Remember the Yugo? The hopelessly underpowered, ugly as sin, cheap little hatchback from the mid 1980s? If you thought that car was a piece of shit,* you've never heard of the Trabant. The Trabant (or "Trabi" to it's fans) was the East German answer to every small car built on the rest of the planet, and it's getting ready to celebrate 50 years on the road:
The first car rolled off the production line on 7 November 1957 - the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, which the GDR celebrated with its big brother, the Soviet Union.There are over 50,000 Trabant's still on the road in Germany, in all their glory.
The Trabant's two-stroke engine could push the car to the dizzying speed of 90km per hour (56mph).
UPDATE: I love this line from the Wikipedia entry on the Trabant: "The mechanically simple, easily tuned engine makes Trabants interesting for low-cost rallying." That's high praise!
* Indeed - a convertible example graces the cover of Crap Cars, which my nephew gave me for Xmas a few years back. The Yugo GV finishes behind the Mustang II on the list of worst cars ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment