The Cars of East Germany - Trabant & Wartburg

[gothhearse]

wow, handmade now its done all by machines on most cars

[FnFTkyDrft]

Makes me proud to live in Zwickau :')

[wrcfaAAAAAAAAN]

Handmade Car :DDD

[cheeriosinabowl]

Ikea should sell these cars ... then you could assemble them yourself. 50,000 pieces + instruction booklet.

[Sohave]

@cheeriosinabowl I would buy one! the "Ikea P601" also known as "Erik"

[italokid80]

In Romania, I see (2011) on the streets few Wartburgs and Trabi's (I have photos), remainings of old inter-communist commerce. One excentric guy from Bucharest make luxury-limousine from an Trabant, he says already cost over 8000 euros. There's also the "Trabant" club (with parade, parties)

[12valvepower1]

capitolismo also created amc, ick

[sha71608]

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[TheGrandvoyager]

Yah, aint Capitalism awful which produces Porsshe, Mercedes Benz,, BMW compared to such marvelous miscarriage of engineering as the Trabant and Wartburg.

By the way, theWest German Police shot how many people trying to escape over the wall into East German "Paradise"?

[Mackeson3]

I know someone was delivering a new Wartburg to a customer and on the way there the engine seized up!

[shortyfocker]

Epic video! I have a Trabant myself. If you think they broke down too often you're maybe right... I am still a student (22 years old) and if you can believe I mended my Trabant at the side of the road with a chewing gum and a cigarette. And it worked till i got home (made about 70 km), so the moral of the story is that if you have some mechanical inspiration you can repair it yourself... if not, sit on the side of the road till some one comes pick you up... you can repair the engine in 2 hours.

[Seattlecarnut]

I like the Wartburg over the Trabant. Neither car would last long in the Western European, at least the Wartburg looks more attractive than the Trabant.

[BTIsaac]

Good old Trabant. My old man had one. The outer casing was literally made of paper mashe.

[Brauiz90]

Wartburg 1000 - Hat ein bekannter von mir auch, den hat er von seinem Vater "geerbt". Da haben wir schon mit 6 Leuten drin gesessen. Das Fahrzeug ist mit 4 Leuten auf der Rückbank immer noch komfortabel. Die besten Autos kamen nun mal aus dem Osten.

[Brauiz90]

Hat ein bekannter von mir auch, den hat er von seinem Vater "geerbt". Da haben wir schon mit 6 Leuten drin gesessen. Das Fahrzeug ist mit 4 Leuten auf der Rückbank immer noch komfortabel. Die besten Autos kamen nun mal aus dem Osten.

[quimbyt]

I remember the Trabant from when I with the Berlin Brigade (U.S. Army)  I wonder if there are any Trabants left

[PhatFarm60]

HAHAHA! Honecker and the rest of the rulers had imported Volvos, they wouldn't dare drive a Trabant or Wartburg

[michaelfergusonuk]

@PhatFarm60 "Tatra" (the only Luxury Car Maker of note in Eastern Europe [ now makes Trucks & Lorrys])

was the Primary Provider of Vehicles for the Eastern Dictators & High up officials in those times.

It is true though that "Mercedes-Benz" & several other Western Manufacturers Sold Cars to "Heads of State" behind the "Iron Curtain".

[PhatFarm60]

Looks like a fine car to me...but damn, waiting 10-15 years for one? Holy dog shit!

[abu5ader]

we had a hatchback one

it brought a lot of memories

[DJBabysmile]

who is the mossi (mosuitsch)

[benjathome]

God I feel sorry for the citizens of the GDR, life must have been difficult for them, the stasi, the Berlin wall, the inner German border (taking up 6% of their land), informants.. etc..

The national anthem sounds great though!

[NorceCodine]

The only other car in the world completely hand-built is the Rolls-Royce. (!)

[kaupunkimoukari]

Trabant. The car as its simplest. And still making it longer than the cars million times more worth it..

[needstoregister]

Is that the new GM factory?

[NutsandGuts]

*sigh* ze germans and zer cars...

[OrangeKarl7]

For the guy in the UK who is interested in a Trabi or Wartburg: Look up Zwickau for Trabis on the web. They have a "rally" there once or twice a year. So plan your trip, show up with lots of cash in hand, and make your bid. Perhaps this is also done in Eisenach for the Wartburgs? Also, just start perusing the Internet. If you look, you will find. But just be prepared to do some real mechanical work to get it running. I wouldn't buy one. But they are interesting to see on the road.

[MrRedFredSaid]

Wouldn't the world be a better place if we were all satisfied with a simple, basic way of life? Love these little cars, especially the little trabants.

[juxtn]

it would be interesting to feel the outside of the car since it is plastic, you are so used to a car feeling like metal and heavy,, but to knock on a car like this and it feel like a plastic toy or golf cart that makes an impact on you especially when you are about to get inside to ride in it.

[BlanchHashimoto]

ehjemnd bei laune mit mia zu chaten oder am tele oder auch per cam ^^ bin gelangweilt

[mightyzorg]

Top Gear will only destroy it, they don't like older more simple cars.

[Frederic87]

"Trabant... Wir leben Scheisse".

[Frederic87]

"Wir leben Scheisse"...? :p

[sitwithabook]

My son (age four) watched this over and over and over again... and then it disappeared. The song is wormed into our family.  Can someone tell me what it is?

[eltfell]

@sitwithabook Do you mean the childrens' song? It's about handcraft.

[SteHex003]

All the people in the video probably suffering from lung cancer by now (including all the people in Eisenach and all major cities) because those two-stroke engines...

[ponggolese]

Anyone knows the title to the song at 0:50? Thanks

[Sparksaty]

Zweck-au

[BR95027]

Es ist das beste Fahrzeug der Welt.

Robust...

Solide...

Einfach..

[Spockkker]

My dad's friend had a trabant, and another had a Lada, they were actually very reliable, they still have them.

Romanian

[Noszkovonye]

the wartburg link (in the info) is not working

[Gurkmomma]

this is what it says in the part that they erassed from the commercial: And dont forgett it can also hide 1 East german in the trunk and drive safely thorugh the east german checkpoint to West without the guards arresting you Germany. :D :D :D.

[valicourt]

Great! I was just looking for a car that holds 57 Footballs. Now I' ve found it!

[mEtzG3rX]

wartburg too :D

[bikebeerrun1960]

I knew these Trabants had bodies of fiber reinforced plastic, but seeing them in assenbly they resemble "plastic hobby model kits"scaled to life size. Well almost...

[eltfell]

That wasn't fiber reinforced plastic, it was plastic reinforced cotton.

[mrspivvy]

For people who deride these cars, the wartburg and trabant were designed simply to transport a family from A to B. it didnt have to be competitive because there was no other choice. there were no materials/funds available for any other design, they simply did the best they could with what they had.

[benjathome]

Ah you can't really rate a country because its cars, houses, food, clothing etc.. were awful.

You can however rate a country based on how high it builds its walls to keep its citizens in, how much it relys on its secret police to supress freedom and how it is eventually destroyed - by its own people....

[wmichswingers]

Ahh the proletareat at work...

[TashkentFox]

Why would you want to fit 57 footballs in the back of your car unless you work for some international football manufacturing conglomerate? First priority would be how many medium sized suitcases you can fit in.

[TremcladClock]

In one of the adverts for the Trabant 601 it was proudly stated that it had "room for much luggage". The Trabant was much smaller than the Wartburg.

[ktcat1]

Or how many live family members you could stuff in there as you tried to escape the place.

[TashkentFox]

I hadn't thought of that!

[shandamoon]

What's wild to me is they kept those same body styles throughout the decades. So did Checker cabs but you could fit about 150 soccer balls in their trunks.

[KrupyFren]

socialism is step forward to utopia, capitalism is step backward from utopia. Both have their pros and cons. But when your rulers are gangsters you are in deep shit no matter what the regime is. Capitalist gangsters, communist gangsters they have no concern for the stare, they are just greedy for power and wealth, nothing else.

[Petrel2]

In capitalist world now its exactly the opposite thing, The contructors are so productive than we have many cars not sold. Beaucoup trop de marques de voitures chez GM, trop de produits qui ne se vendent pas, ça créé des faillites gigantesque. Le capitalisme n'est pas un modèle parfait.

[mint1633]

omg, TOO MUCH PROSPERITY!!

[slimv29]

that is absurd that you had to wait around 10-15 years for a trabant (come on, they couldnt take that long to build), i mean, i dont remember hearing about having to wait for a zastava, lada, or a polski fiat in order to buy those

[pimpjuice5259307]

slimv29, it doesnt take long to build a trabant, it is rather quite easy and fast. What the problem was is that they merely had shortages of supplies to make the car. Remember, when your a socialist police country, you dont take in imports from other "democratic" and "free" countries, you have to produce them yourself. In east germany you had about three options, trabant, wartburg or take the train. Two car companies cant hold up a country of millions.

Gruss von Rheinland-Pfalz mein freund

[slimv29]

im surprised they didnt have the russians, or any other eastern bloc country help them out a bit, that couldve made the wait shorter

[Havord06]

Alles noch echte Handarbeit - this was all real handmade work!! :)

( Fast - Almost )

[Keijz74]

LOL they were very fast.

[ufkillah]

Yeah... And I grow up in Poland, I was 12 when communism in this part of world felt up. I remember then our first car - Wartburg. Think what u want, in those times it was a car. Hard to belive from US or UK, I know. But it's history, guys. And we saw it. Now even we are looking at that and we're... well, suprised! Changes...

[gurdjieff66]

Just compare East Germany with the Third Reich as rival dictatorships. There is no comparison! The Third Reich leaves the GDR in the dust!

[mukatuna]

The Wartberg's best feature was that one can put 57 footballs in the boot. Couldn't do that with the Trabant.

[thunderstruck665]

How caught up is the East with the West nowadays? Anybody know?

[1981Myname]

Well, it's not doing so well at all, and many people in east Germany are longing back to the times of socialism. Many dream of building up the wall again. Because under socialism, they all had a house, food, income and free healthcare. Today there is huge unemployment and hundreds of people living on the streets in total poverty. Plucking the fruits of capitalism.... The DDR really wasn't all bad, but their biggest mistake was just that they imprisoned themselves.

[marcin9962]

2:58 V6 Engine with twin turbo LOL

[manlyday]

Product of planned economy era

[sovietnimrod]

Any car that can haul 57 footballs is a winner in my opinion!

[xxtwilight2nightxx]

STORY TIME my dad was born in wartzburg and had many brothers and sisters (7) because his mom was a prostitute, and they all had diffrent dads. EVERY ONE OF THEM. but then his mom died from idk what and he got adopted to america (san jose) and now he is happy and has a great life =] true story

[MatAlfRoadShow]

It Front seat has no head cover

[pauloleventelorant]

Trabants forever!

[piancu]

This is what happens when you have Russian bolsheviks in Germany.. You go from a very good industry to junk industry

[canamwing]

After what the Germans did to the Soviet Union they are lucky to still exist! More then what the french wanted for Germany.

[casilias2]

TOP GEAR make a video with dacia 1310..plzz:)

[CumbrowskiCom]

na, I didn't even like Dacia when I was still living in Germany. I liked the Ladas and my favorite (next to the Wartburg Melkus hehe) was the Skoda Coupe Rapid, although I prefered the back side look of the Skoda Coupe Garde :)

[northerbrewer]

We had Skoda in Canada not a common car but better than a Lada. Even a Lada wasn;t so bad compared to American cars of the time. They rusted and broke down a lot but they were very cheap so it all worked out....

[9999RuneScape999]

@CumbrowskiCom Ladas ar nice my favourite is the 5 doored lada niva.

[12valvepower1]

@casilias2 capitolism also produced the pinto. boooom.

[12valvepower1]

i wanna traburg

[12valvepower1]

my name is ich bin ein berliner

[joshhodg]

I don't think I'd want to go 78 mph in a Wartburg.

[KubikCv]

I have Wartburg 1.3 for 80% similar chassis with Wartburg 353 and Vmax is 160 kph approx. 100 mph

[Posthuman83]

"Is there anybody out there?.." (c)

[nightfrog65]

Did those cars have a 2-stroke engine?? They look very simple and easy to repair.

[CumbrowskiCom]

yes, they did

[eisenauto]

Yes, it was the three-cylindered two-stroke engine, engineered in Eisenach in 1939. Not develloped until 1949 ´cause of WW2. After the most unfortunable capitle of history rebirthed out of the waste that soviet reparations cold´nt transport away. Built by knowledge an sweat of the handful left engeneers who left. Transported a half nation wherever tey had to go. Until 1989. Thanks to Eisenach.

[12valvepower1]

@nightfrog65 yes. dkw style motors. dkw junior i think was base for trabi

[Germany1976]

The commercial dates back to 1966.

[Ondra95]

whats name second song? please!

[CumbrowskiCom]

I assume you mean the song at the beginning of the second part about the Trabant factory?!

That is "Mono für Alle" and the song "Honecker komm zurück!". I added a link with the full lyrics to the video description.

[CumbrowskiCom]

I also added a link to a video on YouTube with the full song (video description, because I cannot post URLs in the video comment).

[Ondra95]

Thanks!!!!

[shepshepherd]

An excellent, informative clip. Thanks very much for posting it :)

[paulpembroke]

Excellent video, by the way...

[Thinsid]

Fantastic!!

[t0xictreasure]

easy and simple made

[mrspivvy]

frighteningly labour intensive for such a small simple car. Looks like 1930s production technique. By the way, I really want a trabant or a wartburg. sadly very uncommon here in the UK, no wartburgs since 1974 and trabant never officially imported.

[CumbrowskiCom]

1990-91 would have been the right time for getting them. Trabants were given awat free or sold for ONE DM, which was less than half a Pound back then. That period only lasted a few months and the value went up to a couple hundred DM... then even over thounsand and now it is almost (or maybe already) considered a classic. It can only get more expensive now, because the available number of cars only goes down and never up again.

[paulpembroke]

mrspivvy: Try looking up Wartburg on EBay - they sometimes have a few for sale.

[StepyMandy]

Yeah yeah it was Garde rapid the "hatchback" and it has 5th gear:)

[StepyMandy]

Old people are driving these cars ir our country very often alogn with Skoda 120 and Lada ?2100? if you know it:)

[CumbrowskiCom]

Skoda 120? Is that the really old Skoda? Gee, I start to forget. I think the newer model was the 125 and then they had the "cabrios" 130 and 135... not sure, I need to check. I remember the Lada of course. I grew up in Berlin, East Germany (I was 15 when the Wall came down).