All Hail the Trabant

[RWebb]

has there ever been a worse car?

it seems to be the whipping boy for lousy cars & lousy govt.

but that seems to make it a bit of a collector's item...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/automobiles/collectibles/30REDCAR.html?_r=1


"twice as powerful as a Sears Craftsman two-stage snow blower"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/automobiles/collectibles/30TRABANT.html

[bell]

ahhh the trabby

there was an art exhibit which used trabbys, i'll have to see if i can find the pics

[Dottore]

The bodies of these things were made from recycled garbage. That's a nice idea, but the car was a complete POS.

I had an uncle in East Berlin in the old days. When I'd visit him he would pile six of us into the Trabby and head for the Baltic Sea. Sheer torture—though the highways in the east were always nice and empty.

I don't really get the nostalgia thing about these cars. There was nothing good about them. No saving grace.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by Dottore

The bodies of these things were made from recycled garbage. ...

almost literally...

They recycled left over FG wool and fibers to mix in with the plastic - according to one of those articles.

[mossguy]

[Rick Lee]

Somewhere I have a photo of myself behind the wheel of a Trabby. When I lived in Germany around 1991, you could get them for free. Dealers were literally giving them away and they were sliding through inspection in the west too, though I think it was more out of sympathy than having actually passed the rigorous TUV inspection there. I've been in a lot of them. As for East Bloc cars, I'll take the Lada or Wartburg any day over a Trabby.

[Porsche_monkey]

Only 225 km on this baby. Still hundreds left in her...

http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/cto/893929695.html


"Undoubtedly one of the finest Trabants in the world and most certainly the only one for sale."

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Dottore

The bodies of these things were made from recycled garbage.

Rest assured, they didn't do this out of the slightest concern for the environment.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

They're still probably orders of magnitude better in quality and safety than the crap coming out of China these days...

[Dottore]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

They're still probably orders of magnitude better in quality and safety than the crap coming out of China these days...

No. With respect. You are wrong there.

They are worse in quality and safety than just about anything that was ever produced—or will ever be produced.

[SteveinTO]

"They are worse in quality and safety than just about anything that was ever produced—or will ever be produced. "

Not so fast there. We haven't see post bailout models from Detroit, designed by Congressional committee.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

http://www.unmadeinchina.org/galleria.asp?lang=en&idPag=401

The Chinese rip off everyone else's design style, characteristically thumbing their nose at international copyright laws, putting safety and efficiency dead last due to shoddy construction, terrible engineering and (again, characteristically) caring only about being the cheapest. Hey, if it looks like a Lexus or a BMW or a Smart Car, that should be good enough, right? Never mind the actual performance or safety standards, right?

How the rest of the world suffers this sort of patronizing insult and smug arrogance on the part of the Chinese I'll never know.

Sorry to drag this off-subject but I'd buy a Trabant any day before I'd buy any of the garbage coming out of China. Neither is an especially safe car, nor is either one particularly responsible (both are built only to throw the illusion of western-style prosperity at their poor populaces).

[Moses]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

http://www.unmadeinchina.org/galleria.asp?lang=en&idPag=401

The Chinese rip off everyone else's design style, characteristically thumbing their nose at international copyright laws, putting safety and efficiency dead last due to shoddy construction, terrible engineering and (again, characteristically) caring only about being the cheapest. Hey, if it looks like a Lexus or a BMW or a Smart Car, that should be good enough, right? Never mind the actual performance or safety standards, right?

How the rest of the world suffers this sort of patronizing insult and smug arrogance on the part of the Chinese I'll never know.

Sorry to drag this off-subject but I'd buy a Trabant any day before I'd buy any of the garbage coming out of China. Neither is an especially safe car, nor is either one particularly responsible (both are built only to throw the illusion of western-style prosperity at their poor populaces).

More quality from China;

[Dottore]

If you did that same test with a Trabant, it would just be a pile of grey dust. Like something you just swept out of a large fireplace.

[RWebb]

the Chinese are doing what everybody else did at that stage of industrial development - the US was not to keen on other people IP rights in the mid to late-1800s

it's only when your guys are getting damaged that you start to say - Hey! We have to crack down on the patent/trademark/etc. ripper-offers here and make the guys over there stop harming our other guys...

[pwd72s]

Hmmm, I may have found my 911 replacement. The car nobody would bother to vandalize, because vandalism came as a standard feature.

From the article: "Thus was born the Trabant, a symbol for the failings of state-supervised industry. The body was made of plastic and the car plodded along with a 26-horsepower 500-cubic-centimeter 2-stroke 2-cylinder engine."

So, with congress making demands on car design from Detroit's "tiny three"...can we expect similar results?
After all, state supervised industry is state supervised industry...

[Rick Lee]

Don't forget there was a 13 yr. waitlist for these cars in East Germany and you had to pay for it when you placed your order.

[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Don't forget there was a 13 yr. waitlist for these cars in East Germany and you had to pay for it when you placed your order.

Yep...I see a not so Rosy future for the consumer here...once a "green" congress begins dictating car design as terms for bailouts. Economic freedom means freedom of choice. "Nanny" Government is very talented at limiting choice.

Ahhh, but it's all for our own good, right?

[Z-man]

I've actually driven a Trabbi when I was in Hungary last.

And I did see one involved in a head-on crash on a highway in Hungary. Well, actually, I saw the remains of one after crashing. The body was only slightly stronger than wet paper mache.

While the cars coming out of China are not safe, the Trabbi was/is the worst. Hands down.

My $0.42,
-Z

[woodman]

I saw one on the 10 fwy west bound at about Roberston today. I was going to take a picture, but I feared I might destroy it accidentally in my Duramax...