Fun fact: my grandpa was the main licensed service executive for Wartburg's in Yugoslavia and he says it the best car ever made in his opinion. Never broke down, never failed you, cheap to maintain and gorgeous ride! My uncle now has 3 or 4 of them that he's trying to get back on the road Cheers mate, great video!
Thanks for sharing, good to hear! It’s surprising to hear those that mock them but then hear how well the owners receive them - I think it’s great and they are easy to work with!
My Dad had two Wartburg's (not at the same time!) He had a white estate, the later traded in and bought a new saloon version in yellow. I still remember the number plate KFG 606P. Very distinctive two stroke engine sound. Used to fit my three brothers and me on the back seat, before rear seat belts were installed as standard. Brings back so many memories! Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for sharing your story, we love hearing about people’s Wartburg experiences from the UK back when they were new! It’s amazing how rare they are now - if you see some later videos from our channel we actually recently brought back a RHD from NI and it was great fun! Thanks for following!
I bought one of these brand new as my first car, back in 1975. It cost £799 on the road. I liked it, the colour was bright red. I kept it for five years. It never let me down, never failed an MOT test. Back in 1989, a friend of mine imported a much later four stroke version. The revised front and rear of that version looked quite cool.
Great to hear from you, it always interested us to hear the old stories on Wartburgs as they seemed quite rare even then! The four stroke has had a few more imported recently, I prefer the two stroke but I am quite fond of both!
I still have a set of keys from that Wartburg somewhere. After the Wartburg, I owned a succession of Ladas and Skodas. Other than the Wartburg, the best ‘commie car’ I owned was a top of the range 1983 Lada 1600. I once pulled a local Police Ford Escort out of a snow drift with it. No sweat for that Lada!
I thought you might of mentioned the lever to take it out of free wheel I can remember my dad’s wartburg the starter motor gave up and we at to wait for one to be delivered so we just took it out of free wheel and pushed it being a low compression engine you did not Have two push it far one day I was picking the car up after finishing work and it was parked on an ruff Derelict site down hill so it was easy to push on my own I jumped in and after I just started pushing a few plane close police jumped out from no were and asked my was it my car Said no it is my dads after explaining why I was pushing it they helped me Apparently the hand been a lot of cars stolen from there so they were keeping a watch on the place they didn’t say it unusual for Wartburgs to be stolen. My dad was on holiday with my mum in the car and locked the key in it with the engine running so he smashed the rear quarter light to gain Access when he went to the dealership to have it replaced they told him he did not have to smash it then showed him a spear key wired in a hole in front of the Chassis sorry for the big story but after watching your videos the Cobwebs are clearing, and I’m remembering these things
Thanks for this video... Fond memories... the engine and exhaust sound instantly brought me back to the mid-eighties when I was gifted a 1977 model by my neighbor at the time. My first "real" car. I remember that one winter I managed to mangle the engine to a grinding halt (probably forgot to add oil, or something!) and I ended up taking an entire engine out of a junkyard specimen while it was snowing and installing in my own car. All my by 19 year-old self, without help or a hoist - that's how small and light-weight the engine was. Great times. At least, that's what I remember now. Doubt that I thought that at the time, though! LOL
The cranks were known to eventually explode so that may have been the issue unless you did forget oil in which case that would do it! Awesome! Michael Ryman in the UK still does a fair few Wartburg bits and did loads of stuff on them in previous decades, he said it was so easy to pop the engine out alone with no engine hoist - which is ideal as I need to do that on my latest Wartburg soon (my blue RHD)!
Tons of stuff on the Trabant, almost nothing on these Wartburgs. Not many Soviet vehicles made it to North America . Skoda was very briefly imported here, in the early 1960’s. Ladas were imported into Canada for a short time, and of course, Yugo. 📻🚗🙂
A few observations: three coils, one per cylinder, was a design that was also used in 1950 - 60's in Auto Union two stroke models. Each coil was connected to switches (points?), one per cylinder, that were positioned at the head of the crankshaft. To adjust the ignition you need to remove the middle piece of the bumper and the mask, six bolts in total. The fuel pump is vacuum-operated with the pressure variations of cylinder number three. It's simply a diaphram and a spring. Replacing it (when necessary) with an electric pump works fine. Overheating the engine is an issue with the models with the fan and radiator behind the engine, use a 3% oil - petrol mix ( 1 litre oil / 30 - 33 litres petrol ). The factory recommended 2% is not enough! If you drive up steep hills, the way to climb up those is with your foot REALLY nailed to the floor. You can hear how the engine starts to really "breath" through the carburetor: this way the engine gets a full load of lubrication. When you don't need full power, just ease your foot off the gas pedal and let the freewheel clutch disengage the transmission and the engine will idle. On level ground also take advantage of the freewheel clutch as much as possible. To mitigate problems with rust, remove the mat in the boot and let it dry properly. Do the same with the rubber mat inside the car, the floor is probably wet from leaky doors. Also remove the plastic cones under the hood that cover the top of the front shock absorbers and coil springs. Rust likes to hide at the top of the suspension, because the cones don't let moisture evaporate from there.
Excellent, low key, information dense video. These are a thing of beauty, practicality and simplicity. Big panel gaps? No problem, what is the consequence of big gaps adds to the atmosphere of the car. very low in resources to build and if it lasts 40 years, it knocks modern fragile cars into a cocked hat!
Wow you gave me a treat! My dad had 2, my grandad had 1. Almost all of my early childhood car memories relate to this car (since I remember so circa 1990 all way up to early 2000s). Thanks to this car - my dad got know someone who was named by us Grandpa - the guy who had the biggest Trabant and Wartburg scrapyard in Poland at the time, he had 1000s of spares collected in a barn, he had a few Wartburgs as he's daily drivers. I had spent many holidays and even normal weekends playing around those cars in the beauty of very quiet countryside.
@@OGCars from what my father told me, Grandpa passed away unfortunately good few years ago, the family sold the property and it's contents more than likely. Good memories exist still.
1:59 The name of this color is "bieberbraun". It was introduced around 1981 (approx.). Rear mud flaps were mandatory in the GDR. Even imported Citroëns, Volvos, VW Golfs and Mazdas had to be equipped with rear mud flaps. Several drivers (me included) equipped Wartburgs and Trabants with front mud flaps to protect the undebody gainst debris, due to poor rust protection. Sorry to disappoint you about the warning triangle. I guess you're much younger than I am (54). But these rectangle-shaped plastic packaging were introduced just in the later 1990's. 😉 Vanity mirror in the driver's sun visor: just in the "de Luxe" model. The upper 2 control lights: top left only active when towing a trailer, indicating the function of the blinker of the trailer (2-circuit blinker-relais required), top right was used just very, very rarely in late domestic models for indicating a low level of brake fluid. You can make it function if you find the brake-fluid container cover with 2 contacts on a flea-market (equal part for Wartburg and Trabant). Tesla-radio: not OEM. Tesla was a brand from Chechoslovakia.
On the rear side of the mirror holder (behind the ball joint) is a small screw. There you can stiffen the loose rear mirror adjustment. The Trabant had just a snap-on mount, the Wartburg mount was adjustable. 😉 It looks almost like the Wartburg on what I did my driver's license in 1988. It just had a panorama roof with a transparent yellow wind deflector and stick shift.
@@OGCars Yeah, it only works on Short and Medium length waves so today it's basically only a decoration 😁 But the top of the line radio for the Wartburg was actually very nice, it had FM and even automatic tunning. This Tesla radio was basically Tesla's late 60s radio that stayed in produciton so that there will be at least some really cheap option if you'd want a radio in your car. Also check your Favorits, I belive that the digital clock in the Favorit was also Tesla branded.
@@eozcompany9856 that rings a bell on the clocks actually, cool! A decoration is fine, the sound of the Wartburg is all I need 😂 I do need to see these fancy radios though!
What a pretty car. Lovely condition and it's so cool to see it in my home country (UK). I aspire to own one of these eventually. EDIT: The tesla radio might be related to the "TESLA" company which did Eastern Bloc sirens for emergency vehicles.
Thanks, she is a beauty! I have had a few more since, check out some of our other videos to see what we have, if you want to own one of these then I can tip you off to a couple of owners if need be or I know people overseas that can help :D
the original color was called "beaver brown" and was also used on many other GDR vehicles. However, because not all raw materials were always the same and available at all times, there were repeated deviations in the color shades over the years of construction. A "beaver brown" or "billiard green" from 1977 is never the same as the one from 1986 etc. etc. The colors for the Wartburg came from the Lacke & Farbenfabrik Waltershausen "Lacufa"
Fabulous...it's so ugly it's beautiful. The antithesis of modern motoring. I also drive an old beige brick from the 70's (DAF 66). Love it. Thanks for sharing the beastie Wartburg.
Hi, the Choke have to be closed after thirty Seconds. But so i think the Engine sounds very good, no tickering and ringing. Many Greets from Eastgermany. 😉
Heater controls: Electric switch, centre off, up and down is fast and slow (can't remember wich way). Other controls: one as you said controls hot or cold. It simply opens or closes a valve that allows the coolant through the heater or not, hence it may take a while for you to feel the difference. (Modern cars control the airflow, not the water flow). The Wartburg had a habit of allowing the temp control outer cable to release from it's clamp just below the dash. Then moving the lever had no effect. So look under the dash and see if the outer cable is still in it's clamp.When working correctly the heater was quite effective. The other control directs the airflow up to the screen or down to the feet. That smoke was on a cold start with full choke. If you run the correct fuel/oil ratio (40 to one) the smoking is negligable when warm. My father bought the estate version new in 1969 (called the Knight Tourist in the UK) for 711.00 pounds. Eventually, about 7 years later he bought another and gave that one to me. By that time it had done over 150,000 miles. I put a towbar on, and towed a 12' Sprite Alpine caravan up to the highlands of Scotland (from Lincolnshire). We eventually retired it at 163,000 miles, still going strong, because I bought a younger low mileage saloon (similar to yours but from 1973) for 150 pounds. Over the years our family had 7 Wartburgs. Great cars. I wish I had one now. Yours looks and sounds really good. If you want to pass it on to a good home let me know!.
Hey Neale, thanks for your comment, the heater controls I assumed were as you suggested, I could get cold and warm but changing the direction of the air flow on the lever didn’t actually seem to change it in the car as far as I could tell! Thanks for sharing your story on Wartburgs, it’s great to hear of someone else in the UK that had them! See a few of our later videos and you’ll see that this brown Wartburg now has a lovely new home on the Scottish border and I have bought a couple more Wartburgs including a very rusty Tourist… Stay tuned to the channel and in the next few weeks there should be a video on two new Wartburg Knights that I’ve bought myself too!
Many years since I part ex'ed my Knight Estate (GMV927N, is it still out there ?) for a new Skoda Favorit when they first came out. I wish I'd kept the Knight but I only got around 28mpg so not cheap to run, especially when you add the cost of the oil as well, and the wife found the steering heavy, but I loved it.
Untaxed as of 1992 unfortunately... didn’t last much longer than when you traded it in I’d imagine considering the Favorit was early 90s? The Favorits are good cars too, Georgina has one so a our garage video will be made for it eventually!
@@OGCars Cheers for that, a real shame. I saw it after I traded it in, guy bought it at auction but I don't think he appreciated what he had. My Favorit lasted 15 years before I (sadly) scrapped it !
Cheers Craig! We are certainly happy for it to be featured! In fairness I still haven’t done a motorway run in it yet, not sure if I’m looking forward to that one 😂
Wartburg is a truly beautiful classic car. Those who say the opposite either try to slander or envy because these tools are produced in a communist state. I think people who understand cars can never call a Trabant and a Wartburga bad.
Were the original tyres Pneuments? I had them on MZ motorcycles and they were not too bad. Did a two-stroke car have nay trouble passing the exhaust emission test at the MOT?
The tyres were just standard knock off modern stuff in terrible condition! Two stroke cars and bikes are exempt from emissions testing (they’d never pass!)
@@OGCars a friend at UCL had a Warburg at UCL, which is now in the ULEZ zone. He used to beck and forth from hids home in South Wales. You could set alight its exhaust with a fag lighter. He claimed it was very reliable and easy to maintain. HE perplexed people at filling stations when he pulled up by the two-stroke pump
My dad had a 968 Wartburg Knight. ( OVA 737F) In dark Metalic green; it really suited the car. The bodywork was amazingly soun but not a great engine or chassis, to be honest. Have fun with yours.
I never changed them, nor did I drive it at night really 😂 Sold the car some time ago but you’ll see we’ve since had several Wartburgs! Current Wartburg is a RHD UK market 1974 mk4 Knight
There is no rule against importing a 2 stroke, and it's exempt from exhaust emissions If I wanted to make a brand new car and import them then that would be a different matter but individual classic imports are no problem
@@OGCars You can (should) use 1:50 ratio. It is the factory default. With 1:33 you pullute your environment too much, and the engine makes a lot of deposit in the engine and exhaust. This engine has needle roller bearings at piston pins.
@@OGCars Dang, straight lawn mower style, Trabant at least had a self mixer, but Wartburg had style, competes closely with Tesla for panel gaps. I've seen worse panel gaps on a Tesla so one for Wartburg there. Give me a Wartburg over a Tesla any day, character Trump's all.
It’s an expansion tank system so you can fill from the cap in the expansion tank, that said there’s a flat plug in the radiator you can remove to fill it there!
No resources at all. If you dont have access to good steel and other resources, this is the best you can come up with to provide normal folks a somewhat reliable and economical drive. And dont forget, these things were born and designed in 50s - 60s, a time where 2 stroke cars were very common.
@@ironkcoony Knowledgeable people who understand cars can never call these cars bad, but I do not mind those who speak ignorant without seeing them in their lives and laugh at their ignorance These cars are legendary vehicles with many characters, but the ones in good condition are very few and worth last week a Trabant was sold for 20 thousand euros, it was well restored and sold in a few days.
Don't be a wretch 🤓 I actually like the car. The engine is the same as the DKW Auto Union from the 1950's. When I was a youngster in the 1960's there were many around and many of them clocked high mileage, 600 000 km was easily reached. We used to call the engine a washing machine motor. The only problem was the 2-stroke gas especially on a hot day in slow moving traffic 👍👍👍
@@johansteyn59 don’t make a ‘wretch’ comment if you don’t want a ‘wretch’ reply 😉 This’ll pull the skin off your rice pudding 😂 Yes the DKWs are cool, saw a few at the last Beamish IFA show! I’m quite into the Wartburgs now, had a few 353s/Knights in the last couple of years. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a 311/312 or a DKW but they seem to make the 353 look relatively common still in the UK…
@@OGCars The Wartburg is actually a nice choice because of its simicity both engine and body wise. It's been built well into 'modern times' which makes it a classic good for daily use. Spares in Europe should not be a big issue for the foreseeable future. In South Africa if a car is older than 20 or 25 years you should be able to get an import permit to import it into the country. The problem is that freight costs are hectic now due to covid and also the vehicle has to be a right hand drive by law and yes, I know it's absurd but all regimes do absurd things. So if import a Wartburg I am limited to a Knight which I can imagine may be scarse. 🤓👍Our prayers are for peace in the Ukraine 🇺🇦 🇺🇦🇺🇦
I think they get a bad reputation in the West! Look at how popular Skoda and Dacia have become. The Wartburg looks like the Passat / Audi of the East. Haven't seen a Lada for years, a lot were used and destroyed in the Russian (filmed in the UK) scenes in the James Bond film Goldeneye!
@@danielsellers8707 I do like the old Skoda and Dacias too! The Ladas were all shipped back for the most part, it’s nice to see the occasional one though, I love these style of cars!
I can’t remember if it was a pump on the back or what but I remember changing the pipes going to something on the back of the engine there! Radiator was placed here on all the early ones, only 85 onwards I believe it was had the radiator moved to the front Blame the Eastern Bloc 😉
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Fun fact: my grandpa was the main licensed service executive for Wartburg's in Yugoslavia and he says it the best car ever made in his opinion. Never broke down, never failed you, cheap to maintain and gorgeous ride! My uncle now has 3 or 4 of them that he's trying to get back on the road
Cheers mate, great video!
Thanks for sharing, good to hear! It’s surprising to hear those that mock them but then hear how well the owners receive them - I think it’s great and they are easy to work with!
@@OGCars those mocking have a political agenda and have probably never saw one. It's only a lovely little car.
I agree with your grandfather.
They sound great. I remember when they first appeared in the 70's. Well done, great car.
My Dad had two Wartburg's (not at the same time!) He had a white estate, the later traded in and bought a new saloon version in yellow. I still remember the number plate KFG 606P. Very distinctive two stroke engine sound. Used to fit my three brothers and me on the back seat, before rear seat belts were installed as standard. Brings back so many memories! Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for sharing your story, we love hearing about people’s Wartburg experiences from the UK back when they were new! It’s amazing how rare they are now - if you see some later videos from our channel we actually recently brought back a RHD from NI and it was great fun! Thanks for following!
I bought one of these brand new as my first car, back in 1975. It cost £799 on the road. I liked it, the colour was bright red. I kept it for five years. It never let me down, never failed an MOT test. Back in 1989, a friend of mine imported a much later four stroke version. The revised front and rear of that version looked quite cool.
Great to hear from you, it always interested us to hear the old stories on Wartburgs as they seemed quite rare even then! The four stroke has had a few more imported recently, I prefer the two stroke but I am quite fond of both!
I still have a set of keys from that Wartburg somewhere. After the Wartburg, I owned a succession of Ladas and Skodas. Other than the Wartburg, the best ‘commie car’ I owned was a top of the range 1983 Lada 1600. I once pulled a local Police Ford Escort out of a snow drift with it. No sweat for that Lada!
I thought you might of mentioned the lever to take it out of free wheel I can remember my dad’s wartburg the starter motor gave up and we at to wait for one to be delivered so we just took it out of free wheel and pushed it being a low compression engine you did not Have two push it far one day I was picking the car up after finishing work and it was parked on an ruff Derelict site down hill so it was easy to push on my own I jumped in and after I just started pushing a few plane close police jumped out from no were and asked my was it my car Said no it is my dads after explaining why I was pushing it they helped me Apparently the hand been a lot of cars stolen from there so they were keeping a watch on the place they didn’t say it unusual for Wartburgs to be stolen. My dad was on holiday with my mum in the car and locked the key in it with the engine running so he smashed the rear quarter light to gain Access when he went to the dealership to have it replaced they told him he did not have to smash it then showed him a spear key wired in a hole in front of the Chassis sorry for the big story but after watching your videos the Cobwebs are clearing, and I’m remembering these things
Had one in the 70's and loved it 26MPG regardless! I wish I'd kept it! Engine at speed smooth as a turbine!
Thanks for this video... Fond memories... the engine and exhaust sound instantly brought me back to the mid-eighties when I was gifted a 1977 model by my neighbor at the time. My first "real" car. I remember that one winter I managed to mangle the engine to a grinding halt (probably forgot to add oil, or something!) and I ended up taking an entire engine out of a junkyard specimen while it was snowing and installing in my own car. All my by 19 year-old self, without help or a hoist - that's how small and light-weight the engine was. Great times. At least, that's what I remember now. Doubt that I thought that at the time, though! LOL
The cranks were known to eventually explode so that may have been the issue unless you did forget oil in which case that would do it! Awesome! Michael Ryman in the UK still does a fair few Wartburg bits and did loads of stuff on them in previous decades, he said it was so easy to pop the engine out alone with no engine hoist - which is ideal as I need to do that on my latest Wartburg soon (my blue RHD)!
Tons of stuff on the Trabant, almost nothing on these Wartburgs.
Not many Soviet vehicles made it to North America .
Skoda was very briefly imported here, in the early 1960’s.
Ladas were imported into Canada for a short time, and of course, Yugo.
📻🚗🙂
A few observations: three coils, one per cylinder, was a design that was also used in 1950 - 60's in Auto Union two stroke models. Each coil was connected to switches (points?), one per cylinder, that were positioned at the head of the crankshaft. To adjust the ignition you need to remove the middle piece of the bumper and the mask, six bolts in total.
The fuel pump is vacuum-operated with the pressure variations of cylinder number three. It's simply a diaphram and a spring. Replacing it (when necessary) with an electric pump works fine.
Overheating the engine is an issue with the models with the fan and radiator behind the engine, use a 3% oil - petrol mix ( 1 litre oil / 30 - 33 litres petrol ). The factory recommended 2% is not enough!
If you drive up steep hills, the way to climb up those is with your foot REALLY nailed to the floor. You can hear how the engine starts to really "breath" through the carburetor: this way the engine gets a full load of lubrication. When you don't need full power, just ease your foot off the gas pedal and let the freewheel clutch disengage the transmission and the engine will idle. On level ground also take advantage of the freewheel clutch as much as possible.
To mitigate problems with rust, remove the mat in the boot and let it dry properly. Do the same with the rubber mat inside the car, the floor is probably wet from leaky doors. Also remove the plastic cones under the hood that cover the top of the front shock absorbers and coil springs. Rust likes to hide at the top of the suspension, because the cones don't let moisture evaporate from there.
Excellent, low key, information dense video. These are a thing of beauty, practicality and simplicity. Big panel gaps? No problem, what is the consequence of big gaps adds to the atmosphere of the car. very low in resources to build and if it lasts 40 years, it knocks modern fragile cars into a cocked hat!
Wow you gave me a treat! My dad had 2, my grandad had 1. Almost all of my early childhood car memories relate to this car (since I remember so circa 1990 all way up to early 2000s). Thanks to this car - my dad got know someone who was named by us Grandpa - the guy who had the biggest Trabant and Wartburg scrapyard in Poland at the time, he had 1000s of spares collected in a barn, he had a few Wartburgs as he's daily drivers. I had spent many holidays and even normal weekends playing around those cars in the beauty of very quiet countryside.
Thanks for sharing your story! I wonder if that scrapyard is still about and what happened to the person and his cars!
@@OGCars from what my father told me, Grandpa passed away unfortunately good few years ago, the family sold the property and it's contents more than likely. Good memories exist still.
1:59 The name of this color is "bieberbraun". It was introduced around 1981 (approx.).
Rear mud flaps were mandatory in the GDR. Even imported Citroëns, Volvos, VW Golfs and Mazdas had to be equipped with rear mud flaps.
Several drivers (me included) equipped Wartburgs and Trabants with front mud flaps to protect the undebody gainst debris, due to poor rust protection.
Sorry to disappoint you about the warning triangle. I guess you're much younger than I am (54). But these rectangle-shaped plastic packaging were introduced just in the later 1990's. 😉
Vanity mirror in the driver's sun visor: just in the "de Luxe" model.
The upper 2 control lights: top left only active when towing a trailer, indicating the function of the blinker of the trailer (2-circuit blinker-relais required), top right was used just very, very rarely in late domestic models for indicating a low level of brake fluid. You can make it function if you find the brake-fluid container cover with 2 contacts on a flea-market (equal part for Wartburg and Trabant).
Tesla-radio: not OEM. Tesla was a brand from Chechoslovakia.
I used to go with a friend at the club in 98...99...with his Wartburg....👍
On the rear side of the mirror holder (behind the ball joint) is a small screw. There you can stiffen the loose rear mirror adjustment.
The Trabant had just a snap-on mount, the Wartburg mount was adjustable. 😉
It looks almost like the Wartburg on what I did my driver's license in 1988. It just had a panorama roof with a transparent yellow wind deflector and stick shift.
The Tesla Spider 3 radio is actually Czechoslovak! It was the basic model radio for the Wartburg.
Thanks for your help, I didn’t know this! It’s not very good at getting any reception here 😂
@@OGCars Yeah, it only works on Short and Medium length waves so today it's basically only a decoration 😁
But the top of the line radio for the Wartburg was actually very nice, it had FM and even automatic tunning.
This Tesla radio was basically Tesla's late 60s radio that stayed in produciton so that there will be at least some really cheap option if you'd want a radio in your car.
Also check your Favorits, I belive that the digital clock in the Favorit was also Tesla branded.
@@eozcompany9856 that rings a bell on the clocks actually, cool! A decoration is fine, the sound of the Wartburg is all I need 😂 I do need to see these fancy radios though!
Cool classic. 🤩
What a pretty car. Lovely condition and it's so cool to see it in my home country (UK). I aspire to own one of these eventually.
EDIT: The tesla radio might be related to the "TESLA" company which did Eastern Bloc sirens for emergency vehicles.
Thanks, she is a beauty! I have had a few more since, check out some of our other videos to see what we have, if you want to own one of these then I can tip you off to a couple of owners if need be or I know people overseas that can help :D
the original color was called "beaver brown" and was also used on many other GDR vehicles. However, because not all raw materials were always the same and available at all times, there were repeated deviations in the color shades over the years of construction. A "beaver brown" or "billiard green" from 1977 is never the same as the one from 1986 etc. etc. The colors for the Wartburg came from the Lacke & Farbenfabrik Waltershausen "Lacufa"
Mine has been repainted at some point too so it’s probably several shades of this colour! 😂
@@OGCars The car color named: "biberbraun".
Ahh, now I know where the horn is. Thanks.
Sooooo jealous ....well done ,mate!!
Fabulous...it's so ugly it's beautiful. The antithesis of modern motoring. I also drive an old beige brick from the 70's (DAF 66). Love it. Thanks for sharing the beastie Wartburg.
Thank you Doktor. We love the DAF 66 too! Oldies are goldies!
@@OGCars .Indeed...and the quirkier the better.
Good old days 👍
Hi, the Choke have to be closed after thirty Seconds. But so i think the Engine sounds very good, no tickering and ringing. Many Greets from Eastgermany. 😉
Greetings! This was my first 353, I’ve had several 353s, Knights, Tourists and 311s since! 😁
Heater controls: Electric switch, centre off, up and down is fast and slow (can't remember wich way). Other controls: one as you said controls hot or cold. It simply opens or closes a valve that allows the coolant through the heater or not, hence it may take a while for you to feel the difference. (Modern cars control the airflow, not the water flow). The Wartburg had a habit of allowing the temp control outer cable to release from it's clamp just below the dash. Then moving the lever had no effect. So look under the dash and see if the outer cable is still in it's clamp.When working correctly the heater was quite effective. The other control directs the airflow up to the screen or down to the feet.
That smoke was on a cold start with full choke. If you run the correct fuel/oil ratio (40 to one) the smoking is negligable when warm.
My father bought the estate version new in 1969 (called the Knight Tourist in the UK) for 711.00 pounds. Eventually, about 7 years later he bought another and gave that one to me. By that time it had done over 150,000 miles. I put a towbar on, and towed a 12' Sprite Alpine caravan up to the highlands of Scotland (from Lincolnshire). We eventually retired it at 163,000 miles, still going strong, because I bought a younger low mileage saloon (similar to yours but from 1973) for 150 pounds. Over the years our family had 7 Wartburgs. Great cars. I wish I had one now. Yours looks and sounds really good. If you want to pass it on to a good home let me know!.
Hey Neale, thanks for your comment, the heater controls I assumed were as you suggested, I could get cold and warm but changing the direction of the air flow on the lever didn’t actually seem to change it in the car as far as I could tell!
Thanks for sharing your story on Wartburgs, it’s great to hear of someone else in the UK that had them! See a few of our later videos and you’ll see that this brown Wartburg now has a lovely new home on the Scottish border and I have bought a couple more Wartburgs including a very rusty Tourist…
Stay tuned to the channel and in the next few weeks there should be a video on two new Wartburg Knights that I’ve bought myself too!
Couldn't be more different than the rest of the fleet.🙂👍🇨🇮
You're quite right! First Italians, went into Germans, and now we are on the other side of the Berlin Wall...
Terry Atkinson what's the Ivory Coast flag 🇨🇮 about do you live in the Ivory Coast?
@@pauldunneska only noticed that now... I must be dyslexic 🙄👍
@@terryatkinson899 Is it the Irish flag backwards 🤔?
@@pauldunneska yes, guess I need new glasses haha 🇮🇪👍🙂
Many years since I part ex'ed my Knight Estate (GMV927N, is it still out there ?) for a new Skoda Favorit when they first came out. I wish I'd kept the Knight but I only got around 28mpg so not cheap to run, especially when you add the cost of the oil as well, and the wife found the steering heavy, but I loved it.
Untaxed as of 1992 unfortunately... didn’t last much longer than when you traded it in I’d imagine considering the Favorit was early 90s? The Favorits are good cars too, Georgina has one so a our garage video will be made for it eventually!
@@OGCars Cheers for that, a real shame. I saw it after I traded it in, guy bought it at auction but I don't think he appreciated what he had. My Favorit lasted 15 years before I (sadly) scrapped it !
@@adrianpolley9419 still a good run! Not many left of the Wartburg or even the Favorit now! We save what we can 😎
@@OGCars favorit’s can still be seen on the road in the czech republic, wartburg are much rarer though.
@@yakitoly7461 most of the cars of this era and design are forgotten about in the uk now unfortunately!
Closing the boot sounds like whacking the side of an empty corrugated iron grain silo.😅
That’s a perfect description!
Love it! 😃 Fancy doing a craig special with it when life goes back to normal?
Cheers Craig! We are certainly happy for it to be featured! In fairness I still haven’t done a motorway run in it yet, not sure if I’m looking forward to that one 😂
@@OGCars Cool. Im sure it will purr along nicely 😂
I have the same car problem you have! I have 8 total! 6 classics and 2 dailys
What cars are they? 😎
Wartburg is a truly beautiful classic car. Those who say the opposite either try to slander or envy because these tools are produced in a communist state. I think people who understand cars can never call a Trabant and a Wartburga bad.
They weren’t bad cars considering the circumstances, the only big downside was that they didn’t improve them for decades…
Can you deliver to Canada? Lol!
Were the original tyres Pneuments? I had them on MZ motorcycles and they were not too bad. Did a two-stroke car have nay trouble passing the exhaust emission test at the MOT?
The tyres were just standard knock off modern stuff in terrible condition! Two stroke cars and bikes are exempt from emissions testing (they’d never pass!)
@@OGCars a friend at UCL had a Warburg at UCL, which is now in the ULEZ zone. He used to beck and forth from hids home in South Wales. You could set alight its exhaust with a fag lighter. He claimed it was very reliable and easy to maintain. HE perplexed people at filling stations when he pulled up by the two-stroke pump
My dad had a 968 Wartburg Knight. ( OVA 737F) In dark Metalic green; it really suited the car.
The bodywork was amazingly soun but not a great engine or chassis, to be honest.
Have fun with yours.
@@Keith1 a dark green 68 is the pinnacle of Wartburg in the UK 😉 I’ve had a fair few since but I’ve just got a 74 Neptune blue Knight now!
Love the engine sound...it’s awesomely horrible and as good looking as a turd.
I like it
HOW DARE YOU!
What sort of 2 stroke oil do you put in. Mineral, semi synthetic-?
Mineral usually, I’ve run it off Westway mineral but recently on Mannol, never had any problems
Are you driving it with the "wrong" headlights (traffic on the right)?
I never changed them, nor did I drive it at night really 😂 Sold the car some time ago but you’ll see we’ve since had several Wartburgs! Current Wartburg is a RHD UK market 1974 mk4 Knight
@@OGCars There is a longer comment from me below this one and one from a year ago. 😉
@@u.e.u.e. good to see you’re coming back to watch again 😉 I can’t remember what I did yesterday, let alone a comment from a year ago! 😂
How you bring 2 Stoke to UK ?
There is no rule against importing a 2 stroke, and it's exempt from exhaust emissions
If I wanted to make a brand new car and import them then that would be a different matter but individual classic imports are no problem
Whats the oil to petrol ratio when filling the car up?
1:40 for town and 1:33 for motorway roughly! The IFA club give a very good guide upon joining!
Nice video !
@@OGCars You can (should) use 1:50 ratio. It is the factory default. With 1:33 you pullute your environment too much, and the engine makes a lot of deposit in the engine and exhaust. This engine has needle roller bearings at piston pins.
@@e1gr3co thanks, I just followed the UK IFA Wartburg club recommendations based on driving conditions :)
@@OGCars then they wonder in the club that their cars are smelly and smoking...
8:31 BEEP! BEEP!
Hang on isn't there a separate reservoir for the oil and it mixes itself? Pretty sure trabants had that.
Nope, mix in the main fuel tank
@@OGCars Dang, straight lawn mower style, Trabant at least had a self mixer, but Wartburg had style, competes closely with Tesla for panel gaps. I've seen worse panel gaps on a Tesla so one for Wartburg there. Give me a Wartburg over a Tesla any day, character Trump's all.
Radiator doesn't have a cap...? Did they come that way...? I guess you would have noticed by now and hope the engine is still ok!?
It’s an expansion tank system so you can fill from the cap in the expansion tank, that said there’s a flat plug in the radiator you can remove to fill it there!
Just drive that thing around the neighborhood when you want to get rid of mosquitos.
Used to think these so ugly compared to the previous beautiful design…now find it rather attractive
I do quite like both! Although can only comment as someone that never saw any back in the day!
Why not a four stroke engine in DDR?Was It so difficult?
1989 saw the release of the Wartburg 353 1.3 four stroke? The two stroke was easy to work with anyway!
No resources at all. If you dont have access to good steel and other resources, this is the best you can come up with to provide normal folks a somewhat reliable and economical drive. And dont forget, these things were born and designed in 50s - 60s, a time where 2 stroke cars were very common.
@@ironkcoony Knowledgeable people who understand cars can never call these cars bad, but I do not mind those who speak ignorant without seeing them in their lives and laugh at their ignorance These cars are legendary vehicles with many characters, but the ones in good condition are very few and worth last week a Trabant was sold for 20 thousand euros, it was well restored and sold in a few days.
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It'll make a good lawnmower 🙃
You’ll make a good lawnmower 🤷♂️
Don't be a wretch 🤓 I actually like the car. The engine is the same as the DKW Auto Union from the 1950's. When I was a youngster in the 1960's there were many around and many of them clocked high mileage, 600 000 km was easily reached. We used to call the engine a washing machine motor. The only problem was the 2-stroke gas especially on a hot day in slow moving traffic 👍👍👍
@@johansteyn59 don’t make a ‘wretch’ comment if you don’t want a ‘wretch’ reply 😉 This’ll pull the skin off your rice pudding 😂 Yes the DKWs are cool, saw a few at the last Beamish IFA show! I’m quite into the Wartburgs now, had a few 353s/Knights in the last couple of years. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a 311/312 or a DKW but they seem to make the 353 look relatively common still in the UK…
@@OGCars The Wartburg is actually a nice choice because of its simicity both engine and body wise. It's been built well into 'modern times' which makes it a classic good for daily use. Spares in Europe should not be a big issue for the foreseeable future. In South Africa if a car is older than 20 or 25 years you should be able to get an import permit to import it into the country. The problem is that freight costs are hectic now due to covid and also the vehicle has to be a right hand drive by law and yes, I know it's absurd but all regimes do absurd things. So if import a Wartburg I am limited to a Knight which I can imagine may be scarse. 🤓👍Our prayers are for peace in the Ukraine 🇺🇦 🇺🇦🇺🇦
I am really interested in East German and Eastern bloc cars
They are very interesting vehicles!
I think they get a bad reputation in the West!
Look at how popular Skoda and Dacia have become.
The Wartburg looks like the Passat / Audi of the East.
Haven't seen a Lada for years, a lot were used and destroyed in the Russian (filmed in the UK) scenes in the James Bond film Goldeneye!
@@danielsellers8707 I do like the old Skoda and Dacias too! The Ladas were all shipped back for the most part, it’s nice to see the occasional one though, I love these style of cars!
Quite something! But of course the emissions are atrocious!
Smell nice though.
I subbed
O tempora, o mores!
So this is a slightly better version of the trabant
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First!
lots of smoke because your choke is on, and engine is cold...
Yes, it does clear up… 😉
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The cat is worth more than that "car".
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Radiator strangely placed…no very sensible…thermo siphon, no water pump if I am correct
I can’t remember if it was a pump on the back or what but I remember changing the pipes going to something on the back of the engine there! Radiator was placed here on all the early ones, only 85 onwards I believe it was had the radiator moved to the front
Blame the Eastern Bloc 😉
No doubt it is good looking car, but its lack of liability is nerve wracking. You just will waiting next place to broke. My bro did own one.
I want to say it's extremely reliable but my blue Knight breaks down everywhere it goes..! This brown one gave me no issues mind
??????
Who paints a car shit brown.
British Leyland did Jaguar Triumph MG Austin