mean.. it has the equivalent of a lawnmower engine. I hope one person can fix it easily lol.
Ich war in Göttingen '89. Da ging die Mauer auf und ich glaub es waren 100 DM für jede Familie oder so um in der BRD Güter zu kaufen.
I was in a small town near the east german border and i saw live the visit of the east germans.
Mehr oder weniger
Übrigens habe ich damals von den Zigeunern ein gebrauchtes kühlschrank aus der DDR gehabt...der war guut.
(Sorry for my german it becomes schlimmer)
RELIABLE LOL good one man
I'm 13 always wanted a trabant dad says might as well buy a riding lawnmower without an engine and it would work better but I told him the Same thing it's easy to fix fun to drive and it's a neat little car I'm from Scotland btw
Finally Doug's clothes match the value of the car
$15000 dollars?
@@austrinivanderfanly745 pfft, $15000, sure
@@jpjanse4471 r/youngpeopleyoutube
@@anaverageuser_4267 stop linking subreddits outside of reddit ffs
@@anaverageuser_4267 The virgin subreddit linker of Non Reddit sites vs the Chad callout
and yet it's incredibly cute. The Trabant is like the old grandma of cars - she smokes too much, doesn't have AC at her place, doesn't go very fast, goes to see the doctor often, and has very fragile bones, but you love her anyway :)
It's actually really reliable. My father had one for 11 years and it has never had any problems.
@@istvanbocsor7911 sure
If you treat your car great, it will serve you forever
@@supersonictv8916 not if it’s made by: GM Chrysler anything Italian or anything European
Because then it will just fall apart everyone knows that
I've owned a Trabant in Connecticut for almost 2 years, and absolutely love it. As long as you're not in a rush to get anywhere, it's a lot of fun to drive. It will get you where you need to go, which is basically what a car is for, but without all the frills we've become used to in the West. It's simple to work on, and thanks to the German Trabi clubs, parts are readily available. I encourage others in the U.S. to own one!
How do you double the value of a Trabant? = You fill the gastank
That's a Yugo joke
MDDeGrande1994 yes you can triple the price with the Trabant
It was also a Skoda or Lada joke before VW bought Skoda and Lada failed every emission standard you could think of.
Philip Schmidt
You also double the weight though (triple if your in it)
What, everybody had the same jokes in the entire Socialist block? :D
When I lived in Germany in 1995, I was in the East, and Trabis were still everywhere. As they were integrating into western society, kids at school told ossi wessi witze (east west jokes). In one of them, there's an Ossi (east german) farmer, a Wessi (west german) farmer, and an American farmer, all boasting about how big their farms are. The Ossi says, "my farm is so big, that it takes me over an hour to walk all the way around it." The Wessi replies, "That's nothing--my farm is so big it takes all day to walk around!" The American replies, "Yeah, well it takes me a whole day just to to DRIVE around my farm in the USA." The Ossi replies, "yeah, I have a car like that, too!"
does "Ossi" sound like the English slang for Australian "aussie"?
Yes pretty much, the difference in pronouciation is minimal.
im still waiting for the punch line
you just didnt get it..dumbass
How do you double the value of a Trabant?
You tank it up
you didn't mention that people had to wait 14 years for a Trabant
whaaat?
@@solomonjenkins9505 yeah. Because only one factory build them so people had to wait a decade before they got one
That 14 years is about half a year to 2 years in reality.
@@ShadowViewsOnly It was 3 years in Hungary, that's what people who lived back then say at least. Of course if you displeased the party, you waited untill '89 and didn't get your money back.
@@theblancmange1265 I'm hungarian. My parents overlived WW2.. They know what actually happened. You got your Trabant within AT THE VERY MOST 2 years, but the VAST majority of the requests were complete within half a year.
So, whoever told you 14 years, is a liar.
Total: 2,818,547 units were produced. Good Trabant is easy to drive, reaches 120 km/h 75 miles
These cars were used at the time on really ,crappy extremely poorly maintained roads. Trabants were tough , affordable , and got you from A-B .....and could be repaired with a pair of pliers and some gaffa tape and maybe a bit of chewing gum .... by even the most basic mechanically minded person ..yes they were rubbish but in Soviet communist era they were a neccessity for the ordinary folk and they did their job well all things considered . Yes they were just about one step up from a donkey and cart ....but tough times made this car and it deserves it's place in car history .
as he said it was being made at the same time f40s were being built
"for the ordinary folk" you say, unfortunately it still wasn't affordable for ordinary folk
where my parents used to live, middle-sized city in Poland, so it wasn't a poor country-side, there was one car per 20 families tops
back then, only the best paid employees could afford a car (coal miners, doctors, etc.) and still they waited long months to buy it. My grandpa worked at a coal mine and he bought a Wartburg in 1970s, he waited like 2 or 3 years after he applied to get one until actually he could buy it, and then he drove it for 28 years :)
Wow thanks for your reply and clarification , nice to hear from those who lived it as they say
(un)fortunately I don't remember those times, I only heard from my parents :)
anyway, I agree with the rest of your comment - people couldn't afford anything better, actually western cars weren't even available, so Trabants, Wartburgs, Ladas, Skodas, etc. were the only option, and yet I heard about many people who drove that kind of cars 2000 kms to Bulgaria for holidays :)
I live the simplicity of this car. I love being able to maintain the whole thing myself. Imagine if they made a modern version of it. You know, one that fixed all the critiques (like the wiper position). I bet the smoke problem with this is because it's so old.
Doug - Which gear is it?
Owner - Let me feel it, i dont know
in comunism the car drives you
*In Soviet Russia, the car drives you!
NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT!
Gabriel Kodato I scrolled down to your comment at the same time the part of the video started playing 😂
Actually, Soviet Russia Memes & Comments Have Been Dead For A Year Now.
@@triton6490 this car wasnt made in soviet russia dumb fuck.
this looks like the car from Incredibles
Shut the fuck up
@@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa4 You're a dumb ass
@@MMGJ10 shut the fuck up
@@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa4 look at this edgy teen who probably has a horrible life 😂😂
@@DARKBassRsR shut the fuck up
Hi, do you still have it? Something was wrong with your engine. If you run it at 1:50 gas/oil mix it will not smoke that much. Have you forgotten to disengage the choke or is there a trouble with choke linkage? Also might be a problem with the carb float. Then, also check ignition timing. May be a bit late? Unless on the highway, the Trabant feels very agile and quick. 55 mph top speed is ridiculously low too. Something wrong! My Trabant Universal (wagon) did 115 km/h (~70 mph). Lovely lil screamer.
I had one of these back in Hungary in the early 80's, served me all right for about a year and for the amount I sold it in 1986 I could by an airline ticket to the USA where I live ever since . best exchange I've ever made!
@@roughtoughcocopuff9313 ?
@Realest Ryoma They would look the other way for $$$
@Realest Ryoma Hungry was never under soviet bloc
@Paffs_ Plays yeah some real shit here!! Adevărat
@Realest Ryoma He is lying.
i grew up in Hungary and when i was a child, that car was the only available option as a new car for my family, so my parents bought a new Trabant in 1989. The car type was completely same like in the video, except the car body - we had a "station wagon" with 3 doors. Today we couldnt imagine that a 5 member family (i have 2 younger brother) can live with this car but we (and more 100.000 family in europe) could. I can't feel any nostalgic shit or can't say i miss it, but we always reach or target with it (hungary is a little country). We sold it 10years later with 100,000 mile in the clock. Tha car has never had any serious problems, the engine was original, i can't remember any brakedown, however my father always take care of it, and fixed it in our apartment's parking lot lying a towel. If you have empty 1,5hour watch the film "Go Trabi Go". at /watch?v=hbAoQqwOCU0&t=99s
I grew up in Poland those times. Trabants, Wartburgs, Polonezes, beutyfull times :)
@Adam @Pandik. I am from Poland too. I sat only ones in Trabant, as I was a small child in the mid 70s. Believe or not, I thought to myself, what a comfort! We compare Trabant to modern cars. It is insane!
hungaryans everywhere :D
I grew up Hungary as well and could not afford nice shashlik, I had to make due with Ramenian noodles.
6:50 when she says she’s home alone
Id say 7:42 works much better! Hahahaah
Lol
Wouldn't she always be home alone?
This is absolutely foot on the floor!
somehow i got a hold of a maisto 1/64 trabant... instantly fell in love with the body style.... learning about the extended history of this car was quite a journey.... Doug, I am so happy you found one, and gave us all a really good look at one!!!
The Trabant makes the Fiat 500 feel like a mustang.
like a concept car xD
Don't you diss mah boi fiat 500
@@serra102 In italy, where no roads are straight and most cities have roads meant for motorcycles (when the 500 came out), that thing would've been a rocket.
@@serra102 the only good 500 through the vintage ones the modern ones are absolute unreliable dogshit along with literally every single company involved with Fiat AHEM ( Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Cadillac )
@@silasmcgee3647 Cadillac is not involved with Fiat, Cadillac is GM.