Today I passed a museum exhibit talking about what an incredibly horrible car the Trabi was and how poorly constructed it was. But anecdotally the, um, one or two? people I've met in my life who owned Trabis look back on them quite fondly. I understand nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but I'm also curious to know if these cars were genuinely as bad for the time as they were portrayed to be or if there's a propaganda element to it too?
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Trabant was noisy and Spartan, but drove like a go-cart, two stroke engine had some nice torque when revved, and it was surprisingly roomy, esp. the estate version. All the mechanicals were simple and easy to work on. It was light enough to be steered like a bobsleigh, just by changing the centre of gravity, i.e. everybody leaning heavily to the right made it steer to the right, great stuff when you’re a bunch of stoned teens. Absolutely not the horror story it’s being presented as
Absolute shit. Clutch is like an on/off switch. Pedal spacing is weird. The angle of the steering wheel doesn’t make sense. Loud and handles badly. You won’t be speeding in any of those cars. But they are robust. You can fix them with a hammer and pliers.
I’ve driven a Škoda S100 of a friend a couple of times. We’re not that old, it was just an oldtimer. It was a very pretty car, small but not that uncomfortable as one would imagine, and it was extremely fun to drive it. I was (and still am) driving a Škoda Fabia so a relatively modern car at the time, the difference was huge.
The top speed was like 100 km/h, and once I was driving it on the hills of Buda, and the slope became greater, so I shifted back from 3rd gear to 2nd gear (it had only 4 gears btw), and the engine stalled. 😀 The sound of the engine was beautiful.
When I was a kid, our family had a car (not something to scoff at in the “utopia” of soviet socialist republics). A lada zhiguli.
Half of the trunk was permanently occupied by tools and assortment of spare parts. No, not spare light bulbs or wipers. Spare axles and the like. And they were needed. Concrete repair ramps were somewhat common roadside decoration, and I remember on multiple times waiting around those, while father was wrenching underneath the car.
That should give you an indication of how good cars those were.
I had a Yugo.
It always started, it went fast enough for me. Interior was spartan and it was pretty noisy. But when it broke down it was cheap and easy to repair. It was great for getting round town but I didnt feel protected enough in it to risk a long high speed journey, and Im pretty sure it would have overheated if Id tried.
It was just a basic car, no frills. A concept that no longer exists. It was actually more comfortable than many cars I have had since and the visibility was excellent
In comparison with newer cars, pretty bad, mainly due to the lack of servo steering wheels, so that’s more of an old car quirk than anything. They were also incredibly loud and bumpy, again, probably more of an old car thing as I’ve ridden in or drove Western cars from the same era and experienced much of the same. The main thing about those old communist cars for me is the inconsistent quality. Either the car fell apart after just a few years and you constantly had to fix something (on the plus side these cars were incredibly easy to fix even at home) or they were nigh indestructible and still work fine after 40 years with very few repairs.
Not as bad as the as you would think. We had a Fiat 126p, 125p, Polonez, Trabant, Fiat (FSM Cinquecento) and a VW Golf II throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s in our extended family throughout the years. For reference this was in Poland. 90% of cars in communist and early post communist Poland were “eastern block” cars during that time period. They were good enough for what the roads were like back then and honestly kinda fun to drive. I learned to drive on a 126p and Cinquecento. The cars were simple enough and really cheap to fix. The interiors had character to them and I still love the roof headliner on a 126p. I remember going on a trip to Sweden in a Cinquecento when our VW Passat broke in 1996. We got looks driving from Malmö to Falkenberg to visit a relative with four people in the car plus luggage, beer, food, and duty free booze from the ferry. Most of your family and friend’s parents had similar cars. It wasn’t till the mid 1990’s that you’d start to see newer imported cars. The sound of a Trabi, 126p, or a Cinquecento still grabs my attention.
Most popular Polish communist era cars were basicaly licensed versions Italian cars.
Basically Polski Fiat 125p was based on Fiat 125. So it was a European car designed in 1960s and it drove like 1960s car. Polonez was an evolution of 125p, with more modern body, but very similar drivetrain. It was produced in late 1970s and 1980s, but it drove like 1960s car.
Polski Fiat 126p, was licensed copy of Fiat 126, late 1960s redesign of 1950s Fiat 500 Nuevo. It drove like one.
We didn’t have a car but a few relatives had Ladas and even a Volga. Volga was the mercedes of russia at the time, meaning that it would sometimes last for months without breaking down. Lada Zhiguli was just shit. Low power, everything rattles, they had a distinct smell (probably the glue used in the interior), and of course they broke down a lot.
Communal garages were common back then because where else would you fix your car? [Places like this](https://i.postimg.cc/tTt2sYjM/DJI-0472.jpg) were dotted all around the city. Some had these crappy steel garages, others had brick.
A buddy has an UAZ pickup truck that still runs. It’s cheap to maintain, parts don’t cost a lot and it works. Good enough when you want to take an old fridge to a dump or something.
People look fondly on these vehicles because it’s ridiculous how bad they are. This creates character, like “You can’t turn too fast because a headlight will fall out”.
Nobody would ever want to use them as their daily drivers, they’re a pain to use.
Hard to compare. Old cars were worse anyways. Volga Gaz-24 is a car from early 60s and it had couple of facelifts and they were built until 1992. Zhiguli was based on Fiat 124 that was made from 1966 to 1974 and Zhiguli different models were built long after that and were considered most modern cars.
So for 60s standards they were probably not so bad. Maintenance and availability of spare parts was a problem. Even getting new tires was difficult. Everybody did maintenance and repairs by themselves and that might be part of problem too 🙂 However it had no fuel injection, no power steering, it had manual gearbox. It could be repaired in random garage. People see value in that.
Personal experience with 2106. Quite high ride and soft suspension. Turning had to be slow. You could drive bit faster than other cars of that era but it did not go over 120kph. Road quality was bigger limitation because you really did not want to have repairs. Braking was bad. I doubt that it would pass any modern test that is done to cars.
You can do a guided tour around Berlin and drive a Trabant. When I did it, it was simultaneously one of the funniest and scariest experiences of my life.
I think this was them.
http://www.trabi-safari.de/index.php?language=en
Tbch, I prefer the Polski Fiat (we call them Kispolski in Hungarian) to the Trabant, because it has marginally better rigidity, not being built out of pressed, chemically treated cardboard. I’m not hating on the Trabant, but I shiver thinking of road accidents concerning old socialist cars.
To be actually on topic for a sec, I’ve driven a Wartburg once (I’m too young to have had those cars as my only option), and it was surreal how normal and outdated it felt at the same time. The engine sounds like (and I remember this from childhood too) a metal box with lead balls bouncing around randomly in it, until you rev it up, at which point it sounds like the crankshaft is going to rip out (at least the sound reminded me of the sound a VW Golf Mk 3 made before suffering catastrophic failure), but it’s the normal state of ooeration.