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eduard
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Info Eduard - April 2011
eduard
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Info Eduard - April 2011
HISTORY
the embassy of the Federal Republic. The local streets
were inundated with abandoned Trabants. In October,
after the celebrations commemorating the formation
of East Germany, the bells tolled for Erich Honecker
and his boys, the wall came tumbling down (of which
I have a piece)...and...production of the Trabant went
on, more or less from force of habit, and straight to the
storage yards. Certainly, the last of 39,000 Trabant
1.1s, and more than 3 million Trabants of all versions
built from 1957, came off the line on April 30, 1991.
The end.
So, don’t you think that at the very least, it’s
a helluva story. The car is not just a stinker, a Bakeli-
te contraption or a resin buttercup. It’s a legend, and
rightfully so, and quite the twentieth century develo-
pment. My friend Lada Bednar know something back
in the stagnant eighties when, with a supresed smile,
he asked Trabant joke tellers, if they had any idea
why his Trabant’s trunk was full of hay. No one knew,
and Lada’s smile became much more evident , as he
proclaimed that it was to feed all of those dumb cows
who keep putting it down.
And to nish off, a bit more in the way of stats. In all,
there were 3, 096, 099 Trabants of all versions built.
The breakdown is as follows: 131, 450 P-50s (1957-
1962), 106,628 P-60/Trabant 600 (1962-1965),
2,818547 (!) Of the Trabant 601 (1964-1990), and
39,474 Trabant 1.1 (1989-1991). There was a total
of 850,839 vehicles of all versions exported, of which
816,507 were to other eastern Bloc nations, the majo-
rity of them to Hungary.
The million mark was hit on November 22, 1973, 1.5
million on August 1, 1978, two million on October 1,
1982, 2.5 million on August 15, 1986, and nally,
three million May 21, 1990. The one millionth Tra-
bant built, a red item with a white roof, is displayed in
the August Horch Museum in Zwickau which we would
enthusiastically suggest that it is more than worth the
visit. In 1985, there were 3.306 million registered
automobiles in east Germany, of which 1.632 million
were Trabants of all versions. This accounted for 49%
of vehicles on the road in that country. For comparis-
on, Wartburg vehicles were second at 17%, followed
in third by Skoda at 9.5%, and the Soviet Lada at
9%. The Trabant numbers even kept groaing, reaching
53% in 1989.
A note about prices. In Czechoslovakia, a Trabant
would cost between 27 and 29,000 Kcs in the rst
half of the sixties, and from 1969, 35 to 38,000Kcs.
A Skoda 100 with a 1l, four stroke engine gasoline
engine cost about 55,000 Kcs at the time, and the
Fiat 500 with a 0.5l engine 49,000 Kcs (later to fall
to about 39,000Kcs). In East Germany, the cost of
a fully loaded Trabant 601 DeLuxe in 1988 cost
13,200 East German Marks. The cost of a Trabant
1.1 was 18,000DM in 1989, and that despite that
the economic calculations put the price at 22,000.
However, that price was deemed unacceptable by the
SED, so they decided to step in. This was a fairly co-
mmon practice in East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
The last version to be produced, the Trabant 1.1 with a four cylinder, four stroke engine from VW. The rad cover reminds
of another East German vehicle, the Wartburg.
An advert on the nal Series 444 Trabant 1.1
in the Kombi model. The nineties saw a different
era, customers no longer had to wait ten years for
their Trabant, but the Trabant had to wait for its
customers......in vain.
which more similar that most would want to believe.
In the CSSR, there was a mechanism in place for such
instances that amounted to a negative sales tax. Inci-
dently, it was also applied to some plastic model kits.
Even as late as 1995, the Last Edition Series 444 was
offered, this b eing a white Kombi Trambant 1.1 for
19,444 DM, by now the real German Deutschmark,
but in 1996 there were still 351 of them available, for
just 9,999 DM.
And what about models? There are model kits of se-
veral versions of the Trabant in 1/87 available from
Herba and Brekina. A diecast model is available in
1/43 from, among others, Minichamps. Revell offers
a very nice kit in 1/32, Welly offers several models
in metal in the same scale.
http://www.trabime.cz/trabi.php?id=3
http://www.horch-museum.de/
In the 1990s, the Trabant became became the subject
of some artistic creations, here as a combat vehicle for
the Wehrmacht. Note the commanders hatch on the roof!
The Trabant served in the air force, and not only in
the Kübel version. This Trabant tiger from 1993, same
as the similarly designated L-29 Deln, was the work of
Karel Krejci, who at the time was working on maintaining
ejection seats at the air base in Zatec. The photograph was
taken in 1993 during a visit by USAF F-111 at that eld.
The vehicle was of course, not actually owned by the air
force, and it was the property of the brewery in town.
Karel Krejci left the air force after the decommissioning
of the base, and went to Eduard to work as a photoetched
brass designer. Later, he was chief of the PE department,
and today, he is concerned with the collection of documen-
tation for designs. It can be said that Karel is for Eduard
what the Trabant is for automotive history.