Blog
Plastic car is a blast from the past
25th August 2009
One of my favourite stories from the Business News this month has been the possible relaunch of the original plastic car – the Trabant.
Originally made in 1957 in East Germany, this was the only car which most East Germans could aspire to own under the Communist system. It looked just like a 3-year-old child’s drawing of a car, boasted absolutely no refinements or sophistication, and stayed just the same until after the fall of communism in 1989. In the absence of any choice or competition, there was no need to change it; people either bought a Trabant (usually after a 2-year wait with their name on a waiting list), or they didn’t own a car - this photo shows the car park of a typical East German factory in the 1980’s, and you can see that there is not too much variation in the cars there.
They were exported by the hundred thousand to other Soviet bloc countries, and were very common in the Czechoslovak capital, Prague, when I lived there from 1986 to 1989. It is hard now to imagine life in a world with no ‘market’ and no freedom to choose, but the Trabant was a symbol of those times, and also of the gathering rush towards the end of European communism in 1989.
The first car rolled off the production line on 7 November 1957 - the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. The bodywork was made of plasticised cotton waste, which may sound quite environmentally friendly in these enlightened times but simply meant that it offered no protection to the occupants in an accident, and quickly rotted. The 600cc two-stroke engine could push the car to the dizzying speed of 90km per hour (56mph), belching out fumes that breached EU anti-pollution regulations – after reunification of East and West, Germany had to make an exception for the Trabant as many, many thousands were on their roads. They were notoriously unsafe; poor brakes, bad engines, second rate tyres. Luckily there were few cars on the roads in Eastern Europe in those days, or the accident rate would have been higher. It gave rise to many Trabi jokes:
- How do you double the value of a Trabant? (answer: fill up its petrol tank)
- Why doesn’t a Trabant have seat belts? (answer: It might be mistaken for a rucksack)
- Why does the Trabi have a heated rear window? (answer: it keeps your hands warm while you push it)
But maybe the company wanting to relaunch it does have a point - in these days of recession, where car sales keep falling, and with the trend for nostalgic retro-fashion, perhaps there is a niche market for a no-frills car for the 21st century!
The Trabant also played its role in the fall of Communism. You have to remember that it was simply not possible for residents of countries behind The Iron Curtain to cross the border to countries in the West. However, in the summer of 1989 a small crack started to appear in the border between Hungary and Austria and word started to spread in East Germany that there might be a way out. Thousands of East Germans made their way through Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the border with Austria, travelling in their Trabants which they then abandoned on the Hungarian side while they camped in the fields, waiting. A small section opened on August 19th, officially to allow about 150 Austrians to pass through for a picnic with their neighbours in Hungary. But the small opening was rushed by the thousands who had gathered on the Eastern side, and the border guards took the crucial decision not to fire on them, but to let them go. Those who got through were refugees – they took with them whatever they could carry and left everything else – including their precious Trabants – behind.
If you are interested to read a bit more about this, here are links to a couple of articles published by the BBC and The Times, marking the 20th anniversary of that historical day.