After Germany was divided by the U.S. and Russia at the end of World War II, both the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) faced massive industrial rebuilding projects. Both sides needed to get their populations on the move, and both went about it the same way: state-controlled automakers. Volkswagen (which is currently looking at an $18.6 billion restructuring plan) was in the hands of the German state of Lower Saxony, representing West Germany. Meanwhile, the GDR-owned VEB Sachsenring Automobilewerke Zwickau produced Trabant cars.
Trabants wouldn’t become quite as popular as VW’s rivaling Beetles, but they were successful on their own terms. Despite facing a much smaller market, more than 3 million Trabant vehicles were produced between their launch in 1957 and eventual demise in 1991. They would also get a turn in the cultural spotlight in 1992, when U2 put one on the cover of its album “Achtung, Baby.” More recently — and more disturbingly — artist David Černý put a Trabant on legs for his haunting sculpture “Quo Vadis.”
Another way VW’s Beetles and Trabant would diverge — for a while — had to do with what was providing motivation. The Beetle famously featured a flat four-stroke, four-cylinder engine right from the start. Trabant relied on two-cylinder, two-stroke mills until 1990 – and when it did switch to a four-cylinder engine, that motor had been licensed from VW. By then, of course, the Berlin Wall was down, Germany was re-united, and Trabant succumbed to stiffer Western competition a year later. Granted, Trabant’s dedication to two-cylinder engines wasn’t the only thing that held it back, but there were some deeper reasons behind the time it took to modernize its motor.
Given Trabant’s original mission of providing affordable transportation, you can understand why its first engines were both two-stroke and two-cylinder. After all, two-stroke motors are usually cheaper and simpler to make than their four-stroke counterparts — although they’re also extremely environmentally unfriendly. In terms of cylinder counts, using two instead of four made the process that much cheaper and simpler, too.
Moreover, the typical Trabant didn’t need a big engine to do its job. The iconic and long-running 601 — in production for 28 years — was a mere 142 inches long and weighed only 1,400 pounds. It’s about the same length as the Chevy Spark, but that car weighed nearly 1,000 pounds more. So, early Trabants didn’t need a massive motor to adequately power them. As time went by, however, even the executives recognized the need for a more modern car. But this was where Soviet politics reared its ugly head.
The funds for Trabant development had to be approved by the Soviet Politbüro, but the official in charge simply didn’t want to spend the money when the current models were still so popular. Citizens were enduring a 10-year waitlist for them, although how much of that really had to do with their popularity is an open question. That being said, the Politbüro folks actually did make a deal with Volkswagen — as mentioned above — to license VW’s 1.1-liter four-stroke engine for Trabant production. But the Berlin Wall had fallen by then, giving people access to Western alternatives. And, as a result, less than 40,000 Trabant 1.1 models would be produced before the model finally went under.