7 Amazing Recycled & Repurposed Trabants

The ugly, smokey, slow & smelly Trabant automobile endures as an ironic and iconic symbol of the late, unlamented, communist nation of East Germany. Over 3 million of the two-stroke stinkers were built between 1957 and 1990… where are they now? You might be surprised.

The Trabantimino

If director Quentin Tarantino drove a Trabant with a pickup truck bed we’d call it a Trabantimino and it would be awesome. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen, so who will step up to the plate and give a breathlessly waiting world the Trabantimino it so badly needs? Liz Cohen, of course!

In creating BODYWORK, “a combination performance and sculpture project that investigates the American desire for acceptance,” Cohen oversaw the transformation of a clapped-out 1987 Trabant into a sort of Chevy El Camino on Eastern Bloc steroids while wearing a series of skimpy outfits. Berlin Wall builder Erich Honecker might not approve but Clint Eastwood probably would!

Trabant 601, U2

Trabants were prominently featured on U2′s 1991 album Achtung Baby and the followup worldwide Zoo TV Tour, at which several Trabants were modified to serve as stage lighting. The success of both the album and the tour helped boost the Trabant’s ongoing metamorphosis from a symbol of communist inefficiency to a fondly recalled cult classic car. The link between U2 and the Trabant was such that a number of restored Trabis were painted up and placed inside German music stores to promote the 20th anniversary editions of Achtung Baby released in 2011.

Some of the Trabants used during the Zoo TV Tour have been preserved at various Hard Rock Cafe locations including Dublin, where a colorful Trabant hangs upside-down from the ceiling, Spider Pig style. The Trabant above, posed in a more typical (and accessible) position, can be found at the Hard Rock Cafe in Berlin.

Trabi-Safari

Bored with the Wild West and angling for a little Wild east instead? Then sign on the dotted line: Trabi-Safari is here to show you the best and wurst, er, worst of old East Berlin! Tours dubbed The Wall Ride, Berlin Classic and the aforementioned Berlin Wild East take tourists to locations of note via East Berlin’s version of the double-decker bus, the Trabant. Naturally seating is limited and the speed is slow, but as befits a safari some of the Trabants are painted up in wild zebra and cheetah color schemes.

It might not still be there but at one time, a black-painted Trabant sat regally atop a stout red tower just outside the Trabi Safari HQ, beautifully complemented for photographers by the stunning Die Welt globe just behind it. Trivia note: while Trabants came in a wide variety of colors (green was said to be lucky), black wasn’t one of them. Legend has it the communist bureaucrats in charge of Trabant production wanted no comparisons made to ultra-capitalist Henry Ford and his “any color you want as long as it’s black” Model T Ford.

The Long, Long Trabant

By the end of 1989, the long-in-the-tooth Trabant 601′s wheezing two-stroke engine was putting out a mere 19 kW (26 horsepower) of power so the mere thought of a Trabant limousine is, well, a big stretch. Nonetheless, a host of ultra-long Trabants roam the highways, byways and autobahns these days though one reckons their engines have been seriously upgraded.

Gentlemen, Stork Your Engine!

The name Trabant means “satellite” in German, having been inspired in late 1957 by the world’s first orbiting satellite, the Soviet Union’s Sputnik. The latter burned up after just three months while the Trabant smoked and sputtered on for more than three decades. A tip of the hat to Flickr user Dirk Huijssoon, who captured a rare environmentally-friendly Trabant in the image above near the town of Neuruppin.

One of the few positive features of the Trabant was that it was capable of hauling over 1,000 kg (454 lbs) of cargo… or roughly three smuggled adults. Bearing the weight of the stork parents above plus their nest and eggs/offspring should be a piece of cake. As far as being smokey, until VW built the final series of Trabants in 1990-91 all Trabants ran on two-stroke engines. The model above, on the other hand, has a two-stork engine.

“With Respect to The Moving Powers”

We’re not sure what Bulgarian sculptor Georgi Donov was thinking when he decided to feature the Trabant in his compositions but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt: van Gogh wasn’t in his right mind when he painted some of his masterpieces either. Kudos to photographer and Flicker user Michele Giacuz for capturing the unlikely yet beautiful scene above.

Located in central Sofia, the centerpiece of Donov’s “With Respect to The Moving Powers” is a distressed (well, more than usual) Trabant with a bust of surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp on its roof. It’s not clear whether Donov likes Trabants, hates Duchamp, or both. By the way, the Trabant was a lucrative export product for the DDR though only fellow Warsaw Pact nations like Bulgaria we’re forced, er, allowed to import it.

Firmly Planted In History

Boasting unit body construction and the extensive use of recycled “Duraplast” body panels when they were first introduced, Trabants were actually quite advanced for their time. Trouble was, “their time” was a brief un-shining moment. As the rest of the world progressed, the Trabant stayed pretty much the same and when communism was relegated to the ash heap of history, over 3 million two-stroke Trabants went along for the ride. Nice to know a few cherished “Trabis” serve to remind us of the not-so-good old days.

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