The Trabant Was an Awful Car Made By Communists

In my videos I have shown you a Porsche Carrera GT Ferraris Lamborghinis other exotic cars Today I bring you the exact opposite This is a Trabant It was a car manufactured during the communist government in East Germany and it is simply one of all -The worst cars ever

made

, Come see it with me now before I show you the Trabant. I have the owner here, Robert Dunn, who runs a YouTube channel that includes many videos related to the Trabant on aging wheels and Robert is going to tell us a little bit about the

trabant

first, what year is this vehicle, it's 1981 1981 and what year they started production, 1963 or 64.

Okay, and the design remained more or less the same throughout these years, yes the exterior design changed very little and what is the situation with the engine? It's a two-stroke, two-cylinder, air-cooled engine, uh, 26 horsepower, 26 horsepower, what's the 0 to 60 time of this vehicle? Well, it doesn't exist, it works on flat terrain, you won't. 60. Flat level you won't do it 60. What do you do? 55 is the maximum I have gotten to the flight level. I haven't gotten to 68 going down a hill. Okay, so the biggest question everyone will have is why. Did you buy this car? Do you see that cars are like an addiction?

Yes, some people go with things faster and faster. I had to go with stranger, stranger, stranger things. I came here to Washington DC to hang out with Robert at the Trabant, but you. You're from St. Louis, uh, explain what you're doing on this side of the country. There was a Travont parade held by the International Spy Museum to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. They also had a wall of cardboard boxes that would crash. through a couple of times other things to celebrate fall communism how much do these things cost if I wanted to go buy a

trabant

how much would I have to pay for it well I mean it varies a lot because there aren't many in the states I bought this for three thousand three grand.

Can we talk about the situation with the wall? So this car was

made

in East Germany and then as West German cars got better and they had more options in vehicles and they got more technological advancements in vehicles from the East. Germany had this, yeah, until the wall fell, if you were a normal car this is what you had, maybe in a different color, maybe in slightly different trim options like reverse lights or something. Reversing lights were an important and nice feature in East Germany exactly. So the Ferrari F40 came out in 1988. It was still being sold new to people in East Germany.

When you drive it, what do people say? Does anyone know what type of car it is? If they know it's a true link, they usually show up. with a different approach, they say I haven't seen one of these since the wall fell, since I was in Poland, so are there people you've met who are actually from the Soviet empire and do you think they're crazy to have one here in America, your first question is always why you have it right. This is clearly one of the strangest cars I've ever featured and now it's time to give you a little tour and show you exactly. how

communists

used to build cars the easiest way to see how poorly this car is built is the panel gaps, none of them are consistent and not only are they inconsistent on different panels but some panel gaps are inconsistent on the same panel, here's one that starts wide and then progressively narrows one of my favorite things about this car there's windshield washer fluid but it's manually operated you have to pull out this little plunger and then push, pull out, push and I'm washing the windshield talking about the windscreen cleaners. this is your normal resting position, just in the way a great luxury there is a dimming mirror, it is not automatic and there is no button to get to the dimming part, you just turn the mirror and then it dims inside, there is no glove box just A kind of hole with another hole above it and on the other side, welcome fuses and obviously some tools, because you can't drive a Trabant without some tools.

Let's talk about fuel, as was common when this car came out. You don't just put gasoline, you have to put a mixture of gasoline and oil, it is a two-stroke engine, now there is no fuel door to be able to put the oil and gas mixture, you have to open the hood and put it in. Here, that sounds easy enough now, the biggest problem is that there is no gas gauge inside the car, instead you have the communist gas gauge, a fuel dipstick that you insert that lets you know how much fuel It fits you. My personal ridiculous and ridiculous feature of the Trabant is the doors lock, there is only one interior lock, it's on the passenger side.

Now the passenger door does not lock from the outside, however, the driver's door does not have an interior lock, but it does have an exterior lock, so you can close the door. passenger door from the inside when you are in the car or you can close the driver's door from outside when you leave the car but you cannot close the driver's door from inside the car and you cannot close the passenger door from outside the car that's communism here's another crazy thing about the turbine the Toronto was never designed to have seat belts although the factory eventually added front seat belts as a courtesy to the front seat occupants, no such courtesy was given to the front seat occupants rear seat belts, however this car was never manufactured for rear seat belts in East Germany.

Consider that we are talking about a 1981 car with rear seats and no rear seat belts. To start this car, the procedure is a little complicated, you have to do it first. open the fuel valve from z to r, we're not sure what those things really mean, so you have to shift into one gear, now the shifter is a column shifter and if you're not used to operating one then it's bit strange. finally you can continue, oh and you have to remember to take the handbrake off, make sure it's not running, I tried to start it in gear, oh I have to have it that won't let you do that, you can't start it in drive. unfortunately, that's good, that's first, right, yeah, I can't slide, you can't slide in first second or third, it has to be on the pedal or in neutral, in neutral, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, here we go.

Come on, come on, there's a lot of smoke back there, it's

awful

ly loud, okay, I'm in neutral now, yeah, oh, the brakes, yeah, yeah, yeah, your fourth quarter is right up here, this is the fourth one and then the fourth, I did it. I did it without accelerator and now we can move forward, we can toast like in any other car, oh that signal is on, the signal does not cancel, I must remember that it does not give signal, it is on all the time, I don't have any indicator inside because oh that's the third that's the third that's the first isn't this the first there's no third no, let's reverse this reverse first oh no what gear is this that let me feel it because I don't know by looking at it oh this is absolutely foot on the ground here we go this is the slowest car ever how is this really good the right turn signal has been on this whole time first gear ends before you're close to the speed limit that person turns yes no signal no Well, I mean you have had the signal on, is that you? you're right you're right you're right if I'm in third place I have to step on the accelerator which makes this a little scary oh my God, nothing to do with it Hold on tight, I'm with my foot on the ground right now, it's set, they're some 50 kilometers, it's going up 51 52, that's 30 miles an hour, oh my God, so now the smoke is coming into the cabin here because the wind, yeah, we. you're going to die now yes, it was already on, don't worry, the smoke is incredible, the smell is constant, this thing is absolutely ridiculous, it's tremendously difficult to drive, it pollutes like crazy, the turn signals don't cancel, there's no tachometer but it's a hoot it's an absolute blast this is ridiculous I can't believe I'm driving this thing I love it I wouldn't buy one but I'm glad Robert did and that's why that was the trabant for more of my thoughts on what it was like driving the trabant crazy after you've processed all of this, click the link below to check out my oversteer column on autotrader.com and now it's time to say goodbye to the trabant and be thankful we don't.

I don't live in communism and uh, oh shit, it happened before you.