I remember these cars flooding into the West after reunification. My father was absolutely delighted that the Berlin wall was finally down. Best to consign them to history although there are plans for an electric trabant.
They were called "soap containers" (мыльница) by people in Russia (although they weren't allowed in afaik) because many soap containers were made of cheap plastic and that is what this car was made out of. It also smelled like it too. Lots of them in Poland back then...
the Trabant? must be a slow day. As a diesel engine mechanic I once worked alongside a Slovenian who did our body panel work and he always had a good Trabant joke.
did you know Trabant had a luxury package where it came with dual exhaust? the feature was hailed as a revolutionary wheelbarrow with heated handles.
Trabant jokes were also quite popular after reunification, when the first trabants showed up in West Germany. Every kid in school knew at least some jokes. Most were centered around the atrocious build quality.
German engineers from the Trabant factory toured an auto assembly line in Japan. At the end of the line they witnessed a Japanese worker put a live cat inside the car and shut the doors. Puzzled, the German engineers asked their tour guide why. The guide replied, "When we come back the next morning, if the cat is dead we know the car was built airtight and thus has passed inspection." The German engineers nod and take notes. When they get back to Germany they put a cat in a Trabant and roll up the windows. When they get back the next morning the cat is gone.
(The joke is that Trabants are built with engineering tolerance so poor that an animal as large as a cat could slip through the cracks.)
A man in a brand new Mercedes is driving down the highway, and then, out of nowhere his car breaks down. A little while later an older man in a Trabant pulls up and asks if he can help. I don't think so says the Mercedes owner, my car is too heavy for you to tow. "But I can drive you to the next garage", offers the man in the Trabant and the Mercedes owner accepts. Seated in the Trabant he's actually quite surprised, for such a small car, lots of leg room, a stereo, a small espresso machine and an entertainment center that makes his own car look a little shabby. Real leather seats that are amazingly comfortable and on and on. "Wow", says the Mercedes owner, I never expected Trabants to be so luxurious.
A few months later he's driving in his - now repaired - Mercedes on the autobahn, and wouldn't you know it, there is the Trabant stuck by the side of the road with smoke coming out. The Mercedes owner (who has had his car upgraded with all manner of luxury) jumps out, grabs his fire extinguisher and sprints to the Trabant intent on saving the owner. But just as he's about to let loose with the spray a voice comes out of the Trabant: "Just a second, I'll be done with my sauna shortly".
When riding in a Trabant, the passengers carry most of the kinetic energy. To reduce damage to the Trabant in a collision, secure it to as many passengers as possible via seat belts.¹
--
1. Offered as an add-on option, featured in the deluxe package.
Did not see many Trabants in my life, but Ladas and Skodas were a fixture in Western Europe, and the subject of schoolyard jokes (none of which I can recall, unfortunately). I wonder if they joked about them in their countries of origin too?
All the time. Fiat 126p ("Maluch") was famously known for being as safe as Mercedes ("in both of them crumple zone ends at engine") and being as sporty and advanced as Porsche ("both have engine in the boot")
What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill? A miracle
So many of these went around the school playground as a kid. Even the bad ones got a laugh. All could have had Skoda substituted for Lada depending on the day.
In Czechoslovakia, Ladas and Skodas were basically the best a normal citizen could buy, so it wasn't really a subject of jokes. Even getting such a car was not easy, my grandfather said he had to register on a list to get Skoda 1000 MB, and then had to wait 7 years to be able to buy it (that was in 60s/70s).
My granddad used to have one up until the late 2000's. Slow, noisy, uncomfortable, stench was unbearable. But worst of all those things were the gear shifts. Funnily enough it was the first car I ever drove - I must have been like 10 or 11 (on an abandoned dirt road in the countryside, worst thing that could have happened is running over a grasshopper). I think he got it in the second half of the 80's or something like that. Those were a lot more desirable than the other soviet cars available in eastern Europe: at least finding a half-empty bottle of vodka left behind the door panels was out of the equation. As far as that region of the world, the decent(strong word) choices were Trabant and Skoda - all other cars were practically designed to decapitate you in even the lightest accident(I witnessed a fair bit of horror stories when I was a child and soviet cars were still roaming the streets). By having a Skoda or a Trabant you had some chance of survival. This was their only redeeming quality really.
Whats paradoxical though is how these vehicles lasted decades. Sure they had issues, but trabants, skodas, dacias, yugos, all worked for decades - of course they required maintenance but were so basic that anyone could do it. Somehow modern cars have all the gadgets yet fall apart once out of leasing and last 10 years at most.
Indeed, for a few years after socialism ended, it was common for old Dacias to be recommended to tourists to Romania as the best choice of rental car. The idea being that if you had a breakdown, anyone in the country would know how to fix with it rudimentary tools. I once heard someone quip that all you needed to fix most Dacia problems was a hammer.
The modern Dacia brand, however, are complex, modern cars. The socialist-era Dacia was a locally made copy of the Renault 12, a 1960s-era vehicle with a simple design.
This is BS, the AVERAGE age of a car on the road is 12 years, with most easily lasting for longer.
Cars have massively improved in reliability these days to the point where you've all forgotten all the stuff we had to go through as owners of carburator driven cars. Not staring in the winter, empty batteries, having to heat up diesel, dealing with constant light bulb breakages...
They really didn't, it's all survivorship bias, and those that survived were usually maintained out of necessity or not used at all.
> of course they required maintenance but were so basic that anyone could do it
The problem with most products made under planned economy is that they often didn't even work out of the factory, and required part replacement or hacking some solution right off the bat. And the maintenance wasn't really trivial most of the time. Yes, modern cars have planned obsolescence but they are far more reliable and don't need to be serviced that often.
> The problem with most products made under planned economy is that they often didn't even work out of the factory
This happens under capitalism as well. Judging by the amount of junk in your average building store's tool department... some of it looks just like the real thing, in some cases they aren't even trying. I recently bought an air relief key for my radiators, they only sold them in packs of three. All three of them were of such crappy casting material that they broke on the first tap I tried to open with them. Fortunately I found one made in the 70's or so from stainless steel and that worked like a charm. But you couldn't buy that quality today in a normal store, you'd have to go to some specialty place that sells tools for professionals, get yourself a registered account with them and then you can order.
Planned economy products were a mixed bag, that's for sure, but capitalism can produce junk just as easily. What matters are the incentives and to what degree the buyers have access to alternatives.
Visit Cuba to see the "survivorship bias" theory proven BS. Or many places in Asia and Africa and Latin America, for that matter. Older cars, including cheap ones like the 2CV, VW Beetle, Fiat Mini, Yugo, and such, were very serviceable and durable, with very easy means of repair. I know people who in 2023, still have the Beetle, 2CV, and Mini in working condition (and rather pristine), their family having it since the 70s. And I had a friend who was using a Yugo for over 20 years, from student to 40ish (he changed it when he got a kid).
If a modern car, engine or one of the dozens of cpus die, you're SOL without the manufacturer support, original parts, and official service. Even worse for an electric.
With those you could go around the world (and many in the 60s and 70s did, like going on "hippie" style adventures), and fix them locally, sometimes even with the most basic tools.
>those that survived were usually maintained out of necessity
And that's bad (or invalidates their durability) because?
Yes of course most old cars are serviceable. I'm talking about things like not being able to close your door shut properly because the dimensions are slightly off. The quality control was non-existent because the plan took absolute priority and everything else was non-essential to the point the factory could spew the product with half of the parts missing, and ignore the angry consumers who got duped because they weren't affected by consumer feedback in any way.
I actually lived in a planned economy country and I know the bullshit you had to put up with. If you compare apples to apples, i.e. cars made in Eastern Bloc/USSR and the rest of the world of the same era, the typical experience of a car owner in communist countries was exactly like in Cuba - you were expected to constantly fix the half-assed crap you bought because it's literally falling apart. The fall of the wall and the Union led to the instant increase in the quality even during the turmoil of the economic transition. That was long before the prevalence of smart everything, planned obsolescence, "enshittification" etc.
My father at the time had Skoda and before that a Siren. Each year when he tried to transport grandparents 20km for Xmas eve, when the temperature dropped it was half a day of tinkering with no guarantee of working.
Meanwhile over last decade I pulled multiple 3k km+ vacation trips over the Europe in 13-15 years old cars. Worst thing that happened was single random "check engine" light that went away later.
Communism was shit. I hope I won't ever see it again.
Back in 2009 when I got my licence, I was really tempted to buy an '89 BMW e34 which had done 2.5 million kilometers. It was absolutely perfect in every way but I simply could not afford the fuel needed for a 3.5 liter straight six bi-turbo(it was the Alpina B10). I'd still get one if I find it for a reasonable price but that's kinda off topic. point is, it had done 2.5 million kilometers. As for the soviet cars, they rarely had done over 100k. A neighbor of ours when I was a kid had a lada and in it's 30 years it had done less than 35000km and for as long as people could remember, nothing that involved wires in the car ever worked. Point is, by those accounts, a mule is possibly the most reliable form of transportation and will likely outlast any car.
No, they really didn't last decades. The horrible two-stroke engine of the Trabant had a design lifespan of only 60000 km, and the rest wasn't much better. Since buying a new car was nearly impossible, people kept theirs on the road by constantly swapping out parts.
People put in Trabant orders when their grand children were born. As an 18th birthday gift.
Theres a German entertainer that made TV skit where he tracked down some of these people (probably some time in the late 90s or early 2000s and "delivered" their new Trabant on (hidden) camera. Quite fun.
> Whats paradoxical though is how these vehicles lasted decades
This isn't really true. My dad's Yugo was always breaking down. The only redeeming thing was that the car was easily serviceable and the parts were cheap and widely available.
So after 10 years or so you end up with a Yugo of Theseus.
Are you sure? Afaik The way VW works is the companies themselves compete against each other and all brands within the corp have pretty big autonomy. They do use some of the same parts but they are designed and build in different places by different people. With EVs this might be unified even more but ICE VWs and Skodas feel quite differently. Just like you wouldnt say Audi or Porche is reskinned VW.
If anything VW (not the corp, the car brand) is probably upset that Skoda is taking some of their customers since they make better cars than they should.
AFAIK the core parts (engine, drive train, ...) are taken from VW without modifications. Only the "human facing parts"
(body, interior, ...) are different. But yes, the "sub-companies" are fairly autonomous. In East Germany especially, Skodas are quite popular because they offer great value for the money.
Seeing by them on the road it's quite obvious that most of these VW group cars within a segment are essentially the same with slightly different body panels, front grill, and head/taillights.
They're not upset, it's part of the whole strategy: it's basically an image/brand thing + aiming at specific domestic and/or wallet-size market, like, typically Audi usually starts off introducing the new platforms along with with premium "finish" (bigger engines, leather interiors, suspension tuning, fancy lights or features, etc...), then as the production tool gets amortised the platform trickles down to other brands with "lesser" "finish". The "premium" brand gets some amount of protection by being the first to have new shiny stuff for a little while.
It's a bit like Toyota GT86 vs Subaru BR-Z, only a notch further.
The Polish government licensed the right to build several Fiat cars under the brand “Polski Fiat”. Fiat was pretty open to doing a deal with communist states if they could, and communist states were more than happy to be “inspired” by other manufacturers when designing cars, either by stealing ideas (Trabant 600 has lots of ideas taken from VW and Saab cars of the era), or through proper licensing deals. The first Lada for example is a Soviet government take on the Fiat 126p.
That doesn't mean all that much though, there were several Fiat cats being built in eastern/southern Europe.
E.g. Zastava was building them (the Yugo, "crappiest" car in the world was a licensed Fiat platform, same with 101 and 750). Polski Fiat was another example of Fiats common licensing of their platforms to Eastern Europe.
Fiat as in Polski Fiat? Yes. But for whatever reason they were kinda rare. Lada - yes - that and Moskvich: those were the ones designed to either decapitate you put any healthy human into a semi-vegetative state for the rest of their life.
They were so rare every second car in Poland was a Polski Fiat when the war fell. The other big brands in Poland were Polonez, Serena, some Wartburgs, the occasional Zil and lots of Skoda's as well. Some so old that they'd have been in a museum on the other side of the wall but doing daily service in the East.
>Those were a lot more desirable than the other soviet cars available in eastern Europe: at least finding a half-empty bottle of vodka left behind the door panels was out of the equation.
Why not finding one would that make it more desirable? If anything, it would have doubled its value!
If you're interested in the Trabant, the Youtube channel Aging Wheels has a couple of playlists where Robert has rebuilt the engine and gearbox of his [1] and just general videos [2] about his Trabant.
This guy's videos go so in depth, I get them impression that decades from now people will reference them to get a picture of what today's cars were like
My gripe with Doug is that he's not really a car guy. He's read the specs but you get the feeling he really doesn't grok the power train. He's more about the quirky interior features which don't interest me.
The last time I was in Berlin there was an outfit renting them to tourists for joy rides. My girlfriend talked me down, but in the future if she's not there to help me resist temptation...
There are in fact at least two different companies offering tourists Trabants-for-hire in Berlin. Be careful though, as one company has an excellent reputation and another has a terrible reputation, apparently!
I did this exact thing like ten years ago! Was a corporate sponsored event so not sure how much it was and whether I would pay myself, but I do remember it was quite fun!
That still exists; it's called the Trabi Safari. I live there and I regularly see, hear, and smell them. Apparently, they have some kind of exemption for pollution rules because otherwise these things are no longer allowed on the streets. The exhaust fumes are nasty.
But driving them is a fun thing to do if you have the chance. I did that a few times with visitors and very much enjoyed that.
Erich Honecker has been on a trip abroad and returns to his beloved Berlin. But on approach they notice something is off, the traffic is non-existent and the control tower won't answer their calls. Anyway, they land and drive out of the airport. But not a soul to be seen. Finally they get to the site of the wall where a huge gaping hole has been chopped out with sledges, hammers and chisels and apparently anything else that has a handle, tools are lying around discarded. Befuddled Honecker exits the vehicle and walks around for a bit, then he notices an envelope taped to the side of the wall with his name on it. He opens it and reads "Honecker, du bist der letzte, mach bitte das Licht aus.".
There’s a Trabant Museum and nearby theme park in Berlin - I may be using these terms a tad loosely - and there’s one around the corner parked in front of an art gallery and it is occasionally resprayed and redesigned according to the whims of the gallery - and I suspect the paint is the only thing holding it together.
This car is basically a kid’s drawing meeting origami
There was also Trabant Trek (2007/2008) - Berlin to Phnom Penh, with 4 trabbies (only 3 made it). An assistance Mercedes Benz was also lost on the way.
I participated in a rally with Trabants through Budapest. Some people would get excited to see us rally the cars. Some would honk, others would wave. A lot of the traffic would let us through.
On the dashboard, there was a sticker to remind us not to go beyond 50km/h. I think on the final stretch we hit 100. The whole car was shaking, it felt as if the tyres were about to come off. Great fun.
I once towed a broken down Trabant out of the corridor between Berlin and Poland. Not quite legal, but so what, they'd have been there for hours otherwise. Afterwards I got arrested for my trouble, but the funny bit is that the owner of the Trabant said that his car had never gone that fast before :).
I recall visiting Budapest in 1989 and going for a ride in a Trabant taxi. As my dad opened the door and grabbed the roof top with his hand to get out of the taxi, a small piece of the taxi roof top cracked off. We still have it at home as a souvenir.
My parents drove one to their University with me in the back seat as a baby. You could buy one for 500 levs at the time which was a few months salary and it would take you from point A to point B. That said, the surface of the car was cardboard-like and thus fodder of so many jokes. Example:
- A: Are you happy with your Trabant?
B: Yes, except I need to repaint it and some point. It’s blue and as soon as I open the window people start dropping letters for me to mail.
— 4 men were carrying a Trabant. Somebody asks them why? Was it broken? They reply: Nope, nothing wrong with it, we’re just in a hurry.
- A Japanese car manufacturer ordered a Trabant. When it arrived they wrote back: “We got the engine and chassé in a cardboard box, but where is the rest.
- A cop busted a Trabant driver hitting 100km per hour. The cop says: 100levs. The driver counters: another 50 and the car’s yours.
- Trabant stops next to a Lamborghini. Driver rolls down the window and asks - Hey, are you happy with your car? The Lambo driver responds “Yes, why do you ask?”. The Trabi replies: I don’t see many Lambos around, must not be a good car if people aren’t buying it.
There's a song by Atheist Rap, a Serbian punk rock band, who sings about the band happily touring around Vojvodina villages in a "Blue Trabant", until one night they left it parked near a pigsty which resulted in Trabant being eaten by pigs - a reference to it being plastic. Luckily, they managed to convert an engine into a power saw for sawing firewood.
I first heard of these cars in a story from a Croatian friend. He said they had to be careful where they parked them because pigs would like to eat the body. So it seems that it’s a real thing.
Trabant was the cardboard version of Zaporozhets [0] and the little brother of Wartburg [1].
Another Bulgarian jokes about Trabant:
- It is that it's the longest car in the world... if you take the smoke trail behind it.
- A truck was heavily and couldn't climb a hill. A Trabant stops and suggests to pull it over the hill. The Trabant keeps pulling making a huge cloud of smoke. At the top of the hill, the truck driver jokes: "See how much smoke you made!" And the Trabant driver responds: "Sorry, I forgot to release the hand brake."
The German Spy Museum in Berlin has a very cool modified Trabant door in their collection that has an embedded IR camera used by the Stasi in East Germany.
I remember in the late ‘80s there was a tall sculptured column in Kufurtendam with Trabants poking into it all the way up. Sometimes wonder if that’s still there. Bizarre sight
My parents had one, sedan version, in the late 80s. Their first car. I remember when we did a Sunday trip and entered the highway section. When the sign said “100” (km/h), my father said “FIRE”, as in “let’s gooo”, and the pushed the car to its limits (with all the noise and heavy exhaust gases this meant). It became somewhat of a family meme every time we entered the highway.
My parents had one. My dad’s first car and I think the first one I drove too. I have a photo in front of it as a baby. It lasted until I was 16 to drive it, so draw your own conclusions. In the 80s Bulgaria, you had to wait 5-10 years to buy anything else and my dad just got a Trabant instead. We’ve been everywhere across the country with it. Plenty of jokes of course. A few other neighbors had one, and people would prank them by lifting and moving it overnight when parked to a different parking spot, it only needed a few strong men.
My father had 3 of these babies. It was cheaper to get another trabby and scrap it for parts than to try to hunt down the car parts market for replacement parts for your main trabby.
The whole neighborhood would wake up when you would turn on this thing and we actually would go on vacations in it. We were reaching 100km/h and the whole thing was vibrating so bad it felt like it was gonna come apart.
I remember how wholesome it was for 2 trabant drivers to wave to one another as they passed each other on the road. And there was always a sense of camaraderie and solidarity between them. We a few times stopped in the middle of nowhere next to people whose trabant car broke down. Either ran out of gas or some engine problem and my dad would fix it for them or give them enough gas to get them to the next station.
My parents (west German) drove Ladas, first one bought in the late 70s (which was actually reasonably solid, built under license from Fiat. Came with a large very solid cast iron set of tools, and a big pot of paint in the right color). Fully metal bumpers.
My mother got into an accident with a Ford that totaled the Lada (and the Ford).
They bought the same model again, but at this point Soviet manufacturing had deteriorated and that car was nothing but trouble.
I do remember annual 2000km trips to the french coast though...
121 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threaddid you know Trabant had a luxury package where it came with dual exhaust? the feature was hailed as a revolutionary wheelbarrow with heated handles.
How many people does it take to build a Trabant?
Two: One folds, one glues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_jokes#Trabant
- hey who are you? - who? Me? I am a car! - yea, sure. If you are a car, I am a pizza!
Because when you drive one, a comrade pushes while you go "Brrrrrrrr" <raspberry like car noises>
German engineers from the Trabant factory toured an auto assembly line in Japan. At the end of the line they witnessed a Japanese worker put a live cat inside the car and shut the doors. Puzzled, the German engineers asked their tour guide why. The guide replied, "When we come back the next morning, if the cat is dead we know the car was built airtight and thus has passed inspection." The German engineers nod and take notes. When they get back to Germany they put a cat in a Trabant and roll up the windows. When they get back the next morning the cat is gone.
(The joke is that Trabants are built with engineering tolerance so poor that an animal as large as a cat could slip through the cracks.)
What’s the best device for measuring the Trabant‘s acceleration? A calendar.
A few months later he's driving in his - now repaired - Mercedes on the autobahn, and wouldn't you know it, there is the Trabant stuck by the side of the road with smoke coming out. The Mercedes owner (who has had his car upgraded with all manner of luxury) jumps out, grabs his fire extinguisher and sprints to the Trabant intent on saving the owner. But just as he's about to let loose with the spray a voice comes out of the Trabant: "Just a second, I'll be done with my sauna shortly".
When riding in a Trabant, the passengers carry most of the kinetic energy. To reduce damage to the Trabant in a collision, secure it to as many passengers as possible via seat belts.¹
--
1. Offered as an add-on option, featured in the deluxe package.
What do you call a Lada with a sunroof? A [skip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_(container))
What do you call a Lada at the top of a hill? A miracle
So many of these went around the school playground as a kid. Even the bad ones got a laugh. All could have had Skoda substituted for Lada depending on the day.
Trabant was joked about, though.
Cars have massively improved in reliability these days to the point where you've all forgotten all the stuff we had to go through as owners of carburator driven cars. Not staring in the winter, empty batteries, having to heat up diesel, dealing with constant light bulb breakages...
> of course they required maintenance but were so basic that anyone could do it
The problem with most products made under planned economy is that they often didn't even work out of the factory, and required part replacement or hacking some solution right off the bat. And the maintenance wasn't really trivial most of the time. Yes, modern cars have planned obsolescence but they are far more reliable and don't need to be serviced that often.
This happens under capitalism as well. Judging by the amount of junk in your average building store's tool department... some of it looks just like the real thing, in some cases they aren't even trying. I recently bought an air relief key for my radiators, they only sold them in packs of three. All three of them were of such crappy casting material that they broke on the first tap I tried to open with them. Fortunately I found one made in the 70's or so from stainless steel and that worked like a charm. But you couldn't buy that quality today in a normal store, you'd have to go to some specialty place that sells tools for professionals, get yourself a registered account with them and then you can order.
Planned economy products were a mixed bag, that's for sure, but capitalism can produce junk just as easily. What matters are the incentives and to what degree the buyers have access to alternatives.
Visit Cuba to see the "survivorship bias" theory proven BS. Or many places in Asia and Africa and Latin America, for that matter. Older cars, including cheap ones like the 2CV, VW Beetle, Fiat Mini, Yugo, and such, were very serviceable and durable, with very easy means of repair. I know people who in 2023, still have the Beetle, 2CV, and Mini in working condition (and rather pristine), their family having it since the 70s. And I had a friend who was using a Yugo for over 20 years, from student to 40ish (he changed it when he got a kid).
If a modern car, engine or one of the dozens of cpus die, you're SOL without the manufacturer support, original parts, and official service. Even worse for an electric.
With those you could go around the world (and many in the 60s and 70s did, like going on "hippie" style adventures), and fix them locally, sometimes even with the most basic tools.
>those that survived were usually maintained out of necessity
And that's bad (or invalidates their durability) because?
I actually lived in a planned economy country and I know the bullshit you had to put up with. If you compare apples to apples, i.e. cars made in Eastern Bloc/USSR and the rest of the world of the same era, the typical experience of a car owner in communist countries was exactly like in Cuba - you were expected to constantly fix the half-assed crap you bought because it's literally falling apart. The fall of the wall and the Union led to the instant increase in the quality even during the turmoil of the economic transition. That was long before the prevalence of smart everything, planned obsolescence, "enshittification" etc.
My father at the time had Skoda and before that a Siren. Each year when he tried to transport grandparents 20km for Xmas eve, when the temperature dropped it was half a day of tinkering with no guarantee of working.
Meanwhile over last decade I pulled multiple 3k km+ vacation trips over the Europe in 13-15 years old cars. Worst thing that happened was single random "check engine" light that went away later.
Communism was shit. I hope I won't ever see it again.
Theres a German entertainer that made TV skit where he tracked down some of these people (probably some time in the late 90s or early 2000s and "delivered" their new Trabant on (hidden) camera. Quite fun.
The vacuum cleaners, refridgerators - are inefficient but built like tanks. Also often primitive enough to be repaired.
This isn't really true. My dad's Yugo was always breaking down. The only redeeming thing was that the car was easily serviceable and the parts were cheap and widely available.
So after 10 years or so you end up with a Yugo of Theseus.
https://www.skoda.co.uk/new-cars/range
e.g platform PL45 (B5) is shared across Audi A4/S4, VW Passat, and Skoda Superb.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_B_platform
SEAT is also in the mix.
Seeing by them on the road it's quite obvious that most of these VW group cars within a segment are essentially the same with slightly different body panels, front grill, and head/taillights.
They're not upset, it's part of the whole strategy: it's basically an image/brand thing + aiming at specific domestic and/or wallet-size market, like, typically Audi usually starts off introducing the new platforms along with with premium "finish" (bigger engines, leather interiors, suspension tuning, fancy lights or features, etc...), then as the production tool gets amortised the platform trickles down to other brands with "lesser" "finish". The "premium" brand gets some amount of protection by being the first to have new shiny stuff for a little while.
It's a bit like Toyota GT86 vs Subaru BR-Z, only a notch further.
If that happens to be a locust, there is a risk of rollover.
Fiat 126p or 125p was a staple of communism in Poland.
E.g. Zastava was building them (the Yugo, "crappiest" car in the world was a licensed Fiat platform, same with 101 and 750). Polski Fiat was another example of Fiats common licensing of their platforms to Eastern Europe.
They weren't very good, but they were available.
Why not finding one would that make it more desirable? If anything, it would have doubled its value!
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzV2uljPvyAeEgAEgwYNf...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzV2uljPvyAe1K8ArgPHG...
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No1-4GsQa-g
But driving them is a fun thing to do if you have the chance. I did that a few times with visitors and very much enjoyed that.
Cool car imho, but dangerous for its passengers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_120
This car is basically a kid’s drawing meeting origami
https://danmurdoch.blogspot.com/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1974104/
On the dashboard, there was a sticker to remind us not to go beyond 50km/h. I think on the final stretch we hit 100. The whole car was shaking, it felt as if the tyres were about to come off. Great fun.
- A: Are you happy with your Trabant? B: Yes, except I need to repaint it and some point. It’s blue and as soon as I open the window people start dropping letters for me to mail.
— 4 men were carrying a Trabant. Somebody asks them why? Was it broken? They reply: Nope, nothing wrong with it, we’re just in a hurry.
- A Japanese car manufacturer ordered a Trabant. When it arrived they wrote back: “We got the engine and chassé in a cardboard box, but where is the rest.
- A cop busted a Trabant driver hitting 100km per hour. The cop says: 100levs. The driver counters: another 50 and the car’s yours.
- Trabant stops next to a Lamborghini. Driver rolls down the window and asks - Hey, are you happy with your car? The Lambo driver responds “Yes, why do you ask?”. The Trabi replies: I don’t see many Lambos around, must not be a good car if people aren’t buying it.
The ironic thing is that the Japanese cars produced during the Trabant heydey era (60s-70s) are mostly not around any more due to having rusted.
Maybe we would see more ancient Honda Civics on the road if they used duroplast.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R5YgRvIhdtk
The track was quite popular so they made another one about Wartburg.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pvG7vi3bFCY
"500 meters of advesive plaster, please."
The pharmacist looks at him, shocked. The next person in line pats him on his back and says:
"Sir, 100 meters is enough. I also have a Trabant."
Another Bulgarian jokes about Trabant:
- It is that it's the longest car in the world... if you take the smoke trail behind it.
- A truck was heavily and couldn't climb a hill. A Trabant stops and suggests to pull it over the hill. The Trabant keeps pulling making a huge cloud of smoke. At the top of the hill, the truck driver jokes: "See how much smoke you made!" And the Trabant driver responds: "Sorry, I forgot to release the hand brake."
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAZ_Zaporozhets
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(marque)
https://www.berlin.de/en/museums/3977291-3104050-spy-museum-...
The whole neighborhood would wake up when you would turn on this thing and we actually would go on vacations in it. We were reaching 100km/h and the whole thing was vibrating so bad it felt like it was gonna come apart.
I remember how wholesome it was for 2 trabant drivers to wave to one another as they passed each other on the road. And there was always a sense of camaraderie and solidarity between them. We a few times stopped in the middle of nowhere next to people whose trabant car broke down. Either ran out of gas or some engine problem and my dad would fix it for them or give them enough gas to get them to the next station.
Good times.
My mother got into an accident with a Ford that totaled the Lada (and the Ford).
They bought the same model again, but at this point Soviet manufacturing had deteriorated and that car was nothing but trouble.
I do remember annual 2000km trips to the french coast though...