Trivia Quiz 21

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Like the Beetle, and the Mini, Trabants have become a motoring legend. The Beetle is often discussed without mentioning its manufacturer VolksWagen, similarly the Trabant without mentioning Sachsenring.

The Sachsenring factory made 3 million Trabants making it a very successful little car, to put this in perspective there were only 1.2 million Morris Minors made.

To understand the Trabant it is necessary to delve a little into the history of it manufacturer.

Before the war the factories in Zwickau were the home of Horch, a manufacturer of large, expensive, high quality cars, and Audi. They were both part of the Auto Union group which also included DKW.

When hostilities ended Zwickau, in East Germany, became part of the Communist ruled DDR. Initially the factory was used to produce much needed tractors and trucks. The factory became part of IFA which was the state owned group which ran all of the East German motor industry.

A new car was developed utilising Duraplast bodywork. This featured a water cooled, transverse mounted twin cylinder two stroke engine driving the front wheels. (the transverse engine/front wheel drive layout here in use several years before the Mini which is often wrongly credited with pioneering that configuration). The new car was known as the AWZ P70 or Zwickau P70 and really can be regarded as the for runner of the Trabant. The P70 was available in saloon, coupe and estate versions. Many years later Nissan produced the Figaro which was so similar in appearance to the P70 Coupe it would be difficult to believe that they didn't use the P70 as inspiration.

To make way for the production of the P70 of the production of the F9 was moved to Eisenach.

The technology used to make the P70 was employed to make a slightly smaller car. This was called the Trabant P50 and featured a new 500cc twin cylinder two stroke engine, this time using forced air cooling instead of water. The car was built using an inner shell and floor pan made of steel. The engine, transmision, steering and front suspension were mounted on a detachable sub frame. The outer body panels were all made of Duraplast. This resulted in a compact, simple, economical, car that could seat four adults. The P50 was available in saloon, estate, and van formats and volume production started in 1957. At this time the Trabant P50, the P70, and P240 were all in production at the Sachsenring factory alongside of trucks.

http://home.clara.net/peterfrost/p60b.jpg

The P60 was little changed externally from the P50 but featured an enlarged 600cc engine.

The P60 was produced from 1962 to 1964.

At this point it should be remembered that the first Trabants were developed during a time of great shortages especially of steel and petrol. Many economy cars such as bubble cars came into being at this time. Most of these economy cars compromised in some areas; some had restricted seating, some had little or no luggage space, some had minimal performance. The Trabant didn't suffer from any of these problems so was considerably better than many small (micro) cars of the time.

In 1964 the Trabant had a major redisgn which resulted in the launch of the P601. This car retained the same basic concept, and the new body style provided more interior and luggage space.

The P601 body style was retained retained until the end of production in 1991. This lead many people to believe that the cars stayed the same and no further development took place. In reality the cars were constantly developed and every year saw the introduction of a number of changes. The power output of the engine gradually increased, and modifications to the engine allowed it to run with much less oil mixed with the petrol. The brakes were improved, and a change made from 6 volt to 12 volt electrics. There were many other changes, too many to list here, however changes were carried out in such a way that the majority of them could be applied to earlier cars. Many older Trabants were carefully recycled by being rebuilt and updated with later components.

http://home.clara.net/peterfrost/p601est2.jpg

The P601 was available in three basic forms; a saloon, an estate, and a convertible jeep version. The jeep was available in civilian and military specifications.

In 1988 an agreement was entered with VW to produce Polo engines which were fitted to a much modified version of the P601. This was initially produced in parallel with the two stroke car. Eventually, after the fall of the Berlin wall the production of the two stroke car was phased out.