Trabant 1958-1991 - The people's movement in 2-stroke
Summary
There were around 10,000 car brands and designers - most of them have disappeared. One of these vanished brands is Trabant, whose vehicles were also known as racing cars because of their thermoset plastic bodywork. The vehicles were constantly developed further and also enlarged, but compared to the competition in the West, the quantities remained modest and the delivery times almost unbearably long. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, production was slowly phased out.
Estimated reading time: 3min
Preview (beginning of the article)
In 1958, the Automobil-Werk Zwickau (AWZ) in the GDR replaced its front-wheel drive small car P 70 with a 690 cm3 two-cylinder two-stroke engine with the P 50, soon to be known as the Trabant and even smaller with 500 cm3. New features included air cooling, four gears and a platform frame with a metal skeleton instead of the box frame chassis. This supported the Duroplast plastic body of the "racing cardboard", as the Trabbi was popularly known. In 1960, the Universal estate version was added, and with the Trabant P 60 in 1963, the engine capacity was increased to 595 cm3 and the power output from 20 (initially 17/18) to 23 hp. The Trabant 601 introduced in 1964 offered a more elongated body. The Hycomat automatic transmission was introduced in 1965, followed by the S and S de Luxe versions in 1966 and a power boost to 26 hp in 1969.
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