If you’re on my mailing list (lucky you!), you’ve probably seen my little marketing cards that use images of the Trabant. And it would be reasonable for you to ask, “Why?”
Well, mainly, I use the Trabant as an attention getter. The Trabant, a product of East Germany’s centralized communist experiment, ranks among the worst cars ever made. As a car enthusiast, it’s easy to find humor in that. Maybe better than any other symbol, the Trabant represented the great divide between free West Germany and oppressed East Germany. Mercedes-Benz from the West, Trabant from the East.
At the same time, the Trabant — “Trabi” for short — was also one of the most significant, and even heroic, cars of the postwar era. But let me first explain my connection to the Trabant.
Summer of ’74
In the summer of 1974, for my 11th birthday, my parents gave me “World Cars 1974.” You might remember the annual “World Cars” book series (a.k.a. “World Car Catalog”). These were thick, heavy, glossy reference books, published by the Automobile Club of Italy (and Herald Books in the U.S.), that cataloged every car made in the world. They stopped publishing them in the 1980s, I think.
The book cost about $25 in 1974, which is over $100 in today’s dollars. (You can still buy used copies at low prices.) That was a lot of money for my parents in 1974. But I think they knew immediately that it was my favorite gift of all time, and indeed, an investment in my future.
I didn’t just read that book. I studied it. I pored over every photo and every spec – first of the cars I was most interested in, and then all the cars I’d never even heard of. That was the first I’d learned that a Japanese company called Mitsubishi made a sporty car called the GTO. And that Australians could buy a Ford musclecar that looked like a blend of 1970 Torino and 1971 Mustang.
I wore that book down, literally. Within six months the book jacket was breaking. And it even helped me in school. In sixth grade math class, I received a homework assignment (at random) to compare three low priced family sedans with three exotic sports cars.
The assignment card suggested the project might take a long visit to the library to find and compare about 12 different specs among these cars. I had a week to turn the work in. I opened my “World Cars 1974” and had all my specs in about an hour. I created a comparison table (with ruler and pen in that pre-Excel era) in about another hour. I actually felt a little guilty, since I didn’t even need to calculate the weight-to-power ratios; “World Cars” had that spec, too.
End of the Road
But back to the Trabant. After I’d pretty much memorized the specs for all the American cars and the “foreign” car brands that I recognized, I started looking at the obscure cars like the Trabant from East Germany, Hindustan from India and the various communist-country FIAT and Renault cast-offs. I remember saying something to my father like, “Why would anybody want cars like that? They seem so primitive.”
And my father, who still had relatives in communist Czechoslovakia, simply said, “That’s what they can afford.”
Those five words told me all I needed to know, without going into any geopolitical discussion (well, at least one that an 11-year-old could grasp). I got it.
Smile by Photoshop
I received several more “World Cars” books after that, but I didn’t really give the Trabant another thought until 1989. Eastern European communism was crumbling. The Berlin Wall was coming down. And what did we see on TV? East Germans streaming through newly opened border crossings, on foot, on bicycles and in Trabants.
Two years later, the Trabant was featured on the cover of U2’s seminal album, “Achtung, Baby,” and the band used a giant mobile made from empty Trabant shells on the supporting tour. To me, that really symbolized the end of the Trabant’s journey.
By the way, I get the photos for my “Trabi cards” from iStockphoto.com, where a number of photographers have posted images of these cars. Last year, I did spot a blue Trabant in an empty lot in Tarrytown, N.Y., near the waterfront.
JK
