Save the Trabants!
By STEPHEN WILLIAMS
The hapless Trabant, a symbol of East Germany industrial failure, is falling victim to progress.
Finally.
According to the German Federal Office of Motor Vehicles, reports Spiegel, there are only 35,000 Trabants registered in Germany — that’s down from a million in the early 1990s.
“Naturally, the cars are just too old,” said Stephan Elsner, a spokesman for the German motor vehicle agency. The car was introduced in 1957.
The Trabant, built of a composite of plastic and cotton-waste fiberglass, was far more lovable as a planter than as a source of transportation. Still, East Germans revered the car as a symbol of independence, and some waited up for to 10 years to have one delivered.
The last Trabant was built in 1991. But in Berlin, where lots of in-fashion Trabants are likely to be found (and sold, for about $1,300 in the classifieds), the car has graduated from its status as the butt of jokes to something of a tourist attraction. In 2007, more than 2,000 owners showed up to a 50th anniversary celebration in Zwickau, where Trabant had a factory.
While some German cities have low-emission zones that would restrict the use of the Trabant, Berlin in 2009 made an exception by relaxing emissions standards for the Trabant.
But then last year, Germany, like the United States, enacted a cash-for-clunkers program, which created the incentive for owners to dump their Trabants.
Matt Annen, who operates TrabantUSA, a Web site devoted to Trabant fans in the United States, estimates that there are from 200 to 250 cars in the United States and Canada (having been privately imported) with private owners. He says that finding older models is getting harder to do.
“I love these cars; they’re really simple, easy to work on, you can pull the engine in an afternoon,” he said. He owns a 1979 Trabant wagon, which runs on a 26-horsepower engine. “You don’t have a lot of power, but you can really whip ‘em around.”
There is another intriguing coda to the Trabant tale. At the Frankfurt auto show last September, Herpa, a company that makes model cars, announced it was working with the auto-parts maker IndiKar to make a battery-powered Trabant. The developers said they expected that the car will become available in 2012 at a cost of about $32,000.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------When you consider that there were just over 3 million Trabants made, Wartburgs must be getting even more scarce now. There were only 1 million of the 353 made.
I have noticed of late, that prices for Warts and Trabants are pushing upwards. Mark
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