" your car will be available in 5 years " " will it be delivered morning or afternoon " " why? it will be in 5 years " " well, the plumber is coming in the morning "
It's a nice joke, but in Hungary at least, when the time finally came, you had to go to the one and only car distribution site in your town "Merkur telep" and there you could pick a car you ordered. We ordered a Skoda 120L, and after 5 years waiting my father went to this site, and he could pick either grey, green or brown, because that day only so colored 120Ls were phisically there... So we had a green one 😁
How much we wait for a new car these days? 10-20 years? Hell we wait that long for second hand cars too these days. lol If you were really desparate to get a car during communism, you could the same way you do today - by getting an older cheaper used car. The real reason cars were considered a luxury, is the same reason they are today - fuel prices were never cheap in.... well Europe as a whole actually. An american could say Western Europe was poor too - the majority of people drove VW Beetles/Golfs, Citroen 2CV's, Fiat 500s and Opels - luxury cars were rare there too, and their main profit was in the American market.
@@MyNameIsNidos Do they give out new cars for free where you live? 10-20 years, as in the time it takes you to save up the money - or is affordability not possible to be considered limitation these days?
A few clarifications from an actual East German: Yes, some people had to wait ten years for it. Yes, used cars usually ended up more expensive than new ones, but they were also very well cared for because they represented an investment and a commitment, not a disposable fashion article. Yes, they were spartan and simple to fix out of necessity but this argument also works in their favor, to this day they're one of the easiest vintage cars to find parts for in Germany, and one of the easiest cars to wrench on in history, period. No, you didn't get vouchers and weren't approved by some totalitarian bureaucrats for purchase, you either entered the waiting list or you didn't. No, it wasn't the only choice. Not only did East German itself build another, nicer car called the Wartburg, but you could also track down practically any other red bloc car if you knew a guy who knew a guy. My grandparents alone owned Zaporozhets, Moskvitch, Skoda, Lada and Wartburg throughout the course of their lives in East Germany, and my dad's first car was a Trabant at the time the wall fell (his grandma actually entered the waiting list for him when he was in middle school so his car would be ready by the time he graduated college). Also East German teens to this day prefer socialist 50ccs (Simson S51 and Simson Schwalbe) to modern scooters because they look cooler, are easier to fix, make one hell of a racket and grandfathering laws allow them to go faster.
My father-in-law is from Bulgaria and lived there during communist rule. He had a Traby that he waited I think 7 years for, and drove it to East Germany for vacation. He eventually got on another waiting list and was offered a used VW instead, which he accepted. For both cars, when he parked them, he would remove the windshield wipers, drain the fuel, and remove the battery due to rampant theft.
Have to 100% agree. I was born almost 10 years after the wall fell but my family and all old people I know praise this car. It was part of the family in east Germany. Even non car guys could easily fix it. In my area some young people still get them as the first car (just like the famous simme^^).
For all it's faults there's something to be said about a car that's more a faithful mutt than a show dog like many moderns cars. I miss the days when, even in the west, cars didn't have to be a fashion statement. They were allowed to be utilitarian to a fault because they were a tool, not a status symbol. They just had to get you from A to B with your stuff. Nowadays cars, and trucks in particular, are massive, impractical, and impossible to work on in your shed with a spanner. I love the old runabouts because they're unkillable, where so many modern "big dick manly" trucks fall apart if you kick them in the wrong place and you can't put them back together without the manufacturer sending you a cease and desist because they've fought so hard to put right to repair into the ground so you have to pay them even more money. Ridiculous.
Simsons are more popular because of an extra rule, west german mopeds are allowed 50kph but east german mopeds can legally do 60kph with the same license
This is what we call mental gymnastics from someone with Stockholm syndrome. “Waiting 5-10 years is good because suffering gives people an appreciation for life.”
When I went to Berlin in 2019 I saw a caravan of these driving through downtown by the Brandenburg Gate. The running joke was, "How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gas."
Two fun facts about this Trabant: - the little econometer-gauge-thingy on the speedometers right side is called a "Kraftstoffmomentanverbrauchsanzeige". - this color is called "Gletscherblau".
As a Hungarian who grew up in the 80’s, I especially appreciate this. My god mother had one… the “station wagon”. She always struggled with the shifter and one day while sitting at the red light, she struggled getting it into first and couldn’t take off fast enough as the light changed. The dump truck behind her honked, which scared her enough to stick it into reverse instead of first, flooring the gas and popping the clutch, resulting in her backing into the truck strong enough that she left the lift gate on the truck’s grill🤣🤣. My dad still laughs about it 50+ years on. DDR engineering in za House ya….
@@CockatooDude hello, I am one of those Hungarians. Today, there are two kinds of people here still driving Trabants: old people who never had any other car and can't be bothered replacing them and people who were kids or weren't even born when these things were common and drive them for fun.
I've been to Germany once, and ridden on the autobahn twice. Nothing gave me greater joy on that drive than seeing a Trabby belching smoke at highway speeds in its home turf (between Berlin and Polish border). I picked up a toy Trabby in this exact color to remember that trip to eastern Europe. Great job with the video!
We had some polish friends back in the mid 80's, they enthusiastically drove Lada's that needed to be serviced almost daily. I remember seeing them, laying under these cars in our driveway every other day, pools of fliuds with sawdust soaking it up. They loved their cars tho. I asked them why, they said it made them feel like they had a bit of home here with them, easing their homesickness.
Fun fact: When the Mercedes A-Class was released in the late 90s and failed the elchtest (moose test), in which the car rolled over after doing a manoeuvre, the car magazine took a Trabant and tried to do the same thing. To their surprise, the Trabant passed the test, with an even higher speed of 75 kilometers an hour, while the A-Class already rolled over at 60 kilometers an hour
@@luciolalazilia2189 Only if it's in a high-speed collision: and, to be fair, the same can be said of a number of low-budget Western European cars of the same period.
It's a interesting shift in format. The postmodern analysis and HOT DICKS gets alienating after a while. There's a warmth to this video that's refreshing.
Huh, I'm honestly shocked to see people liking it. I used to watch his videos in their entirety, but now as soon as I hear someone other than him droning on about "this is my car. well i like the car because this car has brakes, and I've always wanted a car with brakes. Also it's a gasoline engine, so that means you know, spark plugs and.....gas stations. Left turn. Door opens and closes! I love the way it moves forward, and left and right" the sooner I close out of it Top gear is amazing because they don't involve the owners in the writing process. They let the people who are.....good at writing, write the episodes. Lol I can read the wikipedia articles for these vehicles and get the exact same experience : p
@@jacobl6714 If you want to know the more personal experience from a vehicle, you can't get that from a scripted humorous string of jokes. Whenever Regular talks about the cars he usually relates it to something of his own past if it's a 90's vehicle anyhow. I'm sure most people don't watch these videos for the 'stats', and I cant think of one where they do list boring shit like that, but the owners are the window in which we can look into for the experience of driving vehicles we most certainly don't own. It's interesting to say the least to hear of other experiences. Not all vehicles shown are ones cared about, like I wouldn't care much for the personal experience of someone driving a 2000's Ford Transit, but not every video has to be made for me.
So, as a strange sort of aside, there's a game called "Jalopy" that simulates driving one of these from East Germany on the way to Turkey with your uncle just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It's almost always on the verge of breaking down, and you constantly have to scavenge for parts. I love the attention its owner gives it, and it makes me happy.
@@diegocabral1610 To be fair, I never would have known except another TH-camr, Noah Caldwell Gervais, did a short thought piece on the game where he brought it up. I thought it was a cursed Yugo for a long time. It's the perfect video game shitbox for just barely scraping by.
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.”
From 1990 to 1991 there was also the Trabant 1.1, with a water-cooled, 4-cylinder, 4-stroke 1.1L VW Polo engine and floor-mounted 4-speed stick. It even had a catalytic converter, so it was a strange combination of an archaic 1960s Eastern Bloc body and chassis with an up-to-date West German powertrain. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, there was no demand for it, so only about 30,000 of them were sold, mostly in Poland and Hungary. If you were rich, you did get another choice of automobile in East Germany -- the Wartburg, a 4-door sedan or wagon with a 3-cylinder, 2-stroke engine based on an old DKW design. And likewise near the end of its production run it briefly had an updated version with a 1.3L VW engine installed. And finally there was the Barkas, a small van that was used by the Stasi (East German secret police).
Plus assorted vehicles from the Soviet Union. You could purchase Moskvich cars - which came with a rather modern engine, an OHC four-cylinder-engine with hemispherical combustion chambers, making roughly 60 horsepower to the rear tyres with a displacement of 1,3 liters, and the cars had a four-speed manual gearbox, Ukrainian-made Saporoshez, which were equipped with an aircooled V4-engine, mounted in the back of the car, that was also used as a starter motor for helicopters. I owned a Moskvich 408 at one point. It was a blast to drive, quite frankly. And the Sapo - albeit small and loud - was digging through rough terrain as well. for the more demanding motorist the Volga was available, but Volgas were mostly used as police interceptors and secret service agencies. Hell, they managed to stuff the V8-engine from the Tchaika into the Volga's engine bay, and this 200 horsepower powerplant made the Volga pretty fast. Plus there was the notorious Lada, a.k.a. Shiguli, or VAZ 2101 (it went through several evolutions, final one was the VAZ 2107 before the car was discontinued. Well, Shiguli's base was the Fiat 124, which was introduced to the public in 1966, but the car was improved by Russian engineers, it had a modern OHC engine and chain-driven camshaft, which was able to deal with low-grade fuel, and the ground clearance was altered, so Shiguli was able to tackle Soviet roads. I wish sometimes cars of today were built as tough as the Lada was. It is easy to mock Russian cars altogether, their styling was unusual and kind of quirky, but the cars were robust and rust was the main enemy. But which car of the 60's and 70's did not rust?
I've yet to see a Trabant, but I live near a company that imports old European and Soviet cars, and they have a green Wartburg Knight station wagon and a rusty old Moskvich as shop vehicles. They also have a T34, but I'm fairly certain that gets even worse mileage than the Wartburg... and it won't fit through the Wendy's drive-through!
Funny thing about the 4 strokes is, that despite very limited numbers made (under 50.000 units if I remember right), it´s now become cheaper than the 2 strokes, because people doesn´t have a nostalgic feeling towards them. When I bought my 2 stroke 9 years ago, you could have 2s for 10k CZK no problem, 4s went for 40k up. Today it´s the opposite, you can buy 4s for 30k, while the 2s in the same condition as the one from 9 years back now goes for 60-70k. It´s totally nuts. I bought my car for 7k CZK back then, with all the money i threw in for repairs over the time, I could still sell if with a slight profit.
My dad had both. He sold his Trabi in 1986 after owning it for a short time. We didn't have a car in '87, then he bought a new Wartburg sedan (beanut brown) in 1988 with sunroof and a floor mounted shifter. When he ordered a car they asked him about a body style, sedan or a kombi. When they notified him about picking up the car he could choose between different colors. That's all. He kept it until the 2nd half of the 2000s.
We had a Wartburg 1.3 when I was a kid. I practically learned to drive on that car. I think my parents waited 4 or 5 years for it, and received it 4 months before communism collapsed in Hungary.
15:05 Fun fact: according to the sticker on the German license plate this Trabant passed tech inspection(TÜV) and would be legal to drive in Germany until August 2023. So if you want to make a nice tour through Germany you can :D Unless of course the license plate came from another car.
Im 19, I live in Hungary. A guy has like 50 of these and does sightseeing and driving experiences. A mounth ago they needed a driver quick and I ended up there. I havent driven one before, he briefly showed me how to operate it, and 5 minutes later we were on the way in a convoy. So, it was my first time, and we headed straight to the very center of the capital in rush hour traffic. The shifter was pretty easy to get used to, the clutch is surprisingly good (Im driving for 3 years, with a diesel manual). Not the brakes however. The turn signal stock was soo flimsy, and when you shut it off you had to turn the fuel line off like in a dirtbike. After an hour I was pretty confident in it. I had to take around dutch tourists and explain how it works and assist them while they were driving. The very Best thing about it that everybody asks you, smiles at you, look at you, take pictures (i may have had more pictures taken of me in that 6 hours than in my life). If my schedule would be more open and the contract less shady, I would definetly take this opportunity more. Edit: By faaaar the hardest thing was to sit back in my own car (06’ bmw). My legs wre finally straight and i was sitting so far back like im laying down. The first time i hit the brakes in that i almost smashed my head in the steering wheel
Regarding the fuel: back in the day when these were common, gas stations had the fuel premixed, so you didn’t have to add the oil manually. Also, while there is no fuel gauge, it can suck fuel from two different places in the tank. You normally keep the selector in the position where it where it will run out of fuel first. When you run out, you change it to the other position, restart the engine, and go find a gas station.
Good, simple idea! Like some old motorcycles had no (or largely ineffective or unviewable) fuel gauges, but had fuel tanks straddling the top frame with a left-right fuel line valve that the rider flipped when one side went dry.
@@sejembalm the entire car was designed to be as simple as possible while remaining practical. Another detail I just remembered: only the driver side door can be opened with the key. To open the passenger side, the driver would have to unlock it from the inside. It works and it removes on component. Unrelated, but one time we got locked out of the car. We are still not sure how that happened. Anyway, someone came and managed to open the hood with a simple tool, then he pushed a rod through an opening on the firewall to unlock the door. The car was so well understood by people who worked on them, that this wasn’t an issue at all. The downside of this was that people stealing gas from them became a real issue. One time we found the front grille bent back because someone forced their way into the engine compartment through that… In Hungary, a lot of people who owned Trabants replaced them with the Suzuki Swift. It was the modern Trabant: cheapest new car, simple as a doorknob. People were also stealing gas from these. IIRC, the gas gauge was indicating even when the car wasn’t running, so they would look for a Swift that was fully filled up, then they would get under the car, disconnect something from the gas tank, and take some of the gas. They would then put it back together in a way that would make it easier to disassemble next time. I know about this only because it happened to my mom’s car.
Gas stations here also had fuel mixers. You could put the ratio in and it would mix it for you. They only started getting rid of them about fifteen years ago. There's only one remaining in my area I believe.
The RCR guys used to ride motorcycles (haven't seen him do so in several years) so I'd think they'd be familiar with that system - most motorcycles I've seen do it that way.
While the Trabant 601 was actually built until shortly after the Wall came down (this specific example was built in the strange time between the fall of the Wall and German unification), by this point there was a successor model already in production, the Trabant 1.1, with a four-cylinder, four-stroke engine sourced from Volkswagen. It started production in 1988 and was made a little longer than the 601, until 1991. The body was almost exactly identical, though.
The engine wasn't sourced from VW - it was license built, largely with combloc components. Also, the gearbox was IFA's own design, and quite horrible at that.
@@freyasatsuki561 The taillights were also slightly more modernized and the bumpers in the later model years looked like those awful 5MPH impact bumpers from the 70s. Other than a redesigned dash on the interior, that's about it. *EDIT*: Forgot to mention that there was also a standard external fuel door on the 1.1 due to having a VW-sourced engine that wasn't a two-stroke.
8:48 The dipstick maybe had fallen into the tank. I am living in Germany (Brandenburg) and my grandfather owned two of these. He had about three or four dipsticks just floating inside of the tank.
My 4 year old son was just gifted a Trabant toy car of the exact same colour about an hour before you published this video. Needless to say, he really enjoyed watching the video and learning some things about his new Trabant, so thanks for being so prompt with the upload!
A news report out of Dresden, 1985: A motor accident on a busy intersection led to two dead and 276 injuries. The dead are the drivers, the injured brawled over the spare parts.
My dad had one of these in the 90s and growing up in Hungary around the late 90s/early 2000s you could still see a ton of them driving about. I remember one in particular owned my some young guy who painted it matte black with flames on the side, cut off the roof and lowered it somehow. The thing looked pretty good for what it was but these are complete death traps.
That's fantastic! My old German boss had one in his younger days. We were going somewhere in his S class and I asked him about his first car, and he goes "a Trabant! The wagon!" I asked him how he liked it and he replied "it was terrible, but I loved it. It was wheels!" And said that to this day he has the gas dipstick, which for his was a wooden dowel. It's wheels, and if you have none then any will help.
I remember visiting Budapest back in 2015 - I was disappointed to see precisely one Trabant in the fortnight I was there. They must have all either rotted away or been sold to hipsters. I remember seeing a bunch in Berlin but they were part of a Trabant rally. I don't think I've ever seen one being driven as an actual working car. It's a shame because it's cuter than the Fiat 126 (those headlights).
I'm American, but in the early 2000's, I spent my junior year of high school in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as a foreign exchange student. There were still a ton of Trabants around. Like, seeing one wasn't any big deal. I guess if it still runs, hey, why get rid of it. Of course, that was 20 years ago. I wonder if there are still a lot of Trabants in the former GDR area.
Growing up in Finland we didn't have Trabants but one episode in the early 80:s I still remember well. We were anticipating an East German professor to keep a lecture and it was in the middle of winter. It was snowing quite a bit. The guy arrived a few hours late and apologized but he told us that "he only has a little cardboard car". Sure enough, there was a Trabant outside....and we all felt sorry for him.
I had one for 7 years, and loved it and I'm convinced the designers made it with love. There was one in the DDR museum in Berlin and I ended up explaining tourists everything about it. The longest car in the world, 12 feet of car and 40 feet of smoke.
Oh man, finally! An excuse to tell some of my Trabant jokes! - Q; How do you double the price of a Trabant? A; fill it with gas - Q; What's on the back page of every Trabant's user manual? A; the local bus schedule - A man driving a Trabant in the rain stops by a station, and asks the man behind the counter, "can you do wipers for a Trabant?" After a moment of thought, the man says "alright, sounds like a fair trade." - Q; Why does a Trabant have heated windows on the rear only? A; so it can keep your hands warm while you push it. - Q What comes with the "sport braking" package on the Trabant? A; an extra-thick-soled pair of boots Q; How do you stop a Trabant cold in its' tracks? A; put a piece of gum on the highway
I heard the same jokes about Yugo's and Lada Riva's What's the difference between a Trabant and a Trabant Sport? the sport got a tennis ball in the trunk.
What do you call a Trabant at the top of a hill? A miracle What do you call two Trabants at the top of a hill? A mirage. What do you call three or more Trabants at the top of a hill? The factory's up there.
When my dad was a teenager in the GDR he made some extra money by fixing up old Trabants and Wartburgs, which spiraled into a mechanic career of well over 35 years (and going). You still see these pretty regularly around eastern Germany (saw one just last Saturday).
I saw a wagon trabant on the highway near Dresden just weeks ago filled with 6 or more teenagers. Ofc only going like 75km/h, but they gave everyone a thumbs up when they got passed. Funny how many people can fit in them.
Dude, old 2-stroke Wartburgs are so cool! I still regret not buying 353 Tourist (the estate one) for 300$. Wish they weren't FWD, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment then.
The ending of the video is so poetic! Honestly, despite all of its flaws, to find and bring forth the beauty of a Trabant was something I did not really expect to see in a video about the Trabant. Certainly not something I am used to see. It made me happy, not gonna lie. Gives value to an otherwise worthless piece of automotive history, as most consider it to be but to let such piece of automotive history die out simply because of its flaws and/or its origins, in my opinion, would be a sin. Or at least it should be to anyone who dares say they like cars. Good or bad, history should be preserved. I'm quite certain that if the Trabant featured in this video could talk, it would have many tales to tell. And you know what? I think I would like to listen to them.
I (born in 76 in West Germany) have Fond memories of this type of car. I was 13 when the wall came down. It was amazing to see a wave of Trabants roll into the big cities that are not too far from the (then) border: Berlin obviously and Hamburg. My first adventures exploring the GDR with my friends in 1999, aged 14, had us fascinated with these cars and everyday technology in general: Steam locos and old sowjiet diesels on the rails, cobbled streets, coal-heated houses, derelict industries... The smell of coal heating and Trabant exhaust, mixed with the indescribable special smell of 'Deutsche Reichsbahn'... are now childhood memories.
I've grown up in Brandenburg (The state that surrounds Berlin) which used to be DDR territory. My parents, grandparents and basically anyone who lives here has stories about their Trabants from back in the day. It got me to wanna buy one and it became the first car I bought with my own money when I was 19. It was a broken down Trabant that was missing a lot of parts and had seized brakes. I bought a original DDR handbook on how to fix the car and set about working on it. Nearly a year later it finally ran and was on the road. I've been fixing and upgrading it since with parts of the different variations of Trabants there was (for example the 'De Luxe' model that had few minor interior differences).Now at 22 the Trabant is still my only car and I've never had any major issues with it, never broke down either. It is so fun to meet people that used to have a Trabant back in the day themselves and hear their stories about the old days. For me this car represents more than just a means to commute. It is a car that is packed with stories, emotions and also the fears of a generation that lived in these cars before I was on this planet. I'm glad to own one and I'm happy about all the stories I get to hear about people's experiences with Trabants, not to mention the smiles I get from older folk when they see someone young like me interested not only in the car, but also their personal stories attached to the car. To me it's a window into a past I (luckily?) never got to experience.
@@LMvdB02 I've driven a couple times on the Autobahn. I live in a very rural area, so it's easy to avoid them, but I have gone to Hannover (nearly 300km) a few weeks ago
It tickles me that it's still not as bad as the Oldsmobile Bravada according to Mr. Regular. That review truly is the crowning achievement of this channel.
I'm from the Czech Republic (part of the former Czechoslovakia) and my grandad used to have this car in the 70s and 80s and he used to drive it 500 miles on a family holiday to Rügen. I can't imagine that experience.
Which is weird because Honestly, driving one of those is so much Fun. Dont get me wrong, i dont want to drive those every day. But as a "Fun Car" its great.
When this car drives north or south, the metal sheet that guides the air between the two cylinder heads is called the iron curtain, because it separates the eastern from the western block. Also: Endut! Hoch Hech!
One thing you forgot - it is reliable by design. If is not there, it cannot break down and require servicing. Total opposite of modern OBD2 and chipfilled cars.
It breaks down, but it does not require servicing. And I do mean it does not require servicing, period. It was designed from the outset to ensure anyone could make any repair, no matter what. The manual included such information as where to find spare scrap plastic to repair the body and how to properly mold it. If you needed a mechanic for any reason, you weren't dedicated enough to get approved for a Trabant.
My cousing got stranded with his Audi A3 in a mountain pass, during a winter storm because of a stupid crankshaft sensor - a part which doesnt even exist in older cars. Needless to say hes now driving an old carbureted jeep.
"cannot brake down" you say. ha, I was driving to work in my Trabi and the engine seized up so i needed a tow back home. It's ok if nothing major happens XD
@@thejay8963 Electronic fuel injection is a bad enough experience - 10 times more expensive to add LPG on it, becomes useless if a crankshaft or camshaft censor fails. And if the ECU fails it's a death sentence to your car, cuz you either can't find a new one, or no mechanics in your area can configure the new one to work properly.
I actually wanted to buy one of these for my first car, but ultimately I ended up buying an Opel Kadett instead after taking my uncle's advice. I bet that 1.3s 75hp engine with a 3 speed auto is like a rocketship compared to this.
You really missed out on having a Trabi as the first... it's an adventure, and you'd have properly learnt all the basic physics of driving that could come handy in risky situations. Although Kadett is a good choice as well.
the interesting thing about the trabant is that, when it came out, it was simple, but it was also extremely modern - it beat the Mini to being the first transverse-mounted FF-layout compact family car with independent suspension by about a year, and had an advanced lightweight composite body to boot. Really, the flair in its styling isn't such an inconsistency - it reflects the fact that from top to bottom, people believed in this car, they saw it as a symbol of modernity and something to be proud of designing, even the bureaucrats saw it initially as something to be proud of producing. Of course It just got saddled with that lawnmower engine from day one and was built with essentially no quality control for 30 years.
Trabant has a drivetrain pretty similar to DKW F7, F8 and possibly earlier DKWs. DKWs were made in the same factory in prewar Germany in Zwickau. FF Layout is much older than Mini and Trabant. Composite body was made to reduce cost, and because there wasn't enough steel at that time. Composite panels were fairly thick and I don't know if they were lighter than sheet steel panels.
you need to remember, it was common in the GDR to travel with this car, for example to hungary. this would be a distance of almost 900km or 559 miles, to just get there. you can also experience this in a game called jalopy, were you need to drive very carefully so that your car stays in one piece.
I've heard some Germans even made it all the way to here in Bulgaria in Trabbies. I'm way too young to have lived in those times but from relatives and other people I've heard it wasn't uncommon to even see a Trabi pulling a small caravan, wearing DDR plates :)
@@MartyTheGamer It's true. For East Germans the Trabi wasn't just a car, it was a family member. It would go with you, no matter how far and you would take good care of it.
My mom was driving one of these for a few years in the 2000s. It was unsafe, loud, and slow, but it was a car. We named it, and loved it. I still remember the license plate number. I don’t even remember the license plate number of my first car.
It's not that unsafe because it's slow everyone can hear it and smell it and it has antilock brakes because you can't lock them no matter how hard you try. So it's only unsafe if you are too fast.
@@ReinhardSchuster It’s not unsafe because of how slow it is , but because it’s literally a tin can. Hell a tin can is probably sturdier. If someone hits you even at a slow speed . You probably will die. Or be badly injured.
@@ReinhardSchuster it definitely wasn’t safe on the highway. Around town, sure, it was fine, assuming that no one runs into you in a much heavier car at high speed. I would not want to get t-boned in one of these.
As a 59 years old I've always been happiest with the most simple form of transportation. People always wanting to exceed what they need, but not me, I've been happy driving an old Hilux pickup for the last many years. I'd love to drive one of these around but with the speed limit being much faster than these can go I'd have to decline due to safety reasons.
We still have a Trabant. It was in a barn for ~20 years but in 2018 I brought it back on the road. In 2019 my siblings and I were doing a tour from eastern Germany up to Sweden and back. We were four people in the car and only navigating by map. The car has no rear-seatbelts, no air conditioning and every inch was packed. Like in the trunk, under the seats and even on the roof! It was 2221km in total and such a unique experience. People in Sweden knew the car, but practically never saw one in the past 20 years. So they were takin pictures, waving and honking at us :D Now every year I only drive this car the distance, a tank of gas gives me because the comfort is so low and if you have the choice between this, and a „normal“ car, you don’t want to drive the „Trabi“ every day ;)
When I was younger, back in the late 90s I daily drove a Firebird. Fast fwd 20 years and I find myself wondering how I daily drove that car as I found my 3rd gen IROC Z impractical and smallish. Comfort level is OK but getting in and out of it was hard lol
A few things. There were more cars available than the Trabant in east Germany. There were the Lada models. Very very hard to get and come by. There were Wartburg models. More expensive and a similarly long waiting list. Moskvich models. Readily available but bad quality. My father had one as there as no waiting list and gave it a good tune up. Then it outran every other east German car. Saporoshez also readily available but even worse quality than the Moskvich. V4 air-cooled rear engine and rear wheel drive. Farmers liked it for good off road capabilities. Wolga models. Can't tell you much about them but big engine and low power. They were used for taxies and ran on propane. Another top tip for the Trabant. There a lot.of grease points on the car. Grease it! That car will be so happy. The body parts aren't metal but the spaceframe (yes it is a spaceframe) is made out of metal and rust very quickly! My father still must have the papers somewhere were to remove a rubber part and to inject conservation wax. To improve heating capabilities of the car you could weld some extra heat sink to the exhaust to maximize the area so more heat. Again I have to ask my father. He got a Trabant after the Moskvich. The car shouldn't use any more than 30mpg. If it uses more then something is wrong!! You should be much closer to 40mpg! You can do EVERYTHING yourself on a Trabant. The day my father picked up from factory he instantly dismantled the whole car on the same day. Rust proofed it, sound proofed it and did some heat insulation and improved heating from the exhaust. Well it was rather quiet and you didn't freeze in winter. The car was a 1985 model and it drove around as a daily car at least until 2011. Then we lost track of it unluckily. Waiting time was more like 12 years for it. +-3 years I'd say.
They say soviet cars were sold assembled for ease of transportation only - you had to tear them apart and put them together properly, and they were rather decent. My father had a Moskvitch 2140, did that, and we used it for 20 years, never had problems. He then sold it, the car is now 40 years old, and still alive :)
This is a great answer! The Moskovich and Zap were terrible enough to have no waiting list, that’s true. Both were designed for gravel roads, especially the Mossi's tensioned rear springs were an attest to that; it could jump on uneven asphalt roads. Very unsafe. Doing a 200 km trip in a Mossi? Go over it and check everything, to minimize the chance of failure.
We bought one back in Hungary last year! It's in nowhere near such good condition but it goes well and makes me very happy! It's a car that makes me and everyone else smile when they see it because everyone has stories and memories of their own little Trabi!
1:22 I've watched through this part 3 times and I have no idea what Mr. Regular or the owner said because I'm distracted by the loud snowball fight in the background. It's great comedy - it looks like it was planned that way.
I noticed the pontiac solstice in the background that he did a review on. A little insight on how rcr works. Multiple reviews in a day. Makes sense. Drive 5 or so cars in a day and spend the next few weeks editing videos for each car. Easy peasy. Nice work Mr. Regular... nice
One thing I do appreciate about Soviet standardization is that it's easy to find dublicates of things. I had a set of old Konakovo dinner plates and figured I could get a few more to have a full dozen. After I found some online, I was going through them to make sure they were all correct. Most of the plates I had were stamped '64 production. The oldest plate was '32 and the newest '82. Visually they were all identical. So, for at least 50 years the factory had churned out the same dinner plate, unchanged.
Trying to get my head around that. Who did he expect to be driving a Trabant in Oregon in 2022? Boris and Natasha on the lookout for moose and squirrel?
The only explanation is that he thought that buying any Russian product whatsoever was a) consorting with the enemy b) denying a sale to a good American manufacturer. That's old-school GOP. Funny how things have changed on the Right.
I had the "Combi" (touring) model same color back in the 90s and in the end only the front right brake worked so each time I hit the brake pedal too hard on wet cobblestone roads (we still have such roads!) my "Trabbi" would do a right spin. On the rear window I had a sticker "Rollin' Stoned" and back then the cops in my town thought I liked the Stones. Glorious times!
I'd shake your hand, were it not for the geographical impediment. My grandparents had one (I'm from Romania and at the start of the 90s the country was full of stuff coming in after the '89 Revolution: Trabants, Wartburgs, Skodas, Ladas, Volgas and the omnipresent Dacias) and I remember the trips in it as a kid going to the mountains with my Grandma driving it. I loved the way it looked and that it made all sorts of noises, and my Grandma loved it outright (she would get dressed up for driving and even had leather driving gloves). When she got too old to drive, around 10 years later, and had to sell it, both her and my Grandpa were very sad.
I would have never imagined early trabants being made out of old military uniforms, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DDR recycled old ww2 Wehrmacht uniforms to make them.
All the waste cotton that went into the Duraplast panels came from the USSR, the Phenolic resin came from the GDR as a byproduct of the wallpaper dying industry. I own a 1988 Trabant P 601 Kombi ( estate car).
@@ChannelNotFound Still it's a nice concept to use recycled materials for the body panels. Now I have no idea how safe it was. This thing looks like a death trap.
I love the enthusiasm of the owner for this little car. I think that ownership of a Trabant is a lifestyle choice really, and it's great that some of them are loved and preserved
When I spent the summer of '94 in Berlin, one of my friend had a Trabi (he'd grown up in the former east) and we managed to get six of us in it once. One of those things that are a lot of fun in your 20s that I wouldn't dream of doing now, lol. They also told me a story (which I can't find online, at least in English) of a Trabi that literally fell apart at a traffic light, which was something of a news item when it happened (sometime during the Cold War).
Still remember seeing them often in the early 00’s when I was a preschooler. Nowadays you can really only see the really well kept cars driven by hobbyists or collectors, or the really beat up ones.
A friend in my hometown in Romania had a Trabant. It was an experience to drive. Plus we have a joke in Romania regarding the Trabant. Which is the longest car in the world? Answer: The Trabant. 4 meters the car, 20 meters the smoke 😅😅
Depends on the country, in Hungary 3-5 years of waiting for a Trabant was the norm. Some less popular cars, like a Dacia or a Zaporozhets (those were considered lemons even by commie car standards) could be had even quicker, like in a year or two and sometimes even immediately.
Or, you could simply buy a second hand older car which is also cheaper - just like most people do today. If you desparately needed a car, you could get one. Fact is most people werent - because public transport cost coins, and many didnt need even that cuz usually your job is very close to your home - not like in western countries, where you're lucky to find a job on the other side of town, or even in a closeby town.
@@meganoobbg3387 No, because of the long wait times, second hand Trabbis were actually more expensive than new ones. And as far as I am aware in East Germany wait times were only lower than 12 years when you "knew people" and could go up to 15, 16 years for Trabants and Wartburgs. It's possible that in Hungary wait times were lower because exporting stuff that the own population would have needed was kinda the entire thing of East Germany.
@@RoonMian How old are the majority of cars driven in eastern Europe today? Oh thats right - 20 years old and more. You could easily get a car that old during the communist era too without waiting - an FSO Warsawa, GAZ Pobeda, Moskvich 401, 403, 407, ZAZ 965, Skoda 440, 445, 450, 1200 and Octavia. And unlike today's second hand car dealers, or personal owners who sell it, they couldn't screw you over cuz the car would have to go through a goverment inspection before it gets resold to you. And the inspection is done in a car service, so if anything is worn out or broken it gets replaced. Sure its gonna cost you the new buyer, but the car still wont exeed half the price of a new car - so there, YOU COULD travel around in your own personal car if you really wanted. Ofcourse its another issue altogether how you would afford the fuel, but that was a problem in the entirety of Europe, not just eastern communist Europe. That's why agricultural small cars like the Citroen 2CV were made till 1990, the Fiat 500/126/ Cinquecento were made till 1997, VW Beetle was made till 1973 and even later outside Germany, the first Golf wasnt some luxurious technological marvel either, and hell even Audi made 2 stroke cars till 1966 when Mercedes gave them their first 4 stroke engine. Heard of BMW Isetta? Yeah, BMW also had to make simple people's cars too at one point - not many people were driving Mercedes limozines and other exotic luxuries cuz the fuel price itself would allow it, unlike the US.
Actually it's better to put the oil before the gas. Shaking the car to mix it is a good practice if you don't. Dry running a two stroke car like that is an absolute no-no. Wear comes fast!
@@joeh858 it can be difficult depending on the gas tank capacity. Most old 2 stroke cars came with instructions on how to fill up. And most of them came with a little cup you had inside the filler neck. You had to put the oil in that thing and then the gas on top of it to help mixing it up. The Trabant doesn't have that. I suppose it's because everyone had one, so premix was available at the pump.
That's real love right there. That is some insane passion for something which makes no practical sense. That's awesome. I was also not prepared for the feels at the end there.
True for other nations as well! My grandpa sold his year-old polski fiat for much more than he paid for it, for example. The only car no-one wanted was the zaporozec - that funny soviet nsu prinz copy with v4 engine - it was so bad noone really wanted it, even when there was a huge shortage - waiting list for it was 3-6 months instead of 3-6 years
@@gilbertosantos2806 Waiting times for the Trabant were so long in East Germany that parents often ordered one for their kids so it would arrive by the time they got their driver's license at 18. I'm not shitting you, my parents grew up there. So not exactly as bad.
This episode truly does raise the notion of a car as a living being even just based on its history alone and the attachment to this obviously intelligent owner and the joy it creates in owner and viewers alike......
I really enjoyed how animated and excited the owner was while talking about this little piece of Soviet automotive history. You can tell that he finds the topic incredibly interesting and that energy just kind of rubs off on you, the viewer, while listening. The car is terrible, sure. But it's also symbolic and representative of a moment in time. And this is definitely the perfect dude to appreciate that kind of history. Kudos, dude.
@@kristoffer3000 The German Democratic Republic was a part of the Eastern Bloc and a puppet state manipulated by the Soviet Union. To further this point, the GDR remained occupied by Soviet armed forces all the way to it's dissolution and reintegration into Western Germany in 1990. Viewing their situation as "free" or "not a part of the Soviet Union" is both factually and _ethically_ false.
The Trabant is an example of a car which is horrible to the point that it actually becomes fun. And while they're not the fastest, most powerful, most practical or safest cars ever built (and not the most fun if it's your only choice, and you actually want a good car), they are still amazing (and cute), and I want one.
My family used to have one in Bulgaria! This was the car my dad took me and my mom home from the hospital in when I was born. I remember when I was 6 years old my dad locking his keys in it and him having me climb through the trunk to unlock the doors =) beautiful little death trap of a car, will always have a soft spot for Trabants
It honestly does have a nice look to it. I can't help but think that with a nice, modern tiny motor, A/C, a radio, and a transmission shift pattern that makes sense, it would truly be a nice car to have.
Best RCR-episode ever! I was really looking forward to this! The end was really heart-warming... and you should see the ancient Trabi, the 500/600 series, that's the cutest little car next to the Beetle and the Subaru 360 :) Incidentally, Karmann-Ghia is also one of my most favourite cars ever. Just a few tips to Derik: The heater core is actually a heatshield wrapped around the front muffler, so it basically heats with the exhaust gas waste (like a Beetle). If that's rusting through, that can cause CO2 poisoning, so keep an eye on it (I've changed the whole system to a new one 4 years ago, the old one was full of oil sludge and rust). Also, a dipstick is a must have, try to get an original one for accurate reading. 1:40 mixture is better for the engine, and not much smokier, avoid ethanol-mixed fuels as well, if possible. And for long-term coasting I tend to use just neutral, because the freewheel can go bad after a while, and not cheap to change. Mine also almost always gets some attention on the petrol station here in Hungary, despite Trabant being a familiar thing here, I can imagine the scene you mentioned in the US with 15 people :D But that's part of the fun of it. It's great you already know how to properly handle the car, hope you'll have fun, and drive safely! :)
Ha! Welcome to the Trabi world! I drove one of these for three years DAILY! Mine was a dark blue station wagon from 1986. When I say daily, I mean in the city, where there are no long up- or downhills. In regular traffic it was no worse than any other old beater on the road. My biggest problem was heating. It's nonexistent in the winter time. On the bright side, the car ALWAYS started on the first try. 15 degrees Celsius below zero - crank, crank, vroom. It did however need careful application of the manual choke control, which took me a while to learn. The only mechanical trouble I ever had with it were fouled spark plugs due to the aforementioned manual choke. After I got the hang of it it was a breeze. I even crashed it once, in the winter. I drove on a patch of ice without noticing and couldn't stop in time to avoid a trashcan beside the road. The hood got cracked and I had to replace it. It was indeed quite noisy. I remember I installed a radio in it, but the only time I could actually hear the music was when I was on a stoplight, idling. Otherwise it's only engine noise. The bad side - body rust. The metal frame under the duroplast was quite rusty on mine, and keeping it parked outside did it no favors. I sold it around 2015 to another enthusiast, who did have a garage. I was sad to see it go.
Nice! Next car to review should be a Lada Niva. When in the 1978 this was pretty nice urban off-roader (someone even says that it's the first crossover ever), then in the 90s and 00s this was a piece of cheap crap, compared to the others off-roaders like Jimny, RAV4, Pajero etc., and now it's become one of the last pretty neat real off-roader, that is really made for dirt, not "only roads" only.
@@sampuhhupmas5666 Make it good enough, make it so that it doesn't break, and if it does break, make it so that anyone can fix it with a hammer. There is something to be said for tech that is really, seriously, built to last forever if you maintain it halfway properly.
I had one of these. It still lives, an friend in Poland uses it for a tourism gig. HELGA still flogs the pavements of Berlin and parts of Poland. I want to thank you for the end of your review which matches my feelings exactly. This is a horrible machine. And also a rare joy, and to many, it represented a hint of the possible.
This car made me realize, back in the 80s when I was an elementary school kid in Hungary, that something was't adding up. I was a big car fan and of course, the dream cars were mostly from "the other Germany". The likes of Porsche, Audi, BMW and Mercedes were the stuff of legend among me and my friends. The Trabant and the Warburg, Moskwich and Lada, er, not so much.
It seems that the situation has turned around. These cars are quite sympathetic. That's why his children admire him. Too many children who dream of having them.
Our neighbor had one. Whenever we went fishing, we'd need two guys sitting on the hood just to climb the small grassy hill to the lake. With all its flaws, it was a beloved member of the group and I'll always remember it fondly.
The way you describe that car in the last few minutes... Just seeing a car as a fulfillment of a need and as an opportunity to express style and craft... The car is always a metaphor for a people and their time.
well, over a period of 30 somewhat years ... and mostly export ! foreign markets had priority over the domestic one ... thats why east germans waited so long for it so to say
@@victreebel170 Oh yes, it does. There are many parts in a car that do not last forever. If you design the car in a way that those cannot be replaced (or at least not in a way that makes economic sense), that is still planned obsolescence. ECUs for example. If an ECU breaks after, say, 12 years, and there are no new ones available, the whole car is toast. A timing belt that you need to disassemble half the car to change would be another example. When the second timing belt needs replacing, the cost of replacing it (if you can't to it yourself) will usually approach or exceed the value of the car at the time.
I could just imagine some big ol hoss in Oakley sunglasses driving a lifted f250 Harley Davidson walking towards him with malicious intent yelling "FUCKIN COMMIE"
"The Trabant 601s represents humanity's determinism to KEEP MOVING FORWARD" Awesome words there. I recently discovered a genre of music called sovietwave, and I think this car, and that genre perfectly represents the mentality of the soviet era. My favorite sovietwave song is Don't Leave by Gummy Boy. Give it a listen if you want.
@@GrandTheftChris When I mentioned the Soviet Era, I was mentioning all countries at that time that were under Soviet rule. But I do apologize for the confusion.
@@Ostan-jw2bg OK thanks. Although I'm not into sovietwave that much it reminds me of endless old commi blocks and industrial smoke. It gives me that feeling of waiting for a future that never came. It's kind of depressing for me. I hope you understand.
Fun fact. It can run on cooking oil. A friend of mine used to get cooking oil from restaurants, filter it and use it in the Trabant. Imagine the fries smell when he drove by :))
@@fenris1168 nope. No need to try. Oil is not as flammable and volatile as gasoline, how should the carburettor get it gaseous... In fact it works very well with older diesel engines!
My dad is from the former GDR and did an appranticeship as a car mechanic. During his appranticeship he got his hands on an old and broken Trabant and restored it. The first day he was able to drive it, he was hit by a drunk tram driver who stole a tram from the tram depot. The car was totaled.
A Trabant taxi? It may have been a half-to-three-quarters-illegal taxi in the wild days of 1990. In East Germany, taxis were usually Volgas. And a Trabant would never have met the requirements for a taxi in unified Germany.
@@kyle8952 it’s entirely possible they just liveried it up for the purposes of the tour. Either way, it’s just a bit of fun now and an excuse to brag to my American classmates that I’m one of the few peers they have that can drive a manual
Man this is wild - I daily a 1993 Mitsubishi, and it has everything, power windows, locking diff, turbo charger, mini disc player - all of that. This is 3 years older and it has simply nothing.
One of the most often told stories in my family is how my great-aunt uncle applied for one of these, and got one after 11 years of waiting. My great-uncle takes the train to the factory, collects the car there, drives home for like two hours, and some guy t-bones him on literally the last crossroads before his apartment. Instant-write off. My uncle got away with only minor injuries
I remember visiting East Germany in 1983 and these cars exhaust giving me a headache to the point I threw up. I think the fuel they used was just as refined as the Trabant.
@@solunasunrise It may have been that they weren't mixing it right. I was only 10 so would not have known how any of it worked at the time. I just remember how crazy clean and bland everything there was. I also remember my parents warning me over and over to keep my mouth shut and not to talk to anyone unless they allowed me to. I think it was like North Korea is today. Everything could get you in trouble.
@@12yearssober depends wich part of the GDR i guess ... i m from berlin ... east berlin was more liberal since they could not help it ... (westeners coming from the west of town all the time)... i can imagine if you would ve started to sell western stuff in the east that woulda been a serious issue but talking to people just like that not so mutch (at least in east berlin)... can t really compare it to north korea ... not as harsh and opressive...
I think they still used leaded fuel back then. And those cars had nothing to reduce emissions in any way like catalytic converters. So all the toxic gases that are produced by the combustion were just freely exiting the exhaust pipe.
@@solunasunrise Small town near Dresden. We crossed from West Berlin and drove there with a relative. Like I said I was only about 10 and my parents were scared to cause our relatives any trouble with the Stasi. Something any of us said could have been reported and caused our family there many problems. I had a cousin that was only 19 and was taken away by them simply for complaining to a shop owner about the choices of reading material they had to choose from. He was held for almost a year for pro western beliefs. In some parts of east Germany it was very oppressive. Maybe not to the extent of North Korea but even more so than the Soviet Union whom the Stasi were always trying to please. In that area it was dangerous up until the day the wall opened. It is hard for people to understand it today even though it is in recent history.
Hello! You should replace the pointless pseudo tachometer with a fuel gauge in your Trabant. The fuel gauge is available as an original component and the size fits. A fuel gauge is also necessary for safety reasons. I also suspect that your Trabi has a water pump for the windshield washer system. The first models had a manually operated pump. You can install an auxiliary heater in your Trabant. The company Sirokko built these. They are also original accessories for the Trabant. During the winter, this is a plus. The Trabant was primarily intended for young families. Two adults in the front, two children in the back, a baby carriage and luggage in the trunk. Have a good trip! The name of the car is Sachsenring Trabant 601. Have a good trip!
I was half expecting it to be Aging Wheels's Trabant, so there's more than one lunatic who would voluntarily drive these things regularly!
I so need an Aging Wheels/RCR meet up!
I think his was the Trabant that Doug reviewed a while back, so now there's coverage of basically all Trabants in the US on TH-cam.
So did I. Yes aging wheels has some weird cars
Pretty common to still see these crushing around the Hungarian countryside
This one seems a bit nicer than aging wheels. Lol
" your car will be available in 5 years "
" will it be delivered morning or afternoon "
" why? it will be in 5 years "
" well, the plumber is coming in the morning "
It's a nice joke, but in Hungary at least, when the time finally came, you had to go to the one and only car distribution site in your town "Merkur telep" and there you could pick a car you ordered. We ordered a Skoda 120L, and after 5 years waiting my father went to this site, and he could pick either grey, green or brown, because that day only so colored 120Ls were phisically there... So we had a green one 😁
@@AndrasMihalyi Hey that was my dad's first car when he grew up in Poland! I really want to import one to the US just for him
How much we wait for a new car these days? 10-20 years? Hell we wait that long for second hand cars too these days. lol If you were really desparate to get a car during communism, you could the same way you do today - by getting an older cheaper used car. The real reason cars were considered a luxury, is the same reason they are today - fuel prices were never cheap in.... well Europe as a whole actually. An american could say Western Europe was poor too - the majority of people drove VW Beetles/Golfs, Citroen 2CV's, Fiat 500s and Opels - luxury cars were rare there too, and their main profit was in the American market.
@@meganoobbg3387 10-20 years? Maybe a year max for regular cars if supply is limited lol what are you on about
@@MyNameIsNidos Do they give out new cars for free where you live? 10-20 years, as in the time it takes you to save up the money - or is affordability not possible to be considered limitation these days?
I like the owner interviews lately. Really makes it feel like RCR is a real community thing.
More like real communist thing.
@@shraka communism would require the disinformation boards review prior to posting.
Where's Roman? I haven't seen him on here in weeks, and where's his intro music?
seems kinda lazy to me tbh
Wholeheartedly agree. Seeing the owner talk passionately about their car makes me care about this dinky car a lot more
A few clarifications from an actual East German: Yes, some people had to wait ten years for it. Yes, used cars usually ended up more expensive than new ones, but they were also very well cared for because they represented an investment and a commitment, not a disposable fashion article. Yes, they were spartan and simple to fix out of necessity but this argument also works in their favor, to this day they're one of the easiest vintage cars to find parts for in Germany, and one of the easiest cars to wrench on in history, period. No, you didn't get vouchers and weren't approved by some totalitarian bureaucrats for purchase, you either entered the waiting list or you didn't. No, it wasn't the only choice. Not only did East German itself build another, nicer car called the Wartburg, but you could also track down practically any other red bloc car if you knew a guy who knew a guy. My grandparents alone owned Zaporozhets, Moskvitch, Skoda, Lada and Wartburg throughout the course of their lives in East Germany, and my dad's first car was a Trabant at the time the wall fell (his grandma actually entered the waiting list for him when he was in middle school so his car would be ready by the time he graduated college). Also East German teens to this day prefer socialist 50ccs (Simson S51 and Simson Schwalbe) to modern scooters because they look cooler, are easier to fix, make one hell of a racket and grandfathering laws allow them to go faster.
My father-in-law is from Bulgaria and lived there during communist rule. He had a Traby that he waited I think 7 years for, and drove it to East Germany for vacation. He eventually got on another waiting list and was offered a used VW instead, which he accepted. For both cars, when he parked them, he would remove the windshield wipers, drain the fuel, and remove the battery due to rampant theft.
Have to 100% agree. I was born almost 10 years after the wall fell but my family and all old people I know praise this car. It was part of the family in east Germany. Even non car guys could easily fix it. In my area some young people still get them as the first car (just like the famous simme^^).
For all it's faults there's something to be said about a car that's more a faithful mutt than a show dog like many moderns cars.
I miss the days when, even in the west, cars didn't have to be a fashion statement. They were allowed to be utilitarian to a fault because they were a tool, not a status symbol. They just had to get you from A to B with your stuff.
Nowadays cars, and trucks in particular, are massive, impractical, and impossible to work on in your shed with a spanner. I love the old runabouts because they're unkillable, where so many modern "big dick manly" trucks fall apart if you kick them in the wrong place and you can't put them back together without the manufacturer sending you a cease and desist because they've fought so hard to put right to repair into the ground so you have to pay them even more money. Ridiculous.
Simsons are more popular because of an extra rule, west german mopeds are allowed 50kph but east german mopeds can legally do 60kph with the same license
This is what we call mental gymnastics from someone with Stockholm syndrome. “Waiting 5-10 years is good because suffering gives people an appreciation for life.”
These "interview the owner" segments are gold. Some have had YEARS to perfect their jokes and anecdotes about these things.
When I went to Berlin in 2019 I saw a caravan of these driving through downtown by the Brandenburg Gate. The running joke was, "How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gas."
With these current fuel prices, the value would triple.
You can rent them in Berlin.
Same joke is made with Yugos. I find it funnier that the Trabant's body panels got regularly chewed on by cows and goats.
My favourite is this one:
"What is the longest car in the world?"
"A Trabant with the trail of smoke behind it"
there are even one or two modified into a stretch limo and you can book them i think
Two fun facts about this Trabant:
- the little econometer-gauge-thingy on the speedometers right side is called a "Kraftstoffmomentanverbrauchsanzeige".
- this color is called "Gletscherblau".
That sure is a word
Mine is "Papierenweiss"! 👍
@@neilfoster814 Mine is "Panamagrün".
Or 1970s toilet green.
"Glaicer blue"
Hey that's my safe word that I use for bdsm play
As a Hungarian who grew up in the 80’s, I especially appreciate this. My god mother had one… the “station wagon”. She always struggled with the shifter and one day while sitting at the red light, she struggled getting it into first and couldn’t take off fast enough as the light changed. The dump truck behind her honked, which scared her enough to stick it into reverse instead of first, flooring the gas and popping the clutch, resulting in her backing into the truck strong enough that she left the lift gate on the truck’s grill🤣🤣. My dad still laughs about it 50+ years on. DDR engineering in za House ya….
On some occasions I still see one of these around in Hungary here and there. Some people must really like them haha.
@@CockatooDude hello, I am one of those Hungarians. Today, there are two kinds of people here still driving Trabants: old people who never had any other car and can't be bothered replacing them and people who were kids or weren't even born when these things were common and drive them for fun.
If I remember right, wasn’t the “Station Wagon” version called the limousine?
@@donaldhollums3278 I think they just called it the “Kombi”
@@marissakphotography6604 Okeedokee.
I've been to Germany once, and ridden on the autobahn twice. Nothing gave me greater joy on that drive than seeing a Trabby belching smoke at highway speeds in its home turf (between Berlin and Polish border). I picked up a toy Trabby in this exact color to remember that trip to eastern Europe. Great job with the video!
We had some polish friends back in the mid 80's, they enthusiastically drove Lada's that needed to be serviced almost daily. I remember seeing them, laying under these cars in our driveway every other day, pools of fliuds with sawdust soaking it up. They loved their cars tho. I asked them why, they said it made them feel like they had a bit of home here with them, easing their homesickness.
Fun fact: When the Mercedes A-Class was released in the late 90s and failed the elchtest (moose test), in which the car rolled over after doing a manoeuvre, the car magazine took a Trabant and tried to do the same thing. To their surprise, the Trabant passed the test, with an even higher speed of 75 kilometers an hour, while the A-Class already rolled over at 60 kilometers an hour
Imagine if the A Class hadn’t rolled and they introduced the Smart car unmodified 🙂
@@luciolalazilia2189 Ever owned one?
@@luciolalazilia2189 Only if it's in a high-speed collision: and, to be fair, the same can be said of a number of low-budget Western European cars of the same period.
narrow cars perform well on the moose test because they require less change in direction to pass
@@pocok5000 Does this also apply to the moose?
I love the long interviews with people who are passionate about their vehicles.
I think it's a fantastic inclusion to RCR. Because it's a reminder of what this channels about. What what kind of person is behind the wheel
It's a interesting shift in format. The postmodern analysis and HOT DICKS gets alienating after a while. There's a warmth to this video that's refreshing.
Huh, I'm honestly shocked to see people liking it. I used to watch his videos in their entirety, but now as soon as I hear someone other than him droning on about "this is my car. well i like the car because this car has brakes, and I've always wanted a car with brakes. Also it's a gasoline engine, so that means you know, spark plugs and.....gas stations. Left turn. Door opens and closes! I love the way it moves forward, and left and right" the sooner I close out of it
Top gear is amazing because they don't involve the owners in the writing process. They let the people who are.....good at writing, write the episodes. Lol I can read the wikipedia articles for these vehicles and get the exact same experience : p
@@jacobl6714 If you want to know the more personal experience from a vehicle, you can't get that from a scripted humorous string of jokes. Whenever Regular talks about the cars he usually relates it to something of his own past if it's a 90's vehicle anyhow.
I'm sure most people don't watch these videos for the 'stats', and I cant think of one where they do list boring shit like that, but the owners are the window in which we can look into for the experience of driving vehicles we most certainly don't own. It's interesting to say the least to hear of other experiences.
Not all vehicles shown are ones cared about, like I wouldn't care much for the personal experience of someone driving a 2000's Ford Transit, but not every video has to be made for me.
So, as a strange sort of aside, there's a game called "Jalopy" that simulates driving one of these from East Germany on the way to Turkey with your uncle just after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It's almost always on the verge of breaking down, and you constantly have to scavenge for parts.
I love the attention its owner gives it, and it makes me happy.
I’ve always wondered what car that damned thing was based on, must’ve not been too dissimilar to real life road trips of the time
@@diegocabral1610 To be fair, I never would have known except another TH-camr, Noah Caldwell Gervais, did a short thought piece on the game where he brought it up. I thought it was a cursed Yugo for a long time. It's the perfect video game shitbox for just barely scraping by.
Yeah, I quite like that game. Too bad it's so glitchy - which I suppose makes sense considering the context
@@Eatinbritches sadly is not gettings updated anymore
do not buy the game tho
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.”
From 1990 to 1991 there was also the Trabant 1.1, with a water-cooled, 4-cylinder, 4-stroke 1.1L VW Polo engine and floor-mounted 4-speed stick. It even had a catalytic converter, so it was a strange combination of an archaic 1960s Eastern Bloc body and chassis with an up-to-date West German powertrain. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, there was no demand for it, so only about 30,000 of them were sold, mostly in Poland and Hungary.
If you were rich, you did get another choice of automobile in East Germany -- the Wartburg, a 4-door sedan or wagon with a 3-cylinder, 2-stroke engine based on an old DKW design. And likewise near the end of its production run it briefly had an updated version with a 1.3L VW engine installed. And finally there was the Barkas, a small van that was used by the Stasi (East German secret police).
Plus assorted vehicles from the Soviet Union. You could purchase Moskvich cars - which came with a rather modern engine, an OHC four-cylinder-engine with hemispherical combustion chambers, making roughly 60 horsepower to the rear tyres with a displacement of 1,3 liters, and the cars had a four-speed manual gearbox, Ukrainian-made Saporoshez, which were equipped with an aircooled V4-engine, mounted in the back of the car, that was also used as a starter motor for helicopters. I owned a Moskvich 408 at one point. It was a blast to drive, quite frankly. And the Sapo - albeit small and loud - was digging through rough terrain as well. for the more demanding motorist the Volga was available, but Volgas were mostly used as police interceptors and secret service agencies. Hell, they managed to stuff the V8-engine from the Tchaika into the Volga's engine bay, and this 200 horsepower powerplant made the Volga pretty fast. Plus there was the notorious Lada, a.k.a. Shiguli, or VAZ 2101 (it went through several evolutions, final one was the VAZ 2107 before the car was discontinued. Well, Shiguli's base was the Fiat 124, which was introduced to the public in 1966, but the car was improved by Russian engineers, it had a modern OHC engine and chain-driven camshaft, which was able to deal with low-grade fuel, and the ground clearance was altered, so Shiguli was able to tackle Soviet roads. I wish sometimes cars of today were built as tough as the Lada was. It is easy to mock Russian cars altogether, their styling was unusual and kind of quirky, but the cars were robust and rust was the main enemy. But which car of the 60's and 70's did not rust?
I've yet to see a Trabant, but I live near a company that imports old European and Soviet cars, and they have a green Wartburg Knight station wagon and a rusty old Moskvich as shop vehicles.
They also have a T34, but I'm fairly certain that gets even worse mileage than the Wartburg... and it won't fit through the Wendy's drive-through!
Funny thing about the 4 strokes is, that despite very limited numbers made (under 50.000 units if I remember right), it´s now become cheaper than the 2 strokes, because people doesn´t have a nostalgic feeling towards them. When I bought my 2 stroke 9 years ago, you could have 2s for 10k CZK no problem, 4s went for 40k up. Today it´s the opposite, you can buy 4s for 30k, while the 2s in the same condition as the one from 9 years back now goes for 60-70k. It´s totally nuts. I bought my car for 7k CZK back then, with all the money i threw in for repairs over the time, I could still sell if with a slight profit.
My dad had both. He sold his Trabi in 1986 after owning it for a short time. We didn't have a car in '87, then he bought a new Wartburg sedan (beanut brown) in 1988 with sunroof and a floor mounted shifter. When he ordered a car they asked him about a body style, sedan or a kombi. When they notified him about picking up the car he could choose between different colors. That's all. He kept it until the 2nd half of the 2000s.
We had a Wartburg 1.3 when I was a kid. I practically learned to drive on that car. I think my parents waited 4 or 5 years for it, and received it 4 months before communism collapsed in Hungary.
15:05 Fun fact: according to the sticker on the German license plate this Trabant passed tech inspection(TÜV) and would be legal to drive in Germany until August 2023. So if you want to make a nice tour through Germany you can :D Unless of course the license plate came from another car.
Lol
You can't anymore. The registration sticker beneath the TÜV sticker is scratched up and therefore the license plate is invalide.
@@moenchii You'd have to get it registered again, but it would likely be allowed on the streets. I think that is already something.
@@mbnhiphopmusik6429 That depends on how much rust, etc there is, but this one looks pretty good, so you're right.
Even weirder is that the license plate comes from Ludwigsburg in Baden Württemberg, far from the former German Democratic Republic.
Im 19, I live in Hungary. A guy has like 50 of these and does sightseeing and driving experiences. A mounth ago they needed a driver quick and I ended up there. I havent driven one before, he briefly showed me how to operate it, and 5 minutes later we were on the way in a convoy. So, it was my first time, and we headed straight to the very center of the capital in rush hour traffic. The shifter was pretty easy to get used to, the clutch is surprisingly good (Im driving for 3 years, with a diesel manual). Not the brakes however. The turn signal stock was soo flimsy, and when you shut it off you had to turn the fuel line off like in a dirtbike. After an hour I was pretty confident in it. I had to take around dutch tourists and explain how it works and assist them while they were driving. The very Best thing about it that everybody asks you, smiles at you, look at you, take pictures (i may have had more pictures taken of me in that 6 hours than in my life). If my schedule would be more open and the contract less shady, I would definetly take this opportunity more.
Edit: By faaaar the hardest thing was to sit back in my own car (06’ bmw). My legs wre finally straight and i was sitting so far back like im laying down. The first time i hit the brakes in that i almost smashed my head in the steering wheel
*the most i got out of it was 85km/h
Talpra Trabi Magyar!
The Trabant vs a Polski Fiat for a Hayabusa swap?
@@gnoxycat the maluch is Superior in pretty much every regard.
Regarding the fuel: back in the day when these were common, gas stations had the fuel premixed, so you didn’t have to add the oil manually.
Also, while there is no fuel gauge, it can suck fuel from two different places in the tank. You normally keep the selector in the position where it where it will run out of fuel first. When you run out, you change it to the other position, restart the engine, and go find a gas station.
Good, simple idea! Like some old motorcycles had no (or largely ineffective or unviewable) fuel gauges, but had fuel tanks straddling the top frame with a left-right fuel line valve that the rider flipped when one side went dry.
@@sejembalm the entire car was designed to be as simple as possible while remaining practical. Another detail I just remembered: only the driver side door can be opened with the key. To open the passenger side, the driver would have to unlock it from the inside. It works and it removes on component.
Unrelated, but one time we got locked out of the car. We are still not sure how that happened. Anyway, someone came and managed to open the hood with a simple tool, then he pushed a rod through an opening on the firewall to unlock the door. The car was so well understood by people who worked on them, that this wasn’t an issue at all.
The downside of this was that people stealing gas from them became a real issue. One time we found the front grille bent back because someone forced their way into the engine compartment through that…
In Hungary, a lot of people who owned Trabants replaced them with the Suzuki Swift. It was the modern Trabant: cheapest new car, simple as a doorknob. People were also stealing gas from these. IIRC, the gas gauge was indicating even when the car wasn’t running, so they would look for a Swift that was fully filled up, then they would get under the car, disconnect something from the gas tank, and take some of the gas. They would then put it back together in a way that would make it easier to disassemble next time. I know about this only because it happened to my mom’s car.
Gas stations here also had fuel mixers. You could put the ratio in and it would mix it for you. They only started getting rid of them about fifteen years ago. There's only one remaining in my area I believe.
The RCR guys used to ride motorcycles (haven't seen him do so in several years) so I'd think they'd be familiar with that system - most motorcycles I've seen do it that way.
They actually had a fuel gauge. It was a wooden ruler which you had to stick down into the fuel tank, pull back out and read it like an oil dipstick.
While the Trabant 601 was actually built until shortly after the Wall came down (this specific example was built in the strange time between the fall of the Wall and German unification), by this point there was a successor model already in production, the Trabant 1.1, with a four-cylinder, four-stroke engine sourced from Volkswagen. It started production in 1988 and was made a little longer than the 601, until 1991. The body was almost exactly identical, though.
The engine wasn't sourced from VW - it was license built, largely with combloc components. Also, the gearbox was IFA's own design, and quite horrible at that.
i think the only difference in the bodystyle was the different grille
@@freyasatsuki561 The taillights were also slightly more modernized and the bumpers in the later model years looked like those awful 5MPH impact bumpers from the 70s. Other than a redesigned dash on the interior, that's about it.
*EDIT*: Forgot to mention that there was also a standard external fuel door on the 1.1 due to having a VW-sourced engine that wasn't a two-stroke.
weren't the 1.1s also steel-bodied instead of duroplast?
@@captainzoll3303 No.
8:48 The dipstick maybe had fallen into the tank. I am living in Germany (Brandenburg) and my grandfather owned two of these. He had about three or four dipsticks just floating inside of the tank.
dipstick is just wooden paint stirring stick.
Thank you for showing this guy's genuine excitement and commitment to this car and it's history, he was great to listen to!
Im dating this guy, he really does love his cars! He also has a Lada!
My 4 year old son was just gifted a Trabant toy car of the exact same colour about an hour before you published this video. Needless to say, he really enjoyed watching the video and learning some things about his new Trabant, so thanks for being so prompt with the upload!
A news report out of Dresden, 1985: A motor accident on a busy intersection led to two dead and 276 injuries. The dead are the drivers, the injured brawled over the spare parts.
bs
😂😂🤣
@@carenthusiast6748 It's a joke. If you know how hard it was to obtain spare parts at that time, you will laugh hard.
My dad had one of these in the 90s and growing up in Hungary around the late 90s/early 2000s you could still see a ton of them driving about. I remember one in particular owned my some young guy who painted it matte black with flames on the side, cut off the roof and lowered it somehow. The thing looked pretty good for what it was but these are complete death traps.
That's fantastic!
My old German boss had one in his younger days. We were going somewhere in his S class and I asked him about his first car, and he goes "a Trabant! The wagon!" I asked him how he liked it and he replied "it was terrible, but I loved it. It was wheels!" And said that to this day he has the gas dipstick, which for his was a wooden dowel.
It's wheels, and if you have none then any will help.
You definitely wouldn’t collide with something sturdier than a shoebox driving a Trabant…
Still a part of my childhood😁
I remember visiting Budapest back in 2015 - I was disappointed to see precisely one Trabant in the fortnight I was there. They must have all either rotted away or been sold to hipsters. I remember seeing a bunch in Berlin but they were part of a Trabant rally. I don't think I've ever seen one being driven as an actual working car. It's a shame because it's cuter than the Fiat 126 (those headlights).
They were crash tested after reunification and scored higher in front impacts than a new VW polo. They also passed the moose test. A-Class did not.
I'm American, but in the early 2000's, I spent my junior year of high school in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as a foreign exchange student. There were still a ton of Trabants around. Like, seeing one wasn't any big deal. I guess if it still runs, hey, why get rid of it. Of course, that was 20 years ago. I wonder if there are still a lot of Trabants in the former GDR area.
Growing up in Finland we didn't have Trabants but one episode in the early 80:s I still remember well. We were anticipating an East German professor to keep a lecture and it was in the middle of winter. It was snowing quite a bit. The guy arrived a few hours late and apologized but he told us that "he only has a little cardboard car". Sure enough, there was a Trabant outside....and we all felt sorry for him.
I had one for 7 years, and loved it and I'm convinced the designers made it with love. There was one in the DDR museum in Berlin and I ended up explaining tourists everything about it. The longest car in the world, 12 feet of car and 40 feet of smoke.
Oh man, finally! An excuse to tell some of my Trabant jokes!
- Q; How do you double the price of a Trabant? A; fill it with gas
- Q; What's on the back page of every Trabant's user manual? A; the local bus schedule
- A man driving a Trabant in the rain stops by a station, and asks the man behind the counter, "can you do wipers for a Trabant?" After a moment of thought, the man says "alright, sounds like a fair trade."
- Q; Why does a Trabant have heated windows on the rear only? A; so it can keep your hands warm while you push it.
- Q What comes with the "sport braking" package on the Trabant? A; an extra-thick-soled pair of boots
Q; How do you stop a Trabant cold in its' tracks? A; put a piece of gum on the highway
I heard the same jokes about Yugo's and Lada Riva's
What's the difference between a Trabant and a Trabant Sport? the sport got a tennis ball in the trunk.
What do you call a Trabant at the top of a hill? A miracle
What do you call two Trabants at the top of a hill? A mirage.
What do you call three or more Trabants at the top of a hill? The factory's up there.
Q; When doe a Trabant reach Top Speed? A; When it's towed away.
What is the longest car in Europe? The Trabant, at three meters followed by ten meters of solid blue smoke.
How do you triple the price of a Trabant? You put an Autobahn sticker on the front window.
When my dad was a teenager in the GDR he made some extra money by fixing up old Trabants and Wartburgs, which spiraled into a mechanic career of well over 35 years (and going). You still see these pretty regularly around eastern Germany (saw one just last Saturday).
I saw a wagon trabant on the highway near Dresden just weeks ago filled with 6 or more teenagers. Ofc only going like 75km/h, but they gave everyone a thumbs up when they got passed. Funny how many people can fit in them.
Dude, old 2-stroke Wartburgs are so cool! I still regret not buying 353 Tourist (the estate one) for 300$. Wish they weren't FWD, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment then.
the car tells a deep historic story, needs to be shown
Good job for Roman!
The ending of the video is so poetic! Honestly, despite all of its flaws, to find and bring forth the beauty of a Trabant was something I did not really expect to see in a video about the Trabant. Certainly not something I am used to see. It made me happy, not gonna lie. Gives value to an otherwise worthless piece of automotive history, as most consider it to be but to let such piece of automotive history die out simply because of its flaws and/or its origins, in my opinion, would be a sin. Or at least it should be to anyone who dares say they like cars. Good or bad, history should be preserved. I'm quite certain that if the Trabant featured in this video could talk, it would have many tales to tell. And you know what? I think I would like to listen to them.
I (born in 76 in West Germany) have Fond memories of this type of car. I was 13 when the wall came down. It was amazing to see a wave of Trabants roll into the big cities that are not too far from the (then) border: Berlin obviously and Hamburg.
My first adventures exploring the GDR with my friends in 1999, aged 14, had us fascinated with these cars and everyday technology in general: Steam locos and old sowjiet diesels on the rails, cobbled streets, coal-heated houses, derelict industries...
The smell of coal heating and Trabant exhaust, mixed with the indescribable special smell of 'Deutsche Reichsbahn'... are now childhood memories.
The DB welcomed the 243/143 and they are in service to this day. ;)
If you are born in 76 you can't be 14 in 99...
@@Klunkabatzn he just got a brain fart, give him a break 🤣
I've grown up in Brandenburg (The state that surrounds Berlin) which used to be DDR territory. My parents, grandparents and basically anyone who lives here has stories about their Trabants from back in the day. It got me to wanna buy one and it became the first car I bought with my own money when I was 19. It was a broken down Trabant that was missing a lot of parts and had seized brakes. I bought a original DDR handbook on how to fix the car and set about working on it. Nearly a year later it finally ran and was on the road. I've been fixing and upgrading it since with parts of the different variations of Trabants there was (for example the 'De Luxe' model that had few minor interior differences).Now at 22 the Trabant is still my only car and I've never had any major issues with it, never broke down either.
It is so fun to meet people that used to have a Trabant back in the day themselves and hear their stories about the old days. For me this car represents more than just a means to commute. It is a car that is packed with stories, emotions and also the fears of a generation that lived in these cars before I was on this planet. I'm glad to own one and I'm happy about all the stories I get to hear about people's experiences with Trabants, not to mention the smiles I get from older folk when they see someone young like me interested not only in the car, but also their personal stories attached to the car. To me it's a window into a past I (luckily?) never got to experience.
Do you drive on the autobahn with it or just take back roads with 80km/u and 60km/u speed limits?
@@LMvdB02 I've driven a couple times on the Autobahn. I live in a very rural area, so it's easy to avoid them, but I have gone to Hannover (nearly 300km) a few weeks ago
It tickles me that it's still not as bad as the Oldsmobile Bravada according to Mr. Regular. That review truly is the crowning achievement of this channel.
And don’t forget the Pt Cruiser one, where Mr. Regular, gave one hell of a masters degree class about post-modernism
I'm from the Czech Republic (part of the former Czechoslovakia) and my grandad used to have this car in the 70s and 80s and he used to drive it 500 miles on a family holiday to Rügen. I can't imagine that experience.
This is the only positive review of a Trabant you'll find on YT. And I love it. So wholesome.
Which is weird because Honestly, driving one of those is so much Fun.
Dont get me wrong, i dont want to drive those every day. But as a "Fun Car" its great.
When this car drives north or south, the metal sheet that guides the air between the two cylinder heads is called the iron curtain, because it separates the eastern from the western block.
Also: Endut! Hoch Hech!
“what the hell was that!?”
One thing you forgot - it is reliable by design. If is not there, it cannot break down and require servicing. Total opposite of modern OBD2 and chipfilled cars.
It breaks down, but it does not require servicing. And I do mean it does not require servicing, period. It was designed from the outset to ensure anyone could make any repair, no matter what. The manual included such information as where to find spare scrap plastic to repair the body and how to properly mold it. If you needed a mechanic for any reason, you weren't dedicated enough to get approved for a Trabant.
My cousing got stranded with his Audi A3 in a mountain pass, during a winter storm because of a stupid crankshaft sensor - a part which doesnt even exist in older cars. Needless to say hes now driving an old carbureted jeep.
"cannot brake down" you say. ha, I was driving to work in my Trabi and the engine seized up so i needed a tow back home. It's ok if nothing major happens XD
@@meganoobbg3387
Oh, a carbureted Jeep. Somehow I think that's an even worse experience.
@@thejay8963 Electronic fuel injection is a bad enough experience - 10 times more expensive to add LPG on it, becomes useless if a crankshaft or camshaft censor fails. And if the ECU fails it's a death sentence to your car, cuz you either can't find a new one, or no mechanics in your area can configure the new one to work properly.
I actually wanted to buy one of these for my first car, but ultimately I ended up buying an Opel Kadett instead after taking my uncle's advice. I bet that 1.3s 75hp engine with a 3 speed auto is like a rocketship compared to this.
yes ... kadett you mean i suppose ... trabbi has also an unsynchronized gearbox (making it even longer to get up to speed)
Yet less smoky
You really missed out on having a Trabi as the first... it's an adventure, and you'd have properly learnt all the basic physics of driving that could come handy in risky situations. Although Kadett is a good choice as well.
A bike could probably give the Bant a run for it’s bread
Opel Kadett? Oliver!! 😁
the interesting thing about the trabant is that, when it came out, it was simple, but it was also extremely modern - it beat the Mini to being the first transverse-mounted FF-layout compact family car with independent suspension by about a year, and had an advanced lightweight composite body to boot. Really, the flair in its styling isn't such an inconsistency - it reflects the fact that from top to bottom, people believed in this car, they saw it as a symbol of modernity and something to be proud of designing, even the bureaucrats saw it initially as something to be proud of producing.
Of course It just got saddled with that lawnmower engine from day one and was built with essentially no quality control for 30 years.
This model was introduced 1963, the mini was 1959, that’s four years earlier, dunno where your “facts” came from
@@Thecrazyvaclav this model was, but underneath it's basically the same as the 1957 original model, which had all the same technical "advancements",
@@doorhanger9317 Suzuki suzelight was 1955,
Trabant has a drivetrain pretty similar to DKW F7, F8 and possibly earlier DKWs. DKWs were made in the same factory in prewar Germany in Zwickau. FF Layout is much older than Mini and Trabant. Composite body was made to reduce cost, and because there wasn't enough steel at that time. Composite panels were fairly thick and I don't know if they were lighter than sheet steel panels.
@@Thecrazyvaclav Trabant came out in 1957 as the P50.
The passion this guy has for his vehicle is awesome
you need to remember, it was common in the GDR to travel with this car, for example to hungary. this would be a distance of almost 900km or 559 miles, to just get there. you can also experience this in a game called jalopy, were you need to drive very carefully so that your car stays in one piece.
I've heard some Germans even made it all the way to here in Bulgaria in Trabbies. I'm way too young to have lived in those times but from relatives and other people I've heard it wasn't uncommon to even see a Trabi pulling a small caravan, wearing DDR plates :)
you'd have to fill up about 4-5 times for that trip, now most cars can make it there and almost back on a single tank
@@MartyTheGamer It's true. For East Germans the Trabi wasn't just a car, it was a family member. It would go with you, no matter how far and you would take good care of it.
This car had a rear window defroster as well. It kept your hands warm when you had to push it after it broke down.
That’s a Yugo joke
@@roddydykes7053 yeah, it also applies here.
Pah, if it were truly a shite car, the defroster would *be* your hands on the window while pushing
My mom was driving one of these for a few years in the 2000s. It was unsafe, loud, and slow, but it was a car. We named it, and loved it. I still remember the license plate number. I don’t even remember the license plate number of my first car.
It's not that unsafe because it's slow everyone can hear it and smell it and it has antilock brakes because you can't lock them no matter how hard you try.
So it's only unsafe if you are too fast.
@@ReinhardSchuster It’s not unsafe because of how slow it is , but because it’s literally a tin can. Hell a tin can is probably sturdier. If someone hits you even at a slow speed . You probably will die. Or be badly injured.
@@ReinhardSchuster it definitely wasn’t safe on the highway. Around town, sure, it was fine, assuming that no one runs into you in a much heavier car at high speed. I would not want to get t-boned in one of these.
@@4HUNNIDZ it's actually not that bad.
Because you know Pappe is pretty close to carbon fiber
@@ReinhardSchuster bro you gotta be trolling 😭
As a 59 years old I've always been happiest with the most simple form of transportation. People always wanting to exceed what they need, but not me, I've been happy driving an old Hilux pickup for the last many years. I'd love to drive one of these around but with the speed limit being much faster than these can go I'd have to decline due to safety reasons.
We still have a Trabant. It was in a barn for ~20 years but in 2018 I brought it back on the road. In 2019 my siblings and I were doing a tour from eastern Germany up to Sweden and back.
We were four people in the car and only navigating by map. The car has no rear-seatbelts, no air conditioning and every inch was packed. Like in the trunk, under the seats and even on the roof! It was 2221km in total and such a unique experience. People in Sweden knew the car, but practically never saw one in the past 20 years. So they were takin pictures, waving and honking at us :D
Now every year I only drive this car the distance, a tank of gas gives me because the comfort is so low and if you have the choice between this, and a „normal“ car, you don’t want to drive the „Trabi“ every day ;)
When I was younger, back in the late 90s I daily drove a Firebird. Fast fwd 20 years and I find myself wondering how I daily drove that car as I found my 3rd gen IROC Z impractical and smallish. Comfort level is OK but getting in and out of it was hard lol
James Mays segment on this on his show “Cars of the People” is great, I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about this car.
A few things.
There were more cars available than the Trabant in east Germany.
There were the Lada models. Very very hard to get and come by.
There were Wartburg models. More expensive and a similarly long waiting list.
Moskvich models. Readily available but bad quality. My father had one as there as no waiting list and gave it a good tune up. Then it outran every other east German car.
Saporoshez also readily available but even worse quality than the Moskvich. V4 air-cooled rear engine and rear wheel drive. Farmers liked it for good off road capabilities.
Wolga models. Can't tell you much about them but big engine and low power. They were used for taxies and ran on propane.
Another top tip for the Trabant.
There a lot.of grease points on the car. Grease it! That car will be so happy.
The body parts aren't metal but the spaceframe (yes it is a spaceframe) is made out of metal and rust very quickly! My father still must have the papers somewhere were to remove a rubber part and to inject conservation wax.
To improve heating capabilities of the car you could weld some extra heat sink to the exhaust to maximize the area so more heat. Again I have to ask my father. He got a Trabant after the Moskvich.
The car shouldn't use any more than 30mpg. If it uses more then something is wrong!! You should be much closer to 40mpg!
You can do EVERYTHING yourself on a Trabant.
The day my father picked up from factory he instantly dismantled the whole car on the same day. Rust proofed it, sound proofed it and did some heat insulation and improved heating from the exhaust. Well it was rather quiet and you didn't freeze in winter. The car was a 1985 model and it drove around as a daily car at least until 2011. Then we lost track of it unluckily.
Waiting time was more like 12 years for it. +-3 years I'd say.
They say soviet cars were sold assembled for ease of transportation only - you had to tear them apart and put them together properly, and they were rather decent.
My father had a Moskvitch 2140, did that, and we used it for 20 years, never had problems. He then sold it, the car is now 40 years old, and still alive :)
This is a great answer! The Moskovich and Zap were terrible enough to have no waiting list, that’s true. Both were designed for gravel roads, especially the Mossi's tensioned rear springs were an attest to that; it could jump on uneven asphalt roads. Very unsafe. Doing a 200 km trip in a Mossi? Go over it and check everything, to minimize the chance of failure.
Derick was super awesome to listen to! He sounds like he's one of the coolest types of enthusiast.
Aah Trabant... I spend my kid's age in it, so many memories :-D And we still have it hidden in a garage and fully functional even after all the years.
We bought one back in Hungary last year! It's in nowhere near such good condition but it goes well and makes me very happy! It's a car that makes me and everyone else smile when they see it because everyone has stories and memories of their own little Trabi!
1:22 I've watched through this part 3 times and I have no idea what Mr. Regular or the owner said because I'm distracted by the loud snowball fight in the background. It's great comedy - it looks like it was planned that way.
It's amazing they managed to ignore those clearly audible screams. Maybe they're accustomed to the sound of women screaming 🤔
I didn't even notice that until I read this comment and now I can't unhear it
I was very worried about this
Hahah I was like is anyone gonna mention it
what a sweet slice of life moment.
I cannot put into words the sheer joy I experienced when I came to notice that you have reviewed the Trabbi!
Thanks for recognizing the designers of this car. You can tell they wanted more but could only do what they were able to.
I noticed the pontiac solstice in the background that he did a review on. A little insight on how rcr works. Multiple reviews in a day. Makes sense. Drive 5 or so cars in a day and spend the next few weeks editing videos for each car. Easy peasy. Nice work Mr. Regular... nice
One thing I do appreciate about Soviet standardization is that it's easy to find dublicates of things. I had a set of old Konakovo dinner plates and figured I could get a few more to have a full dozen. After I found some online, I was going through them to make sure they were all correct. Most of the plates I had were stamped '64 production. The oldest plate was '32 and the newest '82. Visually they were all identical. So, for at least 50 years the factory had churned out the same dinner plate, unchanged.
"I got called a communist for owning it..."
Me: who would be actually that stupid?
"...guy in a big pickup..."
Me: ah there it is.
Was waiting for the owner to be like, 'Actually I'm an Anarcho Syndicalist' or something.
Trying to get my head around that.
Who did he expect to be driving a Trabant in Oregon in 2022? Boris and Natasha on the lookout for moose and squirrel?
The only explanation is that he thought that buying any Russian product whatsoever was a) consorting with the enemy b) denying a sale to a good American manufacturer.
That's old-school GOP. Funny how things have changed on the Right.
Its understandable especially if this happened in Washington or Oregon, or in any blue state.
Americans are not that smart in general
I had the "Combi" (touring) model same color back in the 90s and in the end only the front right brake worked so each time I hit the brake pedal too hard on wet cobblestone roads (we still have such roads!) my "Trabbi" would do a right spin. On the rear window I had a sticker "Rollin' Stoned" and back then the cops in my town thought I liked the Stones. Glorious times!
I'd shake your hand, were it not for the geographical impediment. My grandparents had one (I'm from Romania and at the start of the 90s the country was full of stuff coming in after the '89 Revolution: Trabants, Wartburgs, Skodas, Ladas, Volgas and the omnipresent Dacias) and I remember the trips in it as a kid going to the mountains with my Grandma driving it.
I loved the way it looked and that it made all sorts of noises, and my Grandma loved it outright (she would get dressed up for driving and even had leather driving gloves). When she got too old to drive, around 10 years later, and had to sell it, both her and my Grandpa were very sad.
Hahahaha einfach Trabi fahren
What did a “touring” model get you? Some cotton fluff in the seats?
@@roddydykes7053 we lowered the rear seats and turned it into our secret doobie cave.
@@roddydykes7053 in Amerika you would say Wagon we cal it touring in germany
I would have never imagined early trabants being made out of old military uniforms, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DDR recycled old ww2 Wehrmacht uniforms to make them.
That's only true for the early AWZ P70. The Trabant were made out of ruined clothes, and sheets people threw away.
All the waste cotton that went into the Duraplast panels came from the USSR, the Phenolic resin came from the GDR as a byproduct of the wallpaper dying industry.
I own a 1988 Trabant P 601 Kombi ( estate car).
@@ChannelNotFound Still it's a nice concept to use recycled materials for the body panels.
Now I have no idea how safe it was. This thing looks like a death trap.
Probably left the Wehrmacht soldiers in the uniforms
I love the enthusiasm of the owner for this little car. I think that ownership of a Trabant is a lifestyle choice really, and it's great that some of them are loved and preserved
When I spent the summer of '94 in Berlin, one of my friend had a Trabi (he'd grown up in the former east) and we managed to get six of us in it once. One of those things that are a lot of fun in your 20s that I wouldn't dream of doing now, lol. They also told me a story (which I can't find online, at least in English) of a Trabi that literally fell apart at a traffic light, which was something of a news item when it happened (sometime during the Cold War).
Still remember seeing them often in the early 00’s when I was a preschooler. Nowadays you can really only see the really well kept cars driven by hobbyists or collectors, or the really beat up ones.
Weirdo Vehicle 😂
A friend in my hometown in Romania had a Trabant. It was an experience to drive. Plus we have a joke in Romania regarding the Trabant. Which is the longest car in the world? Answer: The Trabant. 4 meters the car, 20 meters the smoke 😅😅
Haha, that's actually a pretty good joke 😂
😂😂😂
"Your vehicle will be available for collection in 3 to 5 years."
Dang, that guy must have known some people to get it that quickly.
Depends on the country, in Hungary 3-5 years of waiting for a Trabant was the norm. Some less popular cars, like a Dacia or a Zaporozhets (those were considered lemons even by commie car standards) could be had even quicker, like in a year or two and sometimes even immediately.
Or, you could simply buy a second hand older car which is also cheaper - just like most people do today. If you desparately needed a car, you could get one. Fact is most people werent - because public transport cost coins, and many didnt need even that cuz usually your job is very close to your home - not like in western countries, where you're lucky to find a job on the other side of town, or even in a closeby town.
@@meganoobbg3387 No, because of the long wait times, second hand Trabbis were actually more expensive than new ones.
And as far as I am aware in East Germany wait times were only lower than 12 years when you "knew people" and could go up to 15, 16 years for Trabants and Wartburgs.
It's possible that in Hungary wait times were lower because exporting stuff that the own population would have needed was kinda the entire thing of East Germany.
@@RoonMian How old are the majority of cars driven in eastern Europe today? Oh thats right - 20 years old and more. You could easily get a car that old during the communist era too without waiting - an FSO Warsawa, GAZ Pobeda, Moskvich 401, 403, 407, ZAZ 965, Skoda 440, 445, 450, 1200 and Octavia. And unlike today's second hand car dealers, or personal owners who sell it, they couldn't screw you over cuz the car would have to go through a goverment inspection before it gets resold to you. And the inspection is done in a car service, so if anything is worn out or broken it gets replaced. Sure its gonna cost you the new buyer, but the car still wont exeed half the price of a new car - so there, YOU COULD travel around in your own personal car if you really wanted. Ofcourse its another issue altogether how you would afford the fuel, but that was a problem in the entirety of Europe, not just eastern communist Europe. That's why agricultural small cars like the Citroen 2CV were made till 1990, the Fiat 500/126/ Cinquecento were made till 1997, VW Beetle was made till 1973 and even later outside Germany, the first Golf wasnt some luxurious technological marvel either, and hell even Audi made 2 stroke cars till 1966 when Mercedes gave them their first 4 stroke engine. Heard of BMW Isetta? Yeah, BMW also had to make simple people's cars too at one point - not many people were driving Mercedes limozines and other exotic luxuries cuz the fuel price itself would allow it, unlike the US.
@@meganoobbg3387 I think we're talking past each other.
Actually it's better to put the oil before the gas.
Shaking the car to mix it is a good practice if you don't.
Dry running a two stroke car like that is an absolute no-no. Wear comes fast!
Don't ya mix it before you put it in???
@@joeh858 it can be difficult depending on the gas tank capacity.
Most old 2 stroke cars came with instructions on how to fill up. And most of them came with a little cup you had inside the filler neck.
You had to put the oil in that thing and then the gas on top of it to help mixing it up.
The Trabant doesn't have that.
I suppose it's because everyone had one, so premix was available at the pump.
The best thing to do is to put oil and gas in simultaneously - the best way of mixing them.
@@ElectronikHeart Exactly, it was available as 1:50 and even 1:33 directly at the gas stations at the time.
@@JanWalzer It still was in the 2000s, now it's gone unfortunately.
This car's owner fits right in with the channel, pretty fun to listen to
That's real love right there. That is some insane passion for something which makes no practical sense. That's awesome.
I was also not prepared for the feels at the end there.
In the GDR a used Trabant was more expensive than a new one because of the mile long waiting list.
So not so different than buying a new car in the USA today.
@@gilbertosantos2806 Well, you know the slogan of the WEF, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy.
Yes, he does mention this in the video. Amazing what people will pay for convenience
True for other nations as well! My grandpa sold his year-old polski fiat for much more than he paid for it, for example. The only car no-one wanted was the zaporozec - that funny soviet nsu prinz copy with v4 engine - it was so bad noone really wanted it, even when there was a huge shortage - waiting list for it was 3-6 months instead of 3-6 years
@@gilbertosantos2806 Waiting times for the Trabant were so long in East Germany that parents often ordered one for their kids so it would arrive by the time they got their driver's license at 18. I'm not shitting you, my parents grew up there.
So not exactly as bad.
This episode truly does raise the notion of a car as a living being even just based on its history alone and the attachment to this obviously intelligent owner and the joy it creates in owner and viewers alike......
I really enjoyed how animated and excited the owner was while talking about this little piece of Soviet automotive history. You can tell that he finds the topic incredibly interesting and that energy just kind of rubs off on you, the viewer, while listening.
The car is terrible, sure. But it's also symbolic and representative of a moment in time. And this is definitely the perfect dude to appreciate that kind of history. Kudos, dude.
Wasn't Soviet, it's from the GDR, or DDR if you wanna be more correct.
@@kristoffer3000 The German Democratic Republic was a part of the Eastern Bloc and a puppet state manipulated by the Soviet Union.
To further this point, the GDR remained occupied by Soviet armed forces all the way to it's dissolution and reintegration into Western Germany in 1990.
Viewing their situation as "free" or "not a part of the Soviet Union" is both factually and _ethically_ false.
The Trabant is an example of a car which is horrible to the point that it actually becomes fun. And while they're not the fastest, most powerful, most practical or safest cars ever built (and not the most fun if it's your only choice, and you actually want a good car), they are still amazing (and cute), and I want one.
My family used to have one in Bulgaria! This was the car my dad took me and my mom home from the hospital in when I was born. I remember when I was 6 years old my dad locking his keys in it and him having me climb through the trunk to unlock the doors =) beautiful little death trap of a car, will always have a soft spot for Trabants
Derik is funny, witty, and brilliant story teller. You should hire him as a presenter of other quirky eastern bloc cars.
I wish they did that with the Civic '92. Just keep cranking those nice light hatches for ever until the Chrysantemum Throne falls
Thank you for worshipping Trabant, it was a part of our life for so long
It honestly does have a nice look to it. I can't help but think that with a nice, modern tiny motor, A/C, a radio, and a transmission shift pattern that makes sense, it would truly be a nice car to have.
Best RCR-episode ever! I was really looking forward to this! The end was really heart-warming... and you should see the ancient Trabi, the 500/600 series, that's the cutest little car next to the Beetle and the Subaru 360 :) Incidentally, Karmann-Ghia is also one of my most favourite cars ever.
Just a few tips to Derik: The heater core is actually a heatshield wrapped around the front muffler, so it basically heats with the exhaust gas waste (like a Beetle). If that's rusting through, that can cause CO2 poisoning, so keep an eye on it (I've changed the whole system to a new one 4 years ago, the old one was full of oil sludge and rust).
Also, a dipstick is a must have, try to get an original one for accurate reading. 1:40 mixture is better for the engine, and not much smokier, avoid ethanol-mixed fuels as well, if possible. And for long-term coasting I tend to use just neutral, because the freewheel can go bad after a while, and not cheap to change.
Mine also almost always gets some attention on the petrol station here in Hungary, despite Trabant being a familiar thing here, I can imagine the scene you mentioned in the US with 15 people :D But that's part of the fun of it. It's great you already know how to properly handle the car, hope you'll have fun, and drive safely! :)
Ha! Welcome to the Trabi world! I drove one of these for three years DAILY! Mine was a dark blue station wagon from 1986. When I say daily, I mean in the city, where there are no long up- or downhills. In regular traffic it was no worse than any other old beater on the road. My biggest problem was heating. It's nonexistent in the winter time. On the bright side, the car ALWAYS started on the first try. 15 degrees Celsius below zero - crank, crank, vroom. It did however need careful application of the manual choke control, which took me a while to learn. The only mechanical trouble I ever had with it were fouled spark plugs due to the aforementioned manual choke. After I got the hang of it it was a breeze. I even crashed it once, in the winter. I drove on a patch of ice without noticing and couldn't stop in time to avoid a trashcan beside the road. The hood got cracked and I had to replace it. It was indeed quite noisy. I remember I installed a radio in it, but the only time I could actually hear the music was when I was on a stoplight, idling. Otherwise it's only engine noise. The bad side - body rust. The metal frame under the duroplast was quite rusty on mine, and keeping it parked outside did it no favors. I sold it around 2015 to another enthusiast, who did have a garage. I was sad to see it go.
Nice! Next car to review should be a Lada Niva. When in the 1978 this was pretty nice urban off-roader (someone even says that it's the first crossover ever), then in the 90s and 00s this was a piece of cheap crap, compared to the others off-roaders like Jimny, RAV4, Pajero etc., and now it's become one of the last pretty neat real off-roader, that is really made for dirt, not "only roads" only.
The funny thing is it Never really Changed like the Trabant
Yes please!
@@ricoricardo4850 The beauty of Soviet design. Make it good enough and continue making it.
@@sampuhhupmas5666 Make it good enough, make it so that it doesn't break, and if it does break, make it so that anyone can fix it with a hammer.
There is something to be said for tech that is really, seriously, built to last forever if you maintain it halfway properly.
Hand-crank starter! 👍🏼
I had one of these. It still lives, an friend in Poland uses it for a tourism gig. HELGA still flogs the pavements of Berlin and parts of Poland.
I want to thank you for the end of your review which matches my feelings exactly. This is a horrible machine. And also a rare joy, and to many, it represented a hint of the possible.
'It's beautiful in its defiance', what a great line! Fantastic video!
This car made me realize, back in the 80s when I was an elementary school kid in Hungary, that something was't adding up. I was a big car fan and of course, the dream cars were mostly from "the other Germany". The likes of Porsche, Audi, BMW and Mercedes were the stuff of legend among me and my friends. The Trabant and the Warburg, Moskwich and Lada, er, not so much.
Tatras were amazing though. I'd love one of those.
@@zogworth Tatras were ok, pretty luxurious, but made like 50 meters per liter.
ever driven in a Wolga Taxi? this was the S-Class of that time *g
@@JanWalzer I have, they were powerful and luxurious, like the Tatras.
It seems that the situation has turned around. These cars are quite sympathetic. That's why his children admire him. Too many children who dream of having them.
In Poland it had a nickname of a Honecker's revenge, cardboard Ford, a soap dispenser, a tramp shoe and Sputnik on wheels
Haha, they also referred to them as Paper Jaguars in Hungary.
@@dlovas awesome trivia! Never heard it
@@dlovas yes, and soap holder was also a nickname for them 😄
It's a BMW. Bakelite Motor Wagen.
Our neighbor had one. Whenever we went fishing, we'd need two guys sitting on the hood just to climb the small grassy hill to the lake. With all its flaws, it was a beloved member of the group and I'll always remember it fondly.
@Mike S the Trabant has always been a front wheel drive car, my dear sir.
The way you describe that car in the last few minutes... Just seeing a car as a fulfillment of a need and as an opportunity to express style and craft...
The car is always a metaphor for a people and their time.
It’s crazy to think this, and my 91 S Class are contemporary. Hopefully Mr. Regular can take it for a spin some day.
It is amazing to think that they built almost 3 000 000 of these cars. Well done comrads. 😄
well, over a period of 30 somewhat years ... and mostly export ! foreign markets had priority over the domestic one ... thats why east germans waited so long for it so to say
@@solunasunrise But the ones they did make lasted a very long time. No planned obsolescence with these things.
@@MartinIbert planned obsolescence makes no sense as a term for autos. no car expires. but you might expire if you got in any accident in this thing.
@@victreebel170 the chevette would like to have a talk with you
@@victreebel170 Oh yes, it does. There are many parts in a car that do not last forever. If you design the car in a way that those cannot be replaced (or at least not in a way that makes economic sense), that is still planned obsolescence.
ECUs for example. If an ECU breaks after, say, 12 years, and there are no new ones available, the whole car is toast. A timing belt that you need to disassemble half the car to change would be another example. When the second timing belt needs replacing, the cost of replacing it (if you can't to it yourself) will usually approach or exceed the value of the car at the time.
"I've been accused of being a communist for owning this car"
Never change americans, never change
Of course in a lifted pickup. It’s not even stereotypical at this point 🤣
Of course if that guy was in a GM pickup, he is the communist. $50 billion of government money. And if he's driving a ram, he must be Italian
Nothing makes you appreciate capitalism more than driving a communist car
I could just imagine some big ol hoss in Oakley sunglasses driving a lifted f250 Harley Davidson walking towards him with malicious intent yelling "FUCKIN COMMIE"
If anything...these will make you thankful you don't live in a communist country.
"The Trabant 601s represents humanity's determinism to KEEP MOVING FORWARD"
Awesome words there. I recently discovered a genre of music called sovietwave, and I think this car, and that genre perfectly represents the mentality of the soviet era. My favorite sovietwave song is Don't Leave by Gummy Boy. Give it a listen if you want.
That car wasn't build in the soviet union and the GDR (its people) had a completely different mindset.
@@GrandTheftChris When I mentioned the Soviet Era, I was mentioning all countries at that time that were under Soviet rule. But I do apologize for the confusion.
@@Ostan-jw2bg OK thanks. Although I'm not into sovietwave that much it reminds me of endless old commi blocks and industrial smoke. It gives me that feeling of waiting for a future that never came. It's kind of depressing for me. I hope you understand.
@@GrandTheftChris Ofcourse!
This dude (the owner) sounds like my uncle Chris...and Chris is honesty the kinda guy to unironically own a Trabant.
Fun fact. It can run on cooking oil. A friend of mine used to get cooking oil from restaurants, filter it and use it in the Trabant. Imagine the fries smell when he drove by :))
I highly doubt that. Driven my trabant more than 100k km... It's a 2 stroke gasoline engine with carburettor... No way running it on cooking oil.
@@hoelle32b have you tried it though?
@@fenris1168 nope. No need to try. Oil is not as flammable and volatile as gasoline, how should the carburettor get it gaseous...
In fact it works very well with older diesel engines!
My dad is from the former GDR and did an appranticeship as a car mechanic. During his appranticeship he got his hands on an old and broken Trabant and restored it. The first day he was able to drive it, he was hit by a drunk tram driver who stole a tram from the tram depot. The car was totaled.
lovely story, drunk tram driver. God damn dude.
A was half expecting the one aging wheels owns
I had the pleasure of driving one of these on a tour through Berlin while studying abroad in 2019. It was a former taxi with over 600k km!
Whoever told you it was a taxi was bullshitting you. They were used for many things, but never taxis. Only four door like Wartburg was a taxi.
A Trabant taxi? It may have been a half-to-three-quarters-illegal taxi in the wild days of 1990. In East Germany, taxis were usually Volgas. And a Trabant would never have met the requirements for a taxi in unified Germany.
@@kyle8952 it’s entirely possible they just liveried it up for the purposes of the tour. Either way, it’s just a bit of fun now and an excuse to brag to my American classmates that I’m one of the few peers they have that can drive a manual
I had a Saab 96 - 3 Cylinder 2 stroke. It also had a 4 speed column shift with a freewheeling clutch. The 4 speed column was surprisingly good.
Man this is wild - I daily a 1993 Mitsubishi, and it has everything, power windows, locking diff, turbo charger, mini disc player - all of that. This is 3 years older and it has simply nothing.
One of the most often told stories in my family is how my great-aunt uncle applied for one of these, and got one after 11 years of waiting. My great-uncle takes the train to the factory, collects the car there, drives home for like two hours, and some guy t-bones him on literally the last crossroads before his apartment. Instant-write off. My uncle got away with only minor injuries
Yikes
I remember visiting East Germany in 1983 and these cars exhaust giving me a headache to the point I threw up. I think the fuel they used was just as refined as the Trabant.
wasn t the fuel ... but because it burned oil WITH fuel together
@@solunasunrise
It may have been that they weren't mixing it right. I was only 10 so would not have known how any of it worked at the time. I just remember how crazy clean and bland everything there was. I also remember my parents warning me over and over to keep my mouth shut and not to talk to anyone unless they allowed me to. I think it was like North Korea is today. Everything could get you in trouble.
@@12yearssober depends wich part of the GDR i guess ... i m from berlin ... east berlin was more liberal since they could not help it ... (westeners coming from the west of town all the time)... i can imagine if you would ve started to sell western stuff in the east that woulda been a serious issue but talking to people just like that not so mutch (at least in east berlin)... can t really compare it to north korea ... not as harsh and opressive...
I think they still used leaded fuel back then. And those cars had nothing to reduce emissions in any way like catalytic converters. So all the toxic gases that are produced by the combustion were just freely exiting the exhaust pipe.
@@solunasunrise
Small town near Dresden. We crossed from West Berlin and drove there with a relative. Like I said I was only about 10 and my parents were scared to cause our relatives any trouble with the Stasi. Something any of us said could have been reported and caused our family there many problems. I had a cousin that was only 19 and was taken away by them simply for complaining to a shop owner about the choices of reading material they had to choose from. He was held for almost a year for pro western beliefs. In some parts of east Germany it was very oppressive. Maybe not to the extent of North Korea but even more so than the Soviet Union whom the Stasi were always trying to please. In that area it was dangerous up until the day the wall opened. It is hard for people to understand it today even though it is in recent history.
The last 3 minutes or so, are a masterpiece.
The owner is a masterpiece too.
Hello!
You should replace the pointless pseudo tachometer with a fuel gauge in your Trabant. The fuel gauge is available as an original component and the size fits. A fuel gauge is also necessary for safety reasons.
I also suspect that your Trabi has a water pump for the windshield washer system. The first models had a manually operated pump.
You can install an auxiliary heater in your Trabant. The company Sirokko built these. They are also original accessories for the Trabant. During the winter, this is a plus.
The Trabant was primarily intended for young families. Two adults in the front, two children in the back, a baby carriage and luggage in the trunk.
Have a good trip!
The name of the car is Sachsenring Trabant 601.
Have a good trip!
That ending was something special. You really are everyone's favorite English/world history teacher. 4.0 Mr. Regular.
Oh god yes.
My neighbor has 3 Trabant shells stacked in a little pyramid.
Love those lil cuties