Trabant: Communist Chic?

Cars

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Now we are all up for purity, simplicity and stripped-down functionality in our cars. We like to drive, after all, rather than sit in a cossetted virtual environment redolent of bubble economies and the ubiquitous pixel. But it’s fairly difficult to get our heads around why the Trabant – relic of cold war-era command economies and the ubiquitous desire to get the hell out of the Communist bloc – retains an enduring appeal.

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But is it so difficult to understand? This nice example of the Trabi Delux: complete with colour co-coded steel hubs, branded mudflaps and an appealing two tone champagne colour, undoutedbly has some tangential coolness about it. It might struggle to get up to fifty on a good day and with a prevailing wind you’ll be able to smell the two stoke engine’s fumes in Leipzig, but it remains, despite ourselves kind of cute.

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Millions of these little monsters were produced in the DDR (the misnamed German Democratic Republic) between 1957 until the wall came down in 1989. They had a steel monocoque chassis and were front wheel drive, but the body panels were made from a recycled material called Duroplast, which, apparently, lessened the East German state-owned manufacturer’s need for expensive steel imports.

This particular car was snapped in the parking space of the Chairman of Bath and North East Somerset Council. Is the love of a retro car is the only communist sympathy the councillor is harbouring? Or could it be that we are we about to see the good burghers of Bath turn a deeper shade of red?

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