@@TooManyInterests775 I imagined that you had that in mind ;-) Will try to come up with something....could be a fun project! (Credits to you, naturally!)....just need to search around for Trabant footage that isn't copyrighted 🙄🙄
I once owned a Trabant and one night I accidentally left the garage unlocked and to my horror and dismay, in the morning I discovered someone had left another Trabant in my Garage.
Communists still believe in personal property which is what a car and stuff is. Just not private property which is what a business or large amounts of property would be.
@@realrebelli0n that guy doesnt know anything about the trabant... this video is just a mockery of this car because it was made during communism, im suprised you still havent realised that what im saying is true
Two Trabbi facts missed: 1.) It's made of duraplastic (sort of budget fibreglass). 2.) To buy one new, you had to apply to be on a *TEN YEAR WAITING LIST*
You should know the Ronald Reagan joke about this. When someone was getting their car after putting up the money in advance the dealer said "come back in ten years" and the buyer said "morning or afternoon?". The dealer said, "well in ten years- what difference does it make?" And the buyer said, "Well the plumber is coming in the morning."
@@logan-df5vm The regular waiting was 13-15 Years on average. My Grandma told me, her Mother (so my Grand-grandma) set her on the waiting list as she was 6.
It could go 110 km/h. The maximum speed allpwance was 120 km/h on the highway. Acceleration was better than BMW or Audi had at starting. I was the first when we started from traffic light even I did not want. :-D
I was in Germany shortly after the wall fell, and Trabannts were coming over the border. The west-German autobahns were littered with Trabbys that had expired while trying to keep up with traffic. The used-car market in Germany was going wild.
My parents were artists around that time and bought literally dozens of Trabbys for a few Mark. My Dad removed the roof of one of them to make a improvised cabriolet for a summer vacation.
@@neuro.weaver Messerschmitt bf109 and me 262 worked without very well. Whilst 70s american cars were and partly are pretty shit. Get your soldiers out of germany!
@@neuro.weaver As you can see money isnt everything to succeed. See america. And none cant achieve anything see Russia. So inovation is needed. German engineering
In fact, like many small iconic cars, the Trabant has undergone very little changes in its exterior design. However, the 1963 and 1990 Trabant are not the same.
The same happened in Russia where there is at least a model that is still in production since the soviets and had just minor modifications. I don't know other car manufacturers but Romanians had at least decency to modify the 1300 making the lights different, improving the car a little and modifying the interior at least 4 times in that car's life.
My dad owned 7 of these cars one after the other. He also swapped engines from better ones with low or very low mileage. He had a handbook specially made for the Trabant in which the author pretty much shared all his knowledge on how to upgrade or forge parts for the car if needed. All in all the Trabant wasn't fantastic, but was able to run okay.
Lots of the eastern bloc cars were made to be easily disassembled with a few tools and a little knowledge. They also came with their full service manual, which you use to be able to get in the west too.
@@ArtifactSkyline just a quick update my father and grandfather and my cousins father had a trabant as their first or second car , these cars are unkillable , my uncle said in early nineties when the new BMWs and Mercedes Benz rolled in to ex communist Hungary , he pulled a couple out of a ditch with this 28hp car , they were fun to drive and they were also used as race cars , this car is so special to me btw Trabant was made by IFA and ifa made a motor oke called the simson which I drive every day 100-600km I get 120mpg and altho my top speed is 80kph so 50mph , it's again a very reliable motorbike and I assure you as a 16 year old boy , I make use of all my 6 horsepower and redline the heck out of my bike , been going strong for the last 3 years and I've driven it like 30 thousand km with barely any problems ( besides when the engine siezed up )
@@teutonalex Or graffiti...almost no rape or murder, no homeless people. The real reason is because the country was over-policed, combined with an amazing sense of Prussian self-discipline, and you could always count on someone knowing your business, something not unique to Communism in Germany. I lived there. I know. Better than we have it now with smash and grabs, attacks on old people, lazy, fat parasites collecting money for NOT working. I would gladly take the Wall and the lack of 'western luxuries' for the safety and security we had back then. You don't have to be a socialist to appreciate the value of close personal relationships between neighbors and citizens. We lost that in exchange for iPhones and Teslas.
@@abhishekrao1525 actually its quite the opposite. a trabant could be fixed what we call "panzertape" ( its this greyish heavy tape). i once saw someone fixing his trabant with this tape in front of my school back in 1991 after a crash on a crossing, while the "westgerman car" had to be pulled off to the workshop - the trabant driver fixed the holes in his chassis with the tape and went driving on ^^
I started my three year assignment in West Germany the day the wall came down. I got to witness the shock on East Germany faces when they came over to West Germany. The poor Trabays were in many accidents(mostly fatal). The E.G. people were coming out of a fifty year time warp. Very interesting times.
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp the trabant engine? No idea. Small update about why these cars were hated by almost everyone who had it. Because the car is not made of metal and in their development costs were cut everywhere, there were tremendous difficulties in opening/closing the doors/trunk. For example, I remember my father going fishing with a friend who had a Trabant and the car was left half in the shade and half in the sun. The problem was that the drivers door was in the sun and expanded so hard that it was impossible to open (and the passenger door does not have an outdoor lock). Many times you had to break into your own car by messing with the windows.
this one is 2 stroke, just by the end of production of this cars (mid 90's) they stick a 4 stroke 4 cylinder 1.4 litre engine from VW polo, also the reason you don't see a rust on this car is simple , all panels , except the roof , was made from cardboard
WRONG wrong wrong! Its production run ended in 1991, and its panels were never made of cardboard- - but cheap thermosetting plastic(which cannot be recycled) that was reinforced with recycled cotton or wool fibers. In the last 2 years of its production (East & West German merger) they made numerous upgrades like you mentioned, but too late to save the line.
John Smith you have been also wrong "cotton 68%, plastic powder of all plastic what could not be recycled 7%, Mix of Metalpowder (alluminium, zinc, copper, lead) 3% and 23% naturel softwood resin"
You are not the only one who despaired of the gear shift. As a "West German", I had the chance to drive one in a parking lot. A colleague of mine drove an old Trabant, and I didn't dare drive it on the street. It was a strange, funny experiment, though! There were waiting lists in East Germany, where you had to wait up to 15 years for a Trabant. Used, ancient cars were sold at black market at almost new car prices, because otherwise it was almost impossible to get a car. Welcome to communism! I was born in 1988 and could hardly believe such stories. When the wall fell and Germany was reunited, even East Germans came all the way to us in the very northwest of (formerly) West Germany to buy the used car market empty, because the whole GDR was fed up with the Trabant and wanted "modern, western" cars - You couldn't blame them.
This car can actually do close to 70 mph if it's really well maintained and the ignition is freshly calibrated. And it can do up 75 mpg when you're just cruising around at 45 mph, and it's close to impossible to get less than 25-30 mpg out of it.
In 1992 I slightly rammed a VEB Sachsenring trabant station wagon with a VW Passat variant. Nothing was to be seen on the VW, the fender of the Trabant was broken, the bonnet was rammed into the windshield like a knife. Luckily nothing happened to anyone. I bought the same Trabant in the next village for 100 German marks and gave it to the people.
It must be indeed a basic modell without any or with only a view "Sonderwunsch" (special request) options - it surely is not the "deLuxe" or the "Hycomat". The "S" doesn't stand for "Sport", by the way, it stands for "Sonderwunsch".
@@rexsceleratorum1632 dont even have to go far to find many of the features. Late 90s early 2000s cruisers still had twist fuel valves, no fuel gauge, no tacho, air cooling. Ofc they arent 2 stroke anymore but still lot of similarities
A true Trabant enthusiast would never let his Trabi be so neglected. By the way, this car can be made into a really chic "racing cardboard" with little effort. Here in Central Germany there are still some very well-preserved and well-maintained Trabant 601s that are quite capable of surprising with great looks and impressive driving characteristics.
1. Making fun of the *old* (like really old) Trabant is like making fun of a senile old man in a nursing home or a mentally impaired kid. 2. It wasn't nearly as bad as some ignoramuses think it is. For what it was designed it was actually pretty clever. Bear in mind most *west-Germans* still drove Volkswagen Type 1's at this time and they were designed in the 1930's. 3. They proved to be remarkably resilient and have an impressive longevity. If anything breaks it's really simple to fix or repair using simple tools. As a cheap people's car it certainly did the job.
We had some on the roads here in Hungary about 20 years ago. Once I saw a two seated Trabant with a platform on it and tow hitch in the back. That's what I call optimism :)
That’s crazy talk. You’re lucky that you didn’t get that entire car seized. If the wrong person found out, your trusty luxury Trabant would have been taken away. Imagine that... a Trabant with a rear ashtray. Btw... did the extra weight from the ash tray make a dent in the overall top speed?
"A man driving a Trabant suddenly breaks his windshield wiper. Pulling into a service station, he hails a mechanic. 'Wipers for a Trabi?' he asks. The mechanic thinks about it for a few seconds and replies, 'Yes, sounds like a fair trade." - Found that on Wikipedia
Here's another one, quite fitting here. A German guy takes his Trabant to America. He drives to a gas station, rolls down the window and asks for a refill. The attendant looks at the "car" and says: "Yes sir, shall I also fart up the tires?"
Looks are deceiving. The Yugo would break down 4 times before the Trabant does once, and even when the Trabi fails you can fix it with a tie or a coin or other household item. :) It's a tremendously simple and resilient thing - as long as you don't kick the side, because it's made of a very thin & weak wooden panel. But you can also lift the car with a handful of stronger people present, it's only ~600kg. :)
@@Steve-es3fc in Egypt we had Naser128 car which is Fiat 128 clone and it was very famous me myself own one 1987 model which is far far advanced than this turban it's 4 stroke engine deliver about 40 hp ,capacity 1100cc going from 0 to 100km/h in about 13s and drive at maximum speed of 140Km/h note that legendary Fiat model was originally designed in 60th and yogu model was based on this model but with 1300cc engine comparing to tarbant this is shows how far the communist germany lift behind
The fuel valve translates as follows: Z= Zu= closed A= Auf = open R= Reserve = reserve This was mandatory due to the fact that there was no fuel gauge. You run the car in the A/open position until you recognize it starting to cough and starve. That's the time to put it in R=reserve so you can drive with a remaining liter or so to the next filling station.
I grew up in Romania and when I was 16 one rich kid get a Trabant for his 18 birthday. We race every day and he won only when my bicicle chain felt off. When I turn 18 he let me drive the beast and I notice the fourth pedal. He said it' s the latest model with an airbag pump.
Why don't you join the elite cycling team? Either you are super human, the car was old heap of trash or you made it all up incluiding the airbag. As a joke your comment may e great as an assessment of Trabant no value whatsoever.
my aw11 mr2 I can lock the drivers door from the inside when the door is closed but not when it's open so it forces you to lock the door from the outside.
I drove through East Germany to visit West Berlin in 1964. I remember seeing a lot of these things belching blue smoke. Always wondered what they were.
I was in West Germany when the Soviet bloc started to fall apart. Each time a border opened up, these things poured into West Germany. The Trabants and their drivers were a menace on the Autobahns, because they were so much slower than traffic.
John Milner Not actually cardboard, but not much better. They were made of a composite of plastic and recycled materials like cotton or wool made from old discarded clothes from the Soviet Empire. Later they used wood fibers(Masonite?). The frame was made of Steel, not stainless!!
I travelled a full country ( like every city and interesting place in Hungary ) in a 1978 simson s50n ( same company who made trabant , it was a 20k km trip I did it once a week I got 2.2l/100km or above 100mpg , it was the time of my life I still drive this bike everyday , these were really reliable machines , my dad and grandpa also praised the trabant
@@jimby_vokk3110 They were really beautiful. They weren't tin snails like the 2cv. Also, there are very few intelligent people here who will take your sensible comments seriously.
As _Un om ordinar_ mentioned, they used different materials depending on availability. That's why I decided to use _fiber_ instead of a definite material. After all, this was the same socialist nation that bought burial shoes with paper-thin soles from foreign nations for people to waer as actual daily shoes. The nation that couldn't build houses after they spent all their bricks and mortar imprisioning their people. Planned economies with all their faults and that. I might not have been alive at the time, but I live in the former GDR. It was shit back then.
Went on a Trabant tour of Berlin once: car broke down, tour company didn’t have a mechanic. I’d read about how easy these cars were to take apart and fix so I took the front wing and panels off, stripped the air filter and throttle out and fixed it with no tools. I am not a mechanic. I’m still a legend at work to this day.
Well... This (and few other) cars were known for their super easy maintanance. When engine belt broke, you just used womens stocking tied as a belt to replace. Could make like 50-100 kilometers with that. And that isnt urban legend... This little car (we call it Rintintin because of the sound it makes) is cute, sweet, bad and forever... There is no way it can break to the way you wont be able to fix it.
I remember these cars on the Autobahn when the wall came down. The families had all their earthly belongings in and on the car driving slow as hell, it was sad and funny at the same time as we watched familial generations who had no clue what freedom was attempt to navigate a truly new beginning and a testament to the abject failure that is communism.
Poland used to export Polski Fiats, so called because they were Polish versions of old Fiats, later called FSOs. These weren't as desperate as Trabants, but were still horrible cars with engines like tractors, terrible handling, awful build quality and bare metal everywhere.
@@Glenn1967ful nah not really, most my family (from DDR) says that living under communism was normal and not as bad as you guys say, sadly you got brainwashed by western propaganda
Hi I'm from Hungary. We had to wait for 5 years to buy our first car the Trabant. 600cc 2 stroke air cooled engine ,top speed i did 120 km/h. Front wheel drive manual steering column gear shiftier. It always started even in -20 C cold. It had a Reserve tap inside ,for the fuel tank,never had to measure the fuel level. It was a great car. I was a TV Tech ,i could fit 3 CRT type TV-S ,when i took the front passenger seat out. It was great on Snow ,cause it was light and front wheel drive. It never broke down in the 10 years i was driving, just had to replace CV Joints once .
Kicsit úgy érzem, az 1000-es Suzuki Swiftek a mai Magyarország Trabantjai:D Ugyanúgy minden körülmények között IS elindul, alig kell szerelni, megy rendesen, kicsi, könnyű, OLCSÓ, alkatrész tonnaszám... Apámnak van egy 98-as évjárata. Kb 10 éve kínozza és mustrálja napi 50-150 km-rel, és mostanában kezdett el csak baszakodni kicsit. De nem vészes.
Finally, someone to clear up the stereotype of them being unreliable! I mean, if someone’s ever seen the engine bay of one, they would know what I mean, how would such a simple car be unreliable?
They worked,easy to fix,and got you from point a to point b isn't that what transportation is supposed to do, love nice cars but we have become too obsessed with them, a guy with a horse drawn cart or a poor man with a bicycle would think of this as a limo.
5 лет назад+736
Why have seatbelts in a car that can’t even outrun the neighbours dog?
@@Cr-lw3ky Most likely I will die it depend on situation. :-) But I most likely will die on a pedestrian cross... I have never have accident with my Trabant, but an idiot hit me on the pedestrian cross.
I'm disappointed you didn't mention that the body was not made of steel but of some strange kind of resin, which was quite innovative in the 1960's when the Traband was first released.
Yeah, it was fiber-reinforced plastic made with cellulose, usually from scrap wood or paper. That’s where all the lovely nicknames like “angry guitar pick” or “cardboard boy” come from.
My dad bought me one of these in 1991, I guess as a practical joke. I drove it for two years. On the last journey I broke down on the autobahn near Kaiserslautern and a drunk driver in a big Merc stopped, turned around (on the motorway) and tried to jump start us. When that failed he towed me off the motorway at (literally) 100km/h. I almost shat myself because the car had never driven that fast before, especially not at a distance of 2 metres to the car in front. I survived. We scrapped the Trabbi after that.
@@obamalore some made 120km/h some just 90.Depended very much on the engine quality and how careful you treated it and how easy you made the first kilometers and if you put enough oil in the benzin,better a bit more.This video is just shit,this idiot making communist cars worthless,just saw a video about a Volga and wrote an angry comment.
@@sven471111 I thought only the ones with the new 4-step engine (or however it is in English) could go faster, the old ones with the 2-step engine could not climb a steeper hill (and that is a fact, you had to have some speed before reaching the hill or you were stuck halfway)
We still have those driving around in Bulgaria. As well as the good old Wartburg as well. There's even a joke about it: - What is the longest car in the world? - A Trabant... if you count the smoke behind it.
I just saw one last week in Brno, but then I thought "When was the last time I saw one of these?" Thinking of it you're probably more likely to see a Porsche or even a Ferrari on our streets. Guess we're getting somewhere. :D
@@Big-man-aman its everything but cool,its slow,it uses way too much fuel for how fast it goes,it cannot heat up in the winter and is a generally rubbish car
@@STEAMRADIO Uhmm if you ever owned a2=stroke motor bike you will know that the oil mixed into the fuel burns white and makes smoke...... ie: they ALWAYS smoke.
@@carachan3073 I actually am East German and I know the Trabant was never regarded as a luxury car. A luxury car would have been something like this: ruclips.net/video/0meH8-75eBs/видео.html or that: ruclips.net/video/gyxha5YX_Po/видео.html.
@@jefref4826 😀 That's why it was luxury - noone could afford it, only party bigwigs had those. Friend of mine got himself one after 1990. Amazing car! Pozdrav z Berlína
@@arnepianocanada I am amazed I lived in Czechoslovakia and I never knew that Czechoslovakia , East Germany and I guess the rest of the east block were part of USSR 😂😂😂😂
@@charlesloko7698 you‘re really one salty chap, aren‘t ya I know you‘re mostly right, but most of the people here don‘t care to educate themselves about Soviet History and most of them won‘t so don‘t bother to waste your time on them
Fun fact: The panelgaps on an new Trabant were always perfect because they were routed AFTER the doors were applied. Watch ruclips.net/video/mv3wnQXRHzc/видео.html at 22:15. I assume the doors on Dougs Trabant were repaired with panels or a whole doors from another Trabbi which would result in crappy gaps, because the were routed on an different car.
@@latinumbavariae Thanks for the link, video is AWESOME, I wonder how many workers died because breathing plastics particles and painting without mask, and how many fingers took the saw used to cut the plastic pieces :/
@@latinumbavariae Cars with faulty panel cavities were rare when they left the factory. I went to a Mercedes dealer today and the Coupe had some very bad faults, the panels were uneven, and then I said someone is unfairly disparaging cars like the Trabant.
Commo joke Seller: your car will be ready for pick up 8 years from now Buyer: morning or afternoon? Seller: why? Its 8 years away Buyer: because I've got the plumber coming in the afternoon.
Supply and demand. There's no point importing them except as historical curiosities, even during the Cold War, so there just aren't any around in the U.S.
I rented one on my last trip to East Berlin. The reverse gear was so confusing that my two buddies and I would just half pick up and half shove it into the parallel parking spots. It was so terrible that we took it back after a couple of hours and walked/rode the bus everywhere else we went. Good times...
and yet it's incredibly cute. The Trabant is like the old grandma of cars - she smokes too much, doesn't have AC at her place, doesn't go very fast, goes to see the doctor often, and has very fragile bones, but you love her anyway :)
@@ShadowViewsOnly It was 3 years in Hungary, that's what people who lived back then say at least. Of course if you displeased the party, you waited untill '89 and didn't get your money back.
@@theblancmange1265 I'm hungarian. My parents overlived WW2.. They know what actually happened. You got your Trabant within AT THE VERY MOST 2 years, but the VAST majority of the requests were complete within half a year. So, whoever told you 14 years, is a liar.
@@serra102 In italy, where no roads are straight and most cities have roads meant for motorcycles (when the 500 came out), that thing would've been a rocket.
@@serra102 the only good 500 through the vintage ones the modern ones are absolute unreliable dogshit along with literally every single company involved with Fiat AHEM ( Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Cadillac )
Indeed, someone tried to stole mine once, and couldn't figure out how to connect the wires of the ignition... and also he still had the steering wheel lock to figure out. And he tried all the buttons and switches as well in the process...
As a 2-stroke motorcycle rider (Suzuki RH599) and pilot, i immediately loved this car when it saw it in Berlin. NO COASTING ? No problem! The “no coasting, except in neutral” is exactly like a motorcycle (where you hold the clutch and just downshift) if you want to coast. NO GAS GAUGE? Correct. Same as an RG500 and other early bikes ! DOOR LOCKS: The right door that only locks from inside and outside lock only on the left side? Sounds crazy until you’ve flown Cessna airplanes like C172/182. Fun to see & probably drive!
Whenever a german sees one of those in the streets, you either hit the recirculation button and close all windows or you enjoy the nostalgic smell of it.
When I lived in Germany in 1995, I was in the East, and Trabis were still everywhere. As they were integrating into western society, kids at school told ossi wessi witze (east west jokes). In one of them, there's an Ossi (east german) farmer, a Wessi (west german) farmer, and an American farmer, all boasting about how big their farms are. The Ossi says, "my farm is so big, that it takes me over an hour to walk all the way around it." The Wessi replies, "That's nothing--my farm is so big it takes all day to walk around!" The American replies, "Yeah, well it takes me a whole day just to to DRIVE around my farm in the USA." The Ossi replies, "yeah, I have a car like that, too!"
0:16 "Worst car ever made..." I ´am from east germany, when you call this car "worst", please remember how poor east germany was after WW2 and under which conditions it was build. You cannot compare this with 1950s / 1960s american chrome cadillacs. ;-) And it was the DDR- engineers forbidden to develop this car (stately controlled economy). In the DDR (east germany) we had to wait up to 15 years (!!!) for such a car. Greetings from germany
Albrecht8000 but compared to every other car its pretty bad... But the fact that they were able to make a car out of recycling... Shows they were smart...
The engineers weren't the problem, the politicians were. They actually developed a new model, with a modern engine, but when the government got wind of it, they ordered to stop all development and seized all blueprints.
I was in Germany when the wall fell. On the Autobahn you'd see 6 people in a Trabant doing 40mph while everyone else was doing 100mph. It was hysterical seeing the 2 stroke blue cloud trailing this caterpillar.
I live near by where they were produced. You were often told to wait up to 10 - 15 years or so to get one. My 86 year old neighbour even drives one till today, and it runs perfectly fine I guess!
It'll probably still run in 50 years, it's easy to repair and there's not that much to break in the first place, no complex electronics and not that much metal(can't remember if they mentioned it in the video but most of the outer shell was plastic)
"OK sir, your car will be ready in 10 years" "Morning or afternoon?" "...why does that matter?" "the plumber's supposed to finally come by that morning."
ist schon schrecklich dass im kommunismus qualität und quantität der wirtschaft so hart leiden. und das auch noch während umweltschutz stark vernachlässigt wird.
Wow, that sucks, here in Hungary the waiting time for a Trabant was usually 6-8 years. My grandfather was a high-level comrade, so he managed to get one within about 2 years.
the cars where not so modern but there was no poverty, no homeless people, everyone got free health care, free high education on a very good level and so on
I drove one of this in Romania. We say this is the longest limo in the world. 1% car and the rest is the smoke.
LOL
It took me a minute to get that. Haha! Cheers!
This car made me laugh so hard
Hahahaha 🤣🤣
Bunicul meu avea una galbena.
Drove one in Berlin last year. Great fun. Had a race against a bicycle at a green light, nearly lost.
If that was the case, you didn't do it right! 😜
phone4R that's a slow cyclist haha
If the exhaust didn't choke the cyclist, you WILL lose. :D
Lamborghini aventador does not even have rear seats.
Horny Pervert least they managed a glove compartment.
"Yeah, I drive a German import."
Hahahahahahah....cracked me up!
A Mercedes ? No, the one from that country that didnt even exists anymore
@@TooManyInterests775 Hahahahaha....would be cool to have the corresponding Ad...with a Trabant!
@@TooManyInterests775 I imagined that you had that in mind ;-) Will try to come up with something....could be a fun project! (Credits to you, naturally!)....just need to search around for Trabant footage that isn't copyrighted 🙄🙄
It's funny that a Trabant cost more than an early 80s diesel Jetta that still runs well.
I once owned a Trabant and one night I accidentally left the garage unlocked and to my horror and dismay, in the morning I discovered someone had left another Trabant in my Garage.
Free spare parts!
@@witchcraftanditsconsequenc4280yay
@@kev3d your house’s value halved that night.
Were you able to tell the two apart? 😂😂
No need for lock because
Not your stuff
Our stuff
In america you own stuff
In soviet russia stuff owns you
Hahahahahaha
Communists still believe in personal property which is what a car and stuff is. Just not private property which is what a business or large amounts of property would be.
LOL
@@ercushkakulmetov7458 heck off, commie.
What is a Trabant on top of a hill?
A miracle.
What are 50 Trabants on top of a hill?
A Trabant factory.
ruclips.net/video/VSZ9MJdcs_I/видео.html do you know them? :D
So, I guess if you want to get on top of a hill, you hired some big guy named Boris to push you up the hill?
Producing ahead of, in hopes of hyping demand?
@@MadCapMag And they never do it again
@@chesucat If there is no road, yeah, a big guy named Boris should be enough to pick it up and get it to the top.
How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gas.
hyzercreek Or attach the fuel dipstick to the cap
hyzercreek or put 3 grand in the trunk
you mean $30
hyzercreek so funny, you dipshit!
how to triple its worth put a banana on the backseat.
A common Trabant joke.
- How do you double the value of a Trabant?
- You fill it up with gas.
trabant was actually a well made car
So you drive one around, and then its value gets halved?
@@AkhmatProductions clearly not if you watched the video
@@realrebelli0n that guy doesnt know anything about the trabant... this video is just a mockery of this car because it was made during communism, im suprised you still havent realised that what im saying is true
Another Trabant joke:
-What means a Trabant on top of the hill?
-A miracle. 🤣🤣
Two Trabbi facts missed:
1.) It's made of duraplastic (sort of budget fibreglass).
2.) To buy one new, you had to apply to be on a *TEN YEAR WAITING LIST*
Beefheart Vandercrease and some people waited upwards of 20 years
You should know the Ronald Reagan joke about this. When someone was getting their car after putting up the money in advance the dealer said "come back in ten years" and the buyer said "morning or afternoon?". The dealer said, "well in ten years- what difference does it make?" And the buyer said, "Well the plumber is coming in the morning."
Beefheart Vandercrease yes very important facts! and they used to warp in the hot weather
@@logan-df5vm The regular waiting was 13-15 Years on average. My Grandma told me, her Mother (so my Grand-grandma) set her on the waiting list as she was 6.
And it was worth the wait!
Q. How do you make a Trabant go faster?
A. Call a tow truck.
I would have answered with "push it off a cliff"
💀💀💀💀
💀💀💀💀
It could go 110 km/h.
The maximum speed allpwance was 120 km/h on the highway.
Acceleration was better than BMW or Audi had at starting. I was the first when we started from traffic light even I did not want. :-D
Q. How do you double the value of a Trabant?
A. Fill it up
The car we all paint as kids does really exist.
And it's called the Volvo 740
😂
Tri Poloski
be thankful to the communists they brought you this
Mercedes W123
I was in Germany shortly after the wall fell, and Trabannts were coming over the border. The west-German autobahns were littered with Trabbys that had expired while trying to keep up with traffic. The used-car market in Germany was going wild.
LOL!!!
My parents were artists around that time and bought literally dozens of Trabbys for a few Mark.
My Dad removed the roof of one of them to make a improvised cabriolet for a summer vacation.
I was stationed in Germany at the time. I remember.
Driving something that slow on the autobahn must have taken extreme bravery. Stay to the right and pray.
Doug’s future teenage kid: “Dad I want a German car”
Doug: “THIS...”
This what "German engineering" produces without the American Marshal Plan.
Doug: thiiiis is my money saver
hes better off with a much realible toyota and honda
@@neuro.weaver Messerschmitt bf109 and me 262 worked without very well. Whilst 70s american cars were and partly are pretty shit. Get your soldiers out of germany!
@@neuro.weaver As you can see money isnt everything to succeed. See america. And none cant achieve anything see Russia. So inovation is needed. German engineering
“I wouldn’t buy one, but I’m glad he did.”
The ideal friendship.
Touché
Indeed.
I'll buy you one johne boi
;)
Usually said about a boat
Something something boats
"The exterior design changed very little..."
Well, as we all know - you can't improve upon perfection!
Exactly and when you even don't have enough steel to build cars
you don't waste it for new press forming tools every 5 years 🤣
In fact, like many small iconic cars, the Trabant has undergone very little changes in its exterior design. However, the 1963 and 1990 Trabant are not the same.
🤣🤣🤣 Thanks for the laugh!!
correct :-)
The same happened in Russia where there is at least a model that is still in production since the soviets and had just minor modifications.
I don't know other car manufacturers but Romanians had at least decency to modify the 1300 making the lights different, improving the car a little and modifying the interior at least 4 times in that car's life.
My dad owned 7 of these cars one after the other. He also swapped engines from better ones with low or very low mileage. He had a handbook specially made for the Trabant in which the author pretty much shared all his knowledge on how to upgrade or forge parts for the car if needed. All in all the Trabant wasn't fantastic, but was able to run okay.
Lots of the eastern bloc cars were made to be easily disassembled with a few tools and a little knowledge. They also came with their full service manual, which you use to be able to get in the west too.
You don’t need to lock the doors on a trabant because the car itself is the anti-theft device
Even if they stole the car, they wouldn't get anywhere.
@@ArtifactSkyline just a quick update my father and grandfather and my cousins father had a trabant as their first or second car , these cars are unkillable , my uncle said in early nineties when the new BMWs and Mercedes Benz rolled in to ex communist Hungary , he pulled a couple out of a ditch with this 28hp car , they were fun to drive and they were also used as race cars , this car is so special to me btw
Trabant was made by IFA and ifa made a motor oke called the simson which I drive every day 100-600km I get 120mpg and altho my top speed is 80kph so 50mph , it's again a very reliable motorbike and I assure you as a 16 year old boy , I make use of all my 6 horsepower and redline the heck out of my bike , been going strong for the last 3 years and I've driven it like 30 thousand km with barely any problems ( besides when the engine siezed up )
Also there was zero car theft in east Germany
Exactly 😁😁😁
@@teutonalex Or graffiti...almost no rape or murder, no homeless people. The real reason is because the country was over-policed, combined with an amazing sense of Prussian self-discipline, and you could always count on someone knowing your business, something not unique to Communism in Germany. I lived there. I know. Better than we have it now with smash and grabs, attacks on old people, lazy, fat parasites collecting money for NOT working. I would gladly take the Wall and the lack of 'western luxuries' for the safety and security we had back then. You don't have to be a socialist to appreciate the value of close personal relationships between neighbors and citizens. We lost that in exchange for iPhones and Teslas.
Z = Zu (Close)
A = Auf (Open)
R = Reserve
Indeed, Doug just went for the R as in reserve, everything is just a learning curve
Rückwärts
Or am I getting whoooshd?
Reverse?
William Jordan reserve gasoline
Reserve is the gear you have in reserve (reverse) when it won’t go forward
* slaps roof of trabant
"this baby can go from 0 to 60 going downhill"
xD
*slaps roof of Trabant
*Trabant falls apart.
😂😂
Btw, a perfect maintained Trabant runs up to 125 kmh (around 80 mph)
@@abhishekrao1525 actually its quite the opposite. a trabant could be fixed what we call "panzertape" ( its this greyish heavy tape). i once saw someone fixing his trabant with this tape in front of my school back in 1991 after a crash on a crossing, while the "westgerman car" had to be pulled off to the workshop - the trabant driver fixed the holes in his chassis with the tape and went driving on ^^
I started my three year assignment in West Germany the day the wall came down. I got to witness the shock on East Germany faces when they came over to West Germany. The poor Trabays were in many accidents(mostly fatal). The E.G. people were coming out of a fifty year time warp. Very interesting times.
mostly fatal 😢
“What is zero to 60?”
“It doesn’t go to 60”
Edit: damn 3.4k likes? Also, it’s been a year already?????
“What’s the zero to 55?”
“Yes”
pugg productions lol
Not even in free fall.
It will go 60 on a hill
My father's friend did 80 with it after a bit of tuning.
Fun fact: its exterior does not rust because it is made of plastic.
Sorry, but plastic was out, it was made of cardboard
@@dirkprivat5106 heated plastic between papers.
old jeans actually
@@antoniosalvatore7986 the only true answer it's like carbon fiber without any benefit
@@adv5755 Comie Fiber*
I had a friend who replaced the engine in this car with a golf 3 gti engine. Man, at 150km/h you feel like death is just around the corner, and it is.
That's the most funny/scary sentence I've read all week.
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp the trabant engine? No idea. Small update about why these cars were hated by almost everyone who had it. Because the car is not made of metal and in their development costs were cut everywhere, there were tremendous difficulties in opening/closing the doors/trunk. For example, I remember my father going fishing with a friend who had a Trabant and the car was left half in the shade and half in the sun. The problem was that the drivers door was in the sun and expanded so hard that it was impossible to open (and the passenger door does not have an outdoor lock). Many times you had to break into your own car by messing with the windows.
this one is 2 stroke, just by the end of production of this cars (mid 90's) they stick a 4 stroke 4 cylinder 1.4 litre engine from VW polo, also the reason you don't see a rust on this car is simple , all panels , except the roof , was made from cardboard
WRONG wrong wrong! Its production run ended in 1991, and its panels were never made of cardboard- - but cheap thermosetting plastic(which cannot be recycled) that was reinforced with recycled cotton or wool fibers.
In the last 2 years of its production (East & West German merger) they made numerous upgrades like you mentioned, but too late to save the line.
John Smith you have been also wrong
"cotton 68%, plastic powder of all plastic what could not be recycled 7%, Mix of Metalpowder (alluminium, zinc, copper, lead) 3% and 23% naturel softwood resin"
You are not the only one who despaired of the gear shift. As a "West German", I had the chance to drive one in a parking lot. A colleague of mine drove an old Trabant, and I didn't dare drive it on the street. It was a strange, funny experiment, though!
There were waiting lists in East Germany, where you had to wait up to 15 years for a Trabant. Used, ancient cars were sold at black market at almost new car prices, because otherwise it was almost impossible to get a car. Welcome to communism! I was born in 1988 and could hardly believe such stories. When the wall fell and Germany was reunited, even East Germans came all the way to us in the very northwest of (formerly) West Germany to buy the used car market empty, because the whole GDR was fed up with the Trabant and wanted "modern, western" cars - You couldn't blame them.
Still waiting for the AMG version.
with an astounding second hand civic engine with 60 hp and cardboard trims to reduce weight
@@mrducky179 it basically comes with cardboard trims from factory...
0-60 in 0.003 seconds
Although they both suck at design, I'm afraid Mercedes and Trabant aren't really the same company...
@@miljororforsprakpartiet290 its a joke -_-
My Czech parents had to wait 14 YEARS to get one of these back in the day :D
Wow
In Bulgaria you could get a Trabant with no waiting but nobody wanted it. 10 year waiting list for a Lada.
Yes, and many families became much larger while waiting the typical 10+ years and the car was too small to haul the family.
Why didn't they order a Skoda ? Skoda was way better than this cardboard thing.
Did they ever put you in the back seat? Jk I would take off my seatbelt all the time as a kid
"What's the 0-60 time?"
"No."
"Oh, ok."
This car can actually do close to 70 mph if it's really well maintained and the ignition is freshly calibrated. And it can do up 75 mpg when you're just cruising around at 45 mph, and it's close to impossible to get less than 25-30 mpg out of it.
Or, wait 2 Revolutions and a military coup... 😜
@@james64ibm the only way to get less is to try to do burnouts, and fail miserably
I laughed out loud at this one
Its does 100kmh, i think it takes about 28 seconds
In 1992 I slightly rammed a VEB Sachsenring trabant station wagon with a VW Passat variant. Nothing was to be seen on the VW, the fender of the Trabant was broken, the bonnet was rammed into the windshield like a knife. Luckily nothing happened to anyone. I bought the same Trabant in the next village for 100 German marks and gave it to the people.
“This car can get up to 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene”
“What country is this from”
“It no longer exists”
PUT IT IN H!
+Michael Essa
Hahahaha! A HECTARE??? A hectare is 100 acres and a measurement of square footage. I get where you were going though.
@Milquetoast Eugenicist Or I don't watch it???
@Milquetoast Eugenicist latveria man what
@@olrikparlez3152 He meant tot say, "It can FUMIGATE 300 Hectares on a gallon!"
*This must be the basic model. The expensive model had the fuel dipstick built into the fuel cap* 👍
Also, you didn't mention the most important thing; the whole body is plastic
Nope, cardboard.
That is a must have feature mate!
It must be indeed a basic modell without any or with only a view "Sonderwunsch" (special request) options - it surely is not the "deLuxe" or the "Hycomat". The "S" doesn't stand for "Sport", by the way, it stands for "Sonderwunsch".
Flame Beats LMAO
"What gear am I in right now?"
"Let me feel it, I can't tell by looking"
This killed me.
This is how (many?) motorbike gears are in my experience. The aircooled 2 stroke engine and twist fuel valve are also normal on older motorbikes
@@rexsceleratorum1632 dont even have to go far to find many of the features. Late 90s early 2000s cruisers still had twist fuel valves, no fuel gauge, no tacho, air cooling. Ofc they arent 2 stroke anymore but still lot of similarities
I drove one today and yes, each gear has its own unique feel 😂
It is a sound gear device, simple no!
Best line in the whole video 😂
A true Trabant enthusiast would never let his Trabi be so neglected. By the way, this car can be made into a really chic "racing cardboard" with little effort. Here in Central Germany there are still some very well-preserved and well-maintained Trabant 601s that are quite capable of surprising with great looks and impressive driving characteristics.
Remember - if the Trabant does not have it as "basic" or on the list of "options" you do not need to have it.
You mean east Germany?
@@zwoelfventilerCentral Germany, Mitteldeutschland.
1. Making fun of the *old* (like really old) Trabant is like making fun of a senile old man in a nursing home or a mentally impaired kid.
2. It wasn't nearly as bad as some ignoramuses think it is. For what it was designed it was actually pretty clever. Bear in mind most *west-Germans* still drove Volkswagen Type 1's at this time and they were designed in the 1930's.
3. They proved to be remarkably resilient and have an impressive longevity. If anything breaks it's really simple to fix or repair using simple tools. As a cheap people's car it certainly did the job.
ANd you couldn't lock your self out. Actually quite clever!
except for when the mice eat it in the winter. then you're fucked, nešika.
Which all rotted away...
Well said, McLarenMercedes...I agree!
We had some on the roads here in Hungary about 20 years ago. Once I saw a two seated Trabant with a platform on it and tow hitch in the back. That's what I call optimism :)
Here in Iceland we had the deluxe edition which had a rear ashtray.
😂
"Luxury"
That’s crazy talk. You’re lucky that you didn’t get that entire car seized. If the wrong person found out, your trusty luxury Trabant would have been taken away. Imagine that... a Trabant with a rear ashtray. Btw... did the extra weight from the ash tray make a dent in the overall top speed?
Do you see them driving much?
@@eligeidel9357 there used to be a lot of them but now only a few during the summer.
"A man driving a Trabant suddenly breaks his windshield wiper. Pulling into a service station, he hails a mechanic. 'Wipers for a Trabi?' he asks. The mechanic thinks about it for a few seconds and replies, 'Yes, sounds like a fair trade." - Found that on Wikipedia
Hahhahahaha
😂😂😂😂
A gas cap for my Yugo?
Here's another one, quite fitting here. A German guy takes his Trabant to America. He drives to a gas station, rolls down the window and asks for a refill. The attendant looks at the "car" and says: "Yes sir, shall I also fart up the tires?"
I've heard a similar joke about Trabants. How do you double the value of a Trabant? You fill the gas tank.
Doug: "What's the 0-60"
Robert: "Uh, we'll, it doesn't exist"
That killed me! 🤣
very old comunistic joke: What is the longest car in the world? Trabant - 15 meters with the smoke!
*"3 метра лима, 5 метери дима"* 😂
Seat belts in Trabant ??
What a waste of money ... you hit anything in 20 miles/h and that plastic car is in 1000 pieces .
But comrade, a zil limo with smoke is 20m at least
How can you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it up.
@@King_Fred_II What's the best theft deterrent for a Trabant? Don't give it more fuel than you need in a short period.
This makes the Yugo look like a luxury vehicle
Looks are deceiving. The Yugo would break down 4 times before the Trabant does once, and even when the Trabi fails you can fix it with a tie or a coin or other household item. :) It's a tremendously simple and resilient thing - as long as you don't kick the side, because it's made of a very thin & weak wooden panel.
But you can also lift the car with a handful of stronger people present, it's only ~600kg. :)
@@Steve-es3fc in Egypt we had Naser128 car which is Fiat 128 clone
and it was very famous
me myself own one 1987 model which is far far advanced than this turban
it's 4 stroke engine deliver about 40 hp ,capacity 1100cc
going from 0 to 100km/h in about 13s
and drive at maximum speed of 140Km/h
note that legendary Fiat model was originally designed in 60th
and yogu model was based on this model but with 1300cc engine
comparing to tarbant
this is shows how far the communist germany lift behind
It made the Polski Fiat 126p look great and reliable.
It was a lot better car than shit boxes like Pinto,Gremlin,Chevette or Vega for that matter.You did not see a lot in your life my friend !
@@Steve-es3fc You can fix the Yugo the same way.
The fuel valve translates as follows:
Z= Zu= closed
A= Auf = open
R= Reserve = reserve
This was mandatory due to the fact that there was no fuel gauge. You run the car in the A/open position until you recognize it starting to cough and starve. That's the time to put it in R=reserve so you can drive with a remaining liter or so to the next filling station.
Well that's how many carburetted motorcycles still operate: most of them have a fuel petcock with a reserve position.
Put it in H!!!
12k communists disliked his video
this car is a soviet piece of trash
I grew up in Romania and when I was 16 one rich kid get a Trabant for his 18 birthday. We race every day and he won only when my bicicle chain felt off.
When I turn 18 he let me drive the beast and I notice the fourth pedal. He said it' s the latest model with an airbag pump.
LOL so you're telling me its faster to bike than to drive a trabant
The trabant makes the Dacia 1300 look like a luxury car :)))
Why don't you join the elite cycling team? Either you are super human, the car was old heap of trash or you made it all up incluiding the airbag. As a joke your comment may e great as an assessment of Trabant no value whatsoever.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
@Sebastian Guevara One way that I know of is that if you have family in the communist party, you were one step above the rest of the population...
The lock system is low key genius, impossible to lock your keys in the car.
No.. no..
This car has manual transmission, so US idiots can't stole it.
RH ÜÜ generalization of a country’s population... not cool
@@luc-perrin wahh
my aw11 mr2 I can lock the drivers door from the inside when the door is closed but not when it's open so it forces you to lock the door from the outside.
"I wouldn't get one" Poor Doug thinks he has a choice when the next DougCar election comes along...
Colby Murphy Trabant for president
P1eased0nteatme probably better than trump or hillary
He should definitely drive one for a year.
honestly he should get an Wartburg instead. 2 stroke, column shifter, steel body instead of pressed cotton. the vehicle for the better workers
He definately needs a Wartburg... maybe a Tourist wagon version... or the pickup one, that would be sweet. Braking with your engine FTW
I drove through East Germany to visit West Berlin in 1964. I remember seeing a lot of these things belching blue smoke. Always wondered what they were.
I was in West Germany when the Soviet bloc started to fall apart. Each time a border opened up, these things poured into West Germany. The Trabants and their drivers were a menace on the Autobahns, because they were so much slower than traffic.
Eks calybur And less than safe to drive! Those little cars had their gasoline tanks in the front of the car, right above the engine.
quite dangerous cars in new territory, yes. the trabant was made of cardboard and plastic, many died in the first month on western roads.
John Milner
Not actually cardboard, but not much better. They were made of a composite of plastic and recycled materials like cotton or wool made from old discarded clothes from the Soviet Empire. Later they used wood fibers(Masonite?).
The frame was made of Steel, not stainless!!
South Efrikan probably didn't really effect the pedestrians due to the shit acceleration xD
All the pedestrian had to do is walk faster than a stroll, and they could avoid it.
Fun fact, some dudes tried to go round the world trip with Trabants, I think they actually succeeded.. partly because you can fix it with a hammer
I travelled a full country ( like every city and interesting place in Hungary ) in a 1978 simson s50n ( same company who made trabant , it was a 20k km trip I did it once a week I got 2.2l/100km or above 100mpg , it was the time of my life I still drive this bike everyday , these were really reliable machines , my dad and grandpa also praised the trabant
@@jimby_vokk3110 They were really beautiful. They weren't tin snails like the 2cv. Also, there are very few intelligent people here who will take your sensible comments seriously.
Dont forget a sickle
if it has a 2 stroke, you can fix it with wire and duct tape :))
Should be up there in Jeremy Clarkson's favourites, then!
Should have mentioned that most of these were actually made from fiber-reinforced polymers.
Cardboard?
similar yes... People who owned these had reported that if the car was left near a farm Cows would eat the car body's.
+Un om ordinar lol
As _Un om ordinar_ mentioned, they used different materials depending on availability. That's why I decided to use _fiber_ instead of a definite material.
After all, this was the same socialist nation that bought burial shoes with paper-thin soles from foreign nations for people to waer as actual daily shoes. The nation that couldn't build houses after they spent all their bricks and mortar imprisioning their people. Planned economies with all their faults and that.
I might not have been alive at the time, but I live in the former GDR. It was shit back then.
Dick SteeleTheDick
In Germany enthusiasts like to say:
"Only men out of steel drive cars out of cardboard".
Went on a Trabant tour of Berlin once: car broke down, tour company didn’t have a mechanic. I’d read about how easy these cars were to take apart and fix so I took the front wing and panels off, stripped the air filter and throttle out and fixed it with no tools. I am not a mechanic. I’m still a legend at work to this day.
Well... This (and few other) cars were known for their super easy maintanance. When engine belt broke, you just used womens stocking tied as a belt to replace. Could make like 50-100 kilometers with that. And that isnt urban legend... This little car (we call it Rintintin because of the sound it makes) is cute, sweet, bad and forever... There is no way it can break to the way you wont be able to fix it.
Using pantyhose as a temporary fix for a fan belt wasn't exactly unheard of in the West.
"Isn't this car harmful to the environment?"
Tribant: The what?
DMichael Kimbley 😂😂😂😂
No more so than MILLIONS of lawnmowers.
@Number Nine i love the Trabant so Yes
The environment didn't exist back then.
CO2 is what makes the grass grow.
You only needed two people to build a Trabant - one to fold and one to glue!
Bruce Lee its true ..u can see visioracer chnnel
the advantage, cheap construction and cheap labor! more money for food... oh wait 😂
and it still took them 14 years to complete your order! hahaha
and one who cuts
Only one is able to build a Trabbi. His name is SATAN.
I remember these cars on the Autobahn when the wall came down. The families had all their earthly belongings in and on the car driving slow as hell, it was sad and funny at the same time as we watched familial generations who had no clue what freedom was attempt to navigate a truly new beginning and a testament to the abject failure that is communism.
Poland used to export Polski Fiats, so called because they were Polish versions of old Fiats, later called FSOs. These weren't as desperate as Trabants, but were still horrible cars with engines like tractors, terrible handling, awful build quality and bare metal everywhere.
@@Glenn1967ful nah not really, most my family (from DDR) says that living under communism was normal and not as bad as you guys say, sadly you got brainwashed by western propaganda
Hi I'm from Hungary.
We had to wait for 5 years to buy our first car the Trabant.
600cc 2 stroke air cooled engine ,top speed i did 120 km/h.
Front wheel drive manual steering column gear shiftier.
It always started even in -20 C cold.
It had a Reserve tap inside ,for the fuel tank,never had to measure the fuel level.
It was a great car.
I was a TV Tech ,i could fit 3 CRT type TV-S ,when i took the front passenger seat out.
It was great on Snow ,cause it was light and front wheel drive.
It never broke down in the 10 years i was driving, just had to replace CV Joints once .
Kicsit úgy érzem, az 1000-es Suzuki Swiftek a mai Magyarország Trabantjai:D Ugyanúgy minden körülmények között IS elindul, alig kell szerelni, megy rendesen, kicsi, könnyű, OLCSÓ, alkatrész tonnaszám... Apámnak van egy 98-as évjárata. Kb 10 éve kínozza és mustrálja napi 50-150 km-rel, és mostanában kezdett el csak baszakodni kicsit. De nem vészes.
gec kovetkezo az ezres suzuki lesz xddd
ANDY KERI na vegre valami reasonable response itt. Nagyon jo kis auto volt ez, de ezt nyugaton nem fogjak soha megerteni, de nem is baj:)
Finally, someone to clear up the stereotype of them being unreliable! I mean, if someone’s ever seen the engine bay of one, they would know what I mean, how would such a simple car be unreliable?
They worked,easy to fix,and got you from point a to point b isn't that what transportation is supposed to do, love nice cars but we have become too obsessed with them, a guy with a horse drawn cart or a poor man with a bicycle would think of this as a limo.
Why have seatbelts in a car that can’t even outrun the neighbours dog?
“Because safety is number one priority”
-CrazyRussianHacker
Because otherwise you wont survive the collision with the neighbours dog. But the dog will at least.
Because it could go with 110km/h on the highway.
What if you get hit by a speeding car
@@Cr-lw3ky Most likely I will die it depend on situation. :-) But I most likely will die on a pedestrian cross... I have never have accident with my Trabant, but an idiot hit me on the pedestrian cross.
Do you really need seatbelts when everyone else was driving a Trabant?
Not everyone was driving Trabants. There were Wartburgs, Skodas, Ladas, Polski Fiats and a few others.
The seatbelts were to keep you from leaving the car
@@avada0 dont forget the worst of all.... Dacias
@Patrik Ratter
Was it? Trabants have an equally low regard. (Though I saw lots more of them around in the nineties)
@@avada0 At least the trabant's steering wheel didn't lock up on turning.
I'm disappointed you didn't mention that the body was not made of steel but of some strange kind of resin, which was quite innovative in the 1960's when the Traband was first released.
Yeah, it was fiber-reinforced plastic made with cellulose, usually from scrap wood or paper. That’s where all the lovely nicknames like “angry guitar pick” or “cardboard boy” come from.
My dad bought me one of these in 1991, I guess as a practical joke. I drove it for two years.
On the last journey I broke down on the autobahn near Kaiserslautern and a drunk driver in a big Merc stopped, turned around (on the motorway) and tried to jump start us. When that failed he towed me off the motorway at (literally) 100km/h. I almost shat myself because the car had never driven that fast before, especially not at a distance of 2 metres to the car in front. I survived. We scrapped the Trabbi after that.
🤣🤣🤣
That's a great story.
What’s the maximum speed?
@@obamalore some made 120km/h some just 90.Depended very much on the engine quality and how careful you treated it and how easy you made the first kilometers and if you put enough oil in the benzin,better a bit more.This video is just shit,this idiot making communist cars worthless,just saw a video about a Volga and wrote an angry comment.
@@sven471111 I thought only the ones with the new 4-step engine (or however it is in English) could go faster, the old ones with the 2-step engine could not climb a steeper hill (and that is a fact, you had to have some speed before reaching the hill or you were stuck halfway)
We still have those driving around in Bulgaria. As well as the good old Wartburg as well.
There's even a joke about it:
- What is the longest car in the world?
- A Trabant... if you count the smoke behind it.
i love to hear that :D have you ever seen a wartburg sport (313)? saw a restored one some weeks ago in Leipzig :D
in hungary there are lots of them we had a trabant 601 L . i think it isn't a shitty car.
Lol they were legendary in the Czech Republic too... still got some drivin' around here
I just saw one last week in Brno, but then I thought "When was the last time I saw one of these?" Thinking of it you're probably more likely to see a Porsche or even a Ferrari on our streets. Guess we're getting somewhere. :D
Lol ani tak ne, u nás je tak max. jedno Ferrari ročně :D
this is a perfect car for a bad naighborhood
why?
cuz noone will steal it
and if he does you can catch him on foot
NERFRig yeah if they can even figure out how to start the car XD
You can’t catch him.... The smoke in your face will kill you.
a thief will think, *uck where is the gear stick and why turn signal indicator is too big.. :P
hahaha omg im dead
Bhahahahahahahahah
7:22 DOUG SAID A NO NO BAD WORD
me: mom, can i have a BMW?
my mom: no, we have a german car at home
german car at home:
Can *WE* have a BMW
Haha
I have a german car at home....
Its an old beetle
@@hayosiko9119 that's cool tho
@@Big-man-aman its everything but cool,its slow,it uses way too much fuel for how fast it goes,it cannot heat up in the winter and is a generally rubbish car
The smoke was known in East Germany as "Trabbifurz" or Trabant fart.
They only smoke badly if poorly maintained.
@@STEAMRADIO which they normally are
😂
@@STEAMRADIO Uhmm if you ever owned a2=stroke motor bike you will know that the oil mixed into the fuel burns white and makes smoke...... ie: they ALWAYS smoke.
They have an atmosphere of their own: Literally!
"What gear is this in?"
*SLAP*
"WE will ask ze questions!!"
Lol
I had some family who lived in east Germany. They were unfortunately not rich enough to own this type of luxury car.
luxury Car?
@@lightshineministries3549 in eastern countries any car was a luxury
@@carachan3073 I actually am East German and I know the Trabant was never regarded as a luxury car. A luxury car would have been something like this: ruclips.net/video/0meH8-75eBs/видео.html or that: ruclips.net/video/gyxha5YX_Po/видео.html.
@@spakkkomat for the tatra i have no idea how they even got their hands on a v8 (im slovak)
@@jefref4826 😀 That's why it was luxury - noone could afford it, only party bigwigs had those. Friend of mine got himself one after 1990. Amazing car! Pozdrav z Berlína
The letters on the fuel valve probably mean: Z - Zu (closed). A - Auf (Open). R - Reserve (Reserve)
@@bbal4616 nein
Oh, German - clever you! Yes, they were likely built for other nations (e.g. East Germany) within the then-USSR.
Ne,er redet vom Benzinhahn also R=Reserve
No, he's talking about the fuel valve so R=Reserve
@@arnepianocanada I am amazed I lived in Czechoslovakia and I never knew that Czechoslovakia , East Germany and I guess the rest of the east block were part of USSR 😂😂😂😂
@@charlesloko7698 you‘re really one salty chap, aren‘t ya
I know you‘re mostly right, but most of the people here don‘t care to educate themselves about Soviet History and most of them won‘t
so don‘t bother to waste your time on them
Doug is the type of guy who complains about the panel gaps on a Trabant.
TBF he did the same thing with a Maserati. True equality for a communist car. I like it :)
Fun fact: The panelgaps on an new Trabant were always perfect because they were routed AFTER the doors were applied. Watch ruclips.net/video/mv3wnQXRHzc/видео.html at 22:15.
I assume the doors on Dougs Trabant were repaired with panels or a whole doors from another Trabbi which would result in crappy gaps, because the were routed on an different car.
@@latinumbavariae Thanks for the link, video is AWESOME, I wonder how many workers died because breathing plastics particles and painting without mask, and how many fingers took the saw used to cut the plastic pieces :/
He is a fool.
@@latinumbavariae Cars with faulty panel cavities were rare when they left the factory. I went to a Mercedes dealer today and the Coupe had some very bad faults, the panels were uneven, and then I said someone is unfairly disparaging cars like the Trabant.
Commo joke
Seller: your car will be ready for pick up 8 years from now
Buyer: morning or afternoon?
Seller: why? Its 8 years away
Buyer: because I've got the plumber coming in the afternoon.
WRONG!!! Reverse lights not an option.. The Soviet Union never traveled backward!
lol
obsolete professor indeed comrade
I know it's sarcasm but it still smells like shit.
Do you want me to laught to death? If you Do: you nearly succeded.
At least now i know how the Wehrmacht felt when they where attacked by shermans.
„Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer!“
He said he got that one for 3000$?? WTF? In my country they get sold for 50$ -.-... a kid who got money from his mom to buy toys can afford one...
This car is exotic in US so people who own them jack up the price to sell them
Supply and demand. There's no point importing them except as historical curiosities, even during the Cold War, so there just aren't any around in the U.S.
VorpalDerringer itd cost you more to import that thing that what youd get off it
Avg price for a trabant in the USA is around 3K.
Lol same here
Z = closed
A = open
R = reserve
You normally use A, if the engine stops, you turn to R, then you have 5 litre left.
Zu, Auf, Reserve
@@bernhardbregen217 rückwärts* mein bengel
@@David-hn6dy How does the petcock go backwards?
Put it in H!
@@David-hn6dy nein tankreserve
I rented one on my last trip to East Berlin. The reverse gear was so confusing that my two buddies and I would just half pick up and half shove it into the parallel parking spots. It was so terrible that we took it back after a couple of hours and walked/rode the bus everywhere else we went. Good times...
What a livello car!
Don't forget that the engine come from DKW and it is easy to elaborate, hats off for 2 strofe!!!
Q: Whats the longest car in the world?
A: Trabant, 2 meter car, 10 meters of smoke.
Q: How to stop a Trabant?
A: Just put a gum on the road...
@08srt8charger A joke? Do you know some?
omg im dying rn
How do you double the value of a Trabant? You fill it up with gas.
Trabant:full speed 55
Bugatti:me on neutral
The seatbelt is used to find the bodies more quickly...
Doomer
Youre the single romanian grandpa that know english
Oof
and yet it's incredibly cute. The Trabant is like the old grandma of cars - she smokes too much, doesn't have AC at her place, doesn't go very fast, goes to see the doctor often, and has very fragile bones, but you love her anyway :)
It's actually really reliable. My father had one for 11 years and it has never had any problems.
@@istvanbocsor7911 sure
If you treat your car great, it will serve you forever
@@supersonictv8916 not if it’s made by: GM Chrysler anything Italian or anything European
Because then it will just fall apart everyone knows that
you didn't mention that people had to wait 14 years for a Trabant
whaaat?
@@solomonjenkins9505 yeah. Because only one factory build them so people had to wait a decade before they got one
That 14 years is about half a year to 2 years in reality.
@@ShadowViewsOnly It was 3 years in Hungary, that's what people who lived back then say at least. Of course if you displeased the party, you waited untill '89 and didn't get your money back.
@@theblancmange1265 I'm hungarian. My parents overlived WW2.. They know what actually happened. You got your Trabant within AT THE VERY MOST 2 years, but the VAST majority of the requests were complete within half a year.
So, whoever told you 14 years, is a liar.
The Trabant makes the Fiat 500 feel like a mustang.
like a concept car xD
Don't you diss mah boi fiat 500
@@serra102 In italy, where no roads are straight and most cities have roads meant for motorcycles (when the 500 came out), that thing would've been a rocket.
@@serra102 the only good 500 through the vintage ones the modern ones are absolute unreliable dogshit along with literally every single company involved with Fiat AHEM ( Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Cadillac )
@@silasmcgee3647 Cadillac is not involved with Fiat, Cadillac is GM.
"The easiest way to see how poorly this car is built is the panel gaps."
Sounds like a Tesla.
Is it weird that I actually want one?
Ogoun nope
No. Prepare to pay over € 10.000 for a well-preserved or professionally restored one. :P
There's a bunch of them hanging from the ceiling at the Rock N Roll hall of fame.
It's a great fun driving one, I got mine for 100$
you can play Jalopy, it's really cool if you like it
What do you call a trabant with twin exhaust pipes?
A wheelbarrow.
This jokes an old one..the answer is actually a reliant robin, ...except the Robin was luxury to the trabant
@@stevedickson5853 also used on ladas
underrated.
Literally impossible to steal. They wouldn't have any idea how to drive one
Indeed, someone tried to stole mine once, and couldn't figure out how to connect the wires of the ignition... and also he still had the steering wheel lock to figure out. And he tried all the buttons and switches as well in the process...
Nobody even wants that car
The only reason a person would steal this was if jennifer lawrence was inside. Which ofcourse she never was/will.
In Poland we make fun out of it to this day.
Just push the car down the hill. It weight like 400 kg or something like that.
As a 2-stroke motorcycle rider (Suzuki RH599) and pilot, i immediately loved this car when it saw it in Berlin.
NO COASTING ?
No problem! The “no coasting, except in neutral” is exactly like a motorcycle (where you hold the clutch and just downshift) if you want to coast.
NO GAS GAUGE?
Correct. Same as an RG500 and other early bikes !
DOOR LOCKS:
The right door that only locks from inside and outside lock only on the left side? Sounds crazy until you’ve flown Cessna airplanes like C172/182.
Fun to see & probably drive!
Finally Doug's clothes match the value of the car
$15000 dollars?
@@austrinivanderfanly745 pfft, $15000, sure
@@jpjanse4471 r/youngpeopleyoutube
@@anaverageuser_4267 stop linking subreddits outside of reddit ffs
@@anaverageuser_4267 The virgin subreddit linker of Non Reddit sites vs the Chad callout
should be mentioned that after ordering it you had to wait for at least 10 years to actually get it.
Because of this, the used ones were more expensive than the new ones.
It takes a lot of time to build such glorious revolutionary quality
Jim Rr
That was a joke Reagan told
thegrassmaster2 It's the truth
Hey it's the car we all drew as children!
Block o Butter Holy shit! You’re right.
LoL
You're exactly right, I 've drew this car so many time as a child.
No thats a Lada
ᴛʀᴜᴇ
Whenever a german sees one of those in the streets, you either hit the recirculation button and close all windows or you enjoy the nostalgic smell of it.
Q: why is it called the trabant 601?
A: because it has seating for 6, comfort for 0, and you always need 1 person to get out and push it.
yeah lol
600 people ordered it and only one person got it...
Seating six what? Gerbils?
@@aarongranda7825 Less food -> smaller people *. . .*
"What's the longest car in the world?"
"It's the Trabant. 2 meters of the vehicle and 10 meters of smoke."
When I lived in Germany in 1995, I was in the East, and Trabis were still everywhere. As they were integrating into western society, kids at school told ossi wessi witze (east west jokes). In one of them, there's an Ossi (east german) farmer, a Wessi (west german) farmer, and an American farmer, all boasting about how big their farms are. The Ossi says, "my farm is so big, that it takes me over an hour to walk all the way around it." The Wessi replies, "That's nothing--my farm is so big it takes all day to walk around!" The American replies, "Yeah, well it takes me a whole day just to to DRIVE around my farm in the USA." The Ossi replies, "yeah, I have a car like that, too!"
does "Ossi" sound like the English slang for Australian "aussie"?
Yes pretty much, the difference in pronouciation is minimal.
im still waiting for the punch line
you just didnt get it..dumbass
How do you double the value of a Trabant?
You tank it up
$3000....? It's about $80-100 in my country (Hungary)
Well most of that is probably shipping cost.
@@MadasIII Yeah, you have to pack something into that Trabant first.
wait a few years. when i was little here in italy the old fiat 500 was like 500 dollars. now is more like 5000 plus, depending on how broken it is.
Amúgy tényleg annyi
The taxes are for cleaning the container
"Why is the Trabbi called Trabbi?"
"Because it is so slow. If it was faster it would be called Galoppi."
A joke that probably only Germans understand.
0:16 "Worst car ever made..."
I ´am from east germany, when you call this car "worst", please remember how poor east germany was after WW2 and
under which conditions it was build.
You cannot compare this with 1950s / 1960s american chrome cadillacs. ;-)
And it was the DDR- engineers forbidden to develop this car (stately controlled economy).
In the DDR (east germany) we had to wait up to 15 years (!!!) for such a car.
Greetings from germany
Albrecht8000 Well at least it's still going after 35 years. The same cannot be said about my Peugeot 207.
Albrecht8000 but compared to every other car its pretty bad... But the fact that they were able to make a car out of recycling... Shows they were smart...
Pretzil295 Well East Germany was still Germany. One of the most well known country for engineering.
The engineers weren't the problem, the politicians were. They actually developed a new model, with a modern engine, but when the government got wind of it, they ordered to stop all development and seized all blueprints.
Andreas Vogler I wasn't talking about the new model. I was talking about this one.
Doug - Which gear is it?
Owner - Let me feel it, i dont know
in comunism the car drives you
*In Soviet Russia, the car drives you!
NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT! NITWIT!
Gabriel Kodato I scrolled down to your comment at the same time the part of the video started playing 😂
Actually, Soviet Russia Memes & Comments Have Been Dead For A Year Now.
@@triton6490 this car wasnt made in soviet russia dumb fuck.
I was in Germany when the wall fell. On the Autobahn you'd see 6 people in a Trabant doing 40mph while everyone else was doing 100mph. It was hysterical seeing the 2 stroke blue cloud trailing this caterpillar.
...."How much faster can a Trabant go over 70? It depends on how high you drop it from" lol
I live near by where they were produced. You were often told to wait up to 10 - 15 years or so to get one. My 86 year old neighbour even drives one till today, and it runs perfectly fine I guess!
Hahaha the Old Guy probably rocks the Old Grumpy Zwickau styles.
It'll probably still run in 50 years, it's easy to repair and there's not that much to break in the first place, no complex electronics and not that much metal(can't remember if they mentioned it in the video but most of the outer shell was plastic)
"OK sir, your car will be ready in 10 years"
"Morning or afternoon?"
"...why does that matter?"
"the plumber's supposed to finally come by that morning."
ist schon schrecklich dass im kommunismus qualität und quantität der wirtschaft so hart leiden. und das auch noch während umweltschutz stark vernachlässigt wird.
Wow, that sucks, here in Hungary the waiting time for a Trabant was usually 6-8 years. My grandfather was a high-level comrade, so he managed to get one within about 2 years.
Trabant design since 1963 never changed, because you can't build over perfection. Same thing with Lada
This much is true.
@@cantloop9589 I think he’s joking 🙃
@@reddash358 no
Is this car legal here?? This is Contrabant
Oh God, Noo...
@@kukuc96 Yeah the trabant is like american houses. Made of cardboard :)
@@computerjantje theres a Movie in Hungary where the biggest joke is a pig that is slowly eating a Trabant
@@lordzorddan8971 I think the movie is Yugoslavian
Black cat,white cat
@@computerjantje as opposed to Mexican homes made with shit.
the cars where not so modern but there was no poverty, no homeless people, everyone got free health care, free high education on a very good level and so on
How do you double the value of a Trabant? = You fill the gastank
That's a Yugo joke
MDDeGrande1994 yes you can triple the price with the Trabant
It was also a Skoda or Lada joke before VW bought Skoda and Lada failed every emission standard you could think of.
Philip Schmidt
You also double the weight though (triple if your in it)
What, everybody had the same jokes in the entire Socialist block? :D
He never gave it a Doug Score. I guess that his scale doesn’t go below zero.
Nah it’s cus it don’t go over 100
@@Calz-hi3cnthats right, this car is pure culture and a symbol of freedom. He should be proud of being allowed to drive this
@@monkeman966 Symbol of freedom? More like the opposite.
He retroactively gave it one when he started doing doug scores.
DougScore wasn’t a thing yet.
6:50 when she says she’s home alone
Id say 7:42 works much better! Hahahaah
Lol
Wouldn't she always be home alone?
This is absolutely foot on the floor!