25 years ago, the last Trabant rolled off the assembly line – the best-selling car in the GDR
A total of about three million Trabants were produced
The first Trabants rolled off the assembly line in 1958 at the «people's enterprise» (VEB) automobile plant in Zwickau. A total of three million such cars were produced. But that quantity was not enough. Demand, as was often the case in the GDR, exceeded supply. Many customers had to wait more than ten years before they could finally get behind the wheel of their own car.
The «people's car» – the Trabant – was the cheapest passenger car in the GDR
Two technical features were characteristic of the Trabant. On the one hand, the exterior of the car. It was made not from sheet metal but from thermoset plastic. This saved weight and thus cost. Steel was simply too expensive under the socialist economy.
To manufacture the thermoset plastic, cotton mats were used, cheaply imported from the Soviet Union, which were impregnated with plastic and then pressed into the desired shape. But the result was – and still is – quite durable.
Germans joked: to get moving, you first had to push-start the Trabant and then jump in
The second essential characteristic of the Trabi is its two-stroke engine, whose exhaust is extremely harmful to the environment. While the engine is running, a small amount of unburned fuel and oil is constantly emitted. This creates a typical smell by which a Trabant can sometimes be located even from several hundred meters away.
As Deutschland.de notes, the Trabant has now become a cult, also due to its striking characteristics. Around 30,000 cars are still on the road worldwide, and 250 of them have even made it to the USA.
Today, the Trabant is a cult car with fans not only in the former GDR but also in many other countries around the world
In Zwickau, the International Trabant Drivers' Club reminds of the «Trabant as a cultural asset» and maintains its own museum with original special models such as the Cabrio and Rallye-Trabant. The club also manages an international Trabant registry, and there are more than 150 fan clubs, as well as numerous Trabant driver meetings.
The cult Trabant can be used in various ways today