It seems that all great people’s cars are built under some kind of regime. We had the VW Beetle, which was of course the brainchild of the not so nice man with moustache. We had the Mini, not exactly built by a regime, but BMC comes close. Bring on the Russian communist Lada, and we have a whole array of cars which sold by millions. But what’s missing? Well the Trabant of course, another example of the people’s car.


After East Germany went communist after the war, the ‘Ossis’, as the East Germans were nicknamed by their West German counterparts, needed something to be proud of. Something that would show the engineering capabilities of East Germany but also to procure work in the socialist state. So, at the beginning of 1954 the East German government ordered the Minister responsible for car industry to develop a car to improve the market share for domestically produced cars. It had to comply with a number of things: It had to be a small car with 2 main and 2 back seats, a maximum weight of 600 KG, a fuel consumption of 5.5L/100km, a price tag of 4000 Mark and a year production of 12000 cars.


Enough rules to comply with then, very much in check with communist thinking of course. The research and de-velopment centre then set to work. This centre was supervised by the ‘society for domestic companies’ (FEW) in Chemnitz which in turn was supervised by the department for Industry. Decided was, due to the shortage of metal, that parts of the body should be produced from Duroplast, a mixture from cotton and resin. This of course helped to keep weight down. Still in 1954, the R&D centre presented the ‘P50’ prototype. It wasn’t really to the taste of the various authorities. The back seats were to small, barely suitable for children, so it couldn’t be sold as the family car intended. Also the duroplast body proved troublesome, add to that constantly changing deadlines and yearly production targets varying from 12000 to 60000 cars and problems with the R&D funding, it drove the designers round the bend.


The eventual producers of the car, the ‘Automobilwerk Zwickau,’ also condemned the prototype, they argued the body style was not suitable for production and thought the car too small. However the chassis and engine was very much to their taste, so they decided to take the car back to their own drawing board and develop the car. Automobilwerk Zwickau passed their experience with the DKW F 8 on to the new P70 prototype. In turn Automobilwerk Zwickau was given the go-ahead in October 1954, to release the AWZ P70 in the following year. Which was officialy designated as a transition model.

Meanwhile the AWZ designers set to work on designing the car that would become the first trabant. They implented the knowledge gained from the AWZ P70 in the new P50 prototype. Fi­nally on the 23 October 1956 the car was presented and approved. In 1957 50 pre-production cars were produced. The car was presented as ‘Der neue aus Zwickau,’ the people were delighted even though they had only seen it on photos from the 1958 automobile fair in Leipzig (which wasn’t open to the general public).

The simple yet elegant shape entchanted the people. The whole shape was very well balanced and very practical with good access to the boot but also the en­gine. The people also liked the relatively large windows, which looked good and were practical as well. It sold well with 128.248 cars built until 1962, perhaps too well as the Automobilwerk Zwickau couldn’t cope with demand and was merged with VEB Sachsenring to become ‘VEB Sachsenring Automobil­werke Zwickau’. During the production years many changes were made to the cars, most notably changes to the engine; in 1960 the engine was modified to turn out a hefty 20 HP, its name was changed to Trabant 500 to be uprated to Trabant 600 two years later. This new designation meant 594 cc and 23 HP due to crankshaft modifications. Still, the Tra­bant kept being affordable and was able compete with its western rivals (the Berlin wall hadn’t been built yet) like the Lloyd 600 or the, albeit larger, DKW junior or Glas Isar. However the 4000 Mark price tag thought up by the socialist government turned out not to be manage­able, it was significantly more expensive at 8360 Mark.

In 1963 the Trabant was completey revised (minus engine + gearbox) and named the P 60/1, a name which was soon replaced by P 601. It got the distinctive shape still known to many as THE Trabant shape. A shape which was kept until the end of the car’s production in the 90s. The engine was exactly the same 23HP unit from the Trabant 600. The car was stretched by 18 cm but retained its original wheel base. So where did all the cms go? Well to the back mostly, suitcases now had a more pleasant life with a boot that was 12% bigger. For passengers in the back however, life did not improve. Passengers had the blessing of 10mm more legroom and 37mm more headroom. But due to a steeper C-post the car did have a new sense of space. The new Trabant was much more angular but with rounded edges and a sharp waist line it followed trends in international car design. In 1963 pre-production starts, with the first full production vehicles being produced in 1964. Cars were produced in the ‘lovely’ colours: ‘Papyrus white,’ ‘Cham­pagnebeige,’ ‘Bali-yellow (a green colour which looked to come straight from a 1970s bath tub factory),’ ‘Dolphingrey,’ ‘Green.’ If you chose for the ‘S’ or the ‘de luxe’ model you had the chance to get a variation of the colours above, for example a Green car with a Dolphingrey roof.

 

The reason why Zwickau chose to give the cars these colours is not because they had a blind stylist, nor because they didn’t have a stylist. No, because these colours could be touched up easily. Not because of problems with painting the cars but, as the man re­sponsible, Dr. Ing. Werner Reichelt wrote in a report that because of the transport of the painted shells from the body­shell factory in Meerane to Zwickau (but also within the Zwickau factory) shells were damaged. The carefully selected colours could easily be touched up to cover any damage which might have oc­cured.

 

Not all bodyshells came from the factory in Meerane though, only the Kombi (from the 600 series) and the Kombi Uni­versal shells were produced in this factory. The new Universal was an alltogether happier car to live with, being a lot more spacious than the limousine its boot could be crammed with 1400L of stuff, provided you folded the back seats down. A new bootlid, sadly still with a small threshold, meant the ‘Ossies’ could now shove all their stuff in the back much more easily. This also meant they could go on holiday far more easily, as many East Germans proved by going to fellow communist coun­tries like Czechoslovakia or Hungary. The Universal was popular among buyers but regrettably production fig­ures always stayed around 20 % of the total Trabant pro­duction.

 

Over the next 25 years no sig­nificant changes were made to the base model of the Trabant. Some specials were produced like the ‘Kübel’ for the East German army. It was basically a Trabant cabrio but than without doors, it was mostly used around the borders as a pa­trol car. It was also designed to appeal to civilians as a fun little car. Something which it became many years later when cars found their way to enthusiasts. A folding canvas roof, to which equally rubbish doors could be fastened kept the enthusiast dry. One positive thing was that you didn’t need a tent when camping, because that was basically what your car looked like after you had put it up. If you had a little company you could also choose for a P 601 ‘Lieferwagen,’ it didn’t turn out to be a great succes as it was produced only 55 times.

 

Even though the P601 was in production until 1990 its two-stroke engine got its last major engine development in 1969. Horsepower went up from 23 HP to 26 HP, this was achieved by changing the shape of the intake ducts, optimisng the carburettor and updating the exhaust system. These 26 HP cars could be recognised by the cool­ing ducts on the C-post and a different. After many changes changes in 1988 the P 601 finally got some luxury. The S deluxe model got a sun roof as standard and the S as an optional extra. Around the same time Zwickau started development on what was to become the last Trabant, the 1.1.

 

The new Trabant 1.1 project cost 9.7 billion Mark, huge investments had to be made in the updating of the production facilities, caused by the production of the new Volk­swagen licenced petrol and diesel engines. Investments not only had to be made to the engine factory in Karl-Marx-Stadt but the East-German suppliers of engine parts were also quick to apply for grants to update their as well. This was of course needed because the parts had to be of much better quality, a quality many suppliers until then couldn’t reach. Another factor why the Trabant was so much more expensive than the projected 3.6 billion Mark, were the licence fees. Not only fees had to be paid to Volkswagen but also to their West-German suppliers of components. 
 

All this plus the continuous un­rest in the country nearly made the government pull the plug. But happily the car industry could prevent this by postponing the Diesel engine, which they did. All the costs of course had an ef­fect on the price; the calculated market price of 6900 Mark wasn’t even enough to cover the production costs. When the 1.1 ap­peared the price tag had risen to 9110 DM for the Limousine, 10.250 for the Universal and 14.820 for the Tramp model (which was similar to Kübel produced many years ear­lier). Of course these price were too high to compete with the cars from the Western world, which due to the revolution were also available to East German citizens. In the process demand almost dried up.

A completely reworked car, even though it looked exactly same, couldn’t change this situation either. Due to the enormous investements in the new engines (which were also in the Wartburg 1.3, albeit, as the name suggests, in a 1.3 litre version) not a lot of money was left for the car itself. New hatchback bodies had been presented, even some prototypes were made but the authorities said “Nein”. With no new bodyshape the old chassis was re­developed ensuring the new, larger, engine could fit in the car. A new front suspen­sion was designed, it featured McPherson struts, coil springs and a wider track the front suspension was now much better and as a result the car handled a lot better, very much unlike earlier Trabants. Also the back struts were modified so that fuel tank could now fit it in the back, as there was no place for it anymore in the front. Also at the back the car retained its drum brakes but at the front there were up-to-date disc brakes. But even after all these modifications it’s still a Trabant, still a car with 1960s engineering. Which you could notice on the ride as well as the space. Due to new engine there was even less legroom for the driver. More posi­tive things though, were the new fascia and a heater that actually worked. Overall the new car was huge step forward, but then 20 years too late.

 

Der Untergang

After 38.122 Trabant 1.1s were built production of the Trabant finally ceased in April 1991. A total of 3.051.485 cars were built, many of them still cherished to this day, not only by Germans but by people from all over the world. It wasn’t the end for the Trabant factories though. During the years after the fall of the Ber­lin Wall the Sachsenring factory was prepared to take on the production of au­tomotive components. In 1993 it was pri­vatised, and after a few years of losses the company became profitable and was listed at the stocked exchange in 1996, employing more than 1700 people. Which is not a lot compared to the 12,000 employees once working at the Sachsenring factory.

The Trabant then, an icon of communist thinking, a car that brought happiness, mobility but also agony to many behind the iron curtain. In the end overruled by capi­talist Western cars, just as its inventors. Sad really, as the Trabant is quite a quirky car.

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