Doug DeMuro Explains Why the Trabant Is Awful in Washington

There was a parade there to celebrate the fall of communism, yet somehow, they also ended up celebrating the Trabant, which is one of Eastern Germany's crappiest byproducts.

There aren't that many of them on the road, not even in Europe. The 2-stroke engines of the old Trabant aren't designed to run on unleaded fuel. The only people who come up to the owner and talk about the Trabant are those who came to America from behind the Iron Curtain, Poles, Czechs and so forth.

As far as we can tell, this particular model is a 1981 Trabant 601S. VEB Sachsenring made about 3 million of these over a period of nearly 30 years. Trabants are minuscule, measuring only 3,360 mm (132.3 in) long and boasting a 2,020 mm (79.5 in). That means they are way more petite than a Fiat 500 and yet still big enough to squeeze four people in there.

Inspired by Soviet Russia's first satellite in space, the Sputnik, the Trabant was named after the German word for "satellite." However, there's nothing cutting edge or scientific about this car. No efforts were ever made to provide a car people would lust after. Because material things are for capitalist pigs!

Most Trabants were equipped with a 2-cylinder, 600cc engine that was barely able to deliver 18 horsepower. While the 1981 model in this video cannot reach 62 miles per hour, there was a version launched in 1989 that could do it in 21 seconds.

Very few people know this, production didn't technically end when the wall fell. Trabants got a 1-liter Polo engine and stuck around until 1991.

Of course, Doug doesn't do great driving reviews. He just sits around and points out all the quirks. Fortunately, there are a lot of them on this car, like manual windshield washer and the gas tank under the hood or the lack of seatbelts.

Nowadays, some crazy people are willing to import them into the US, even though they could buy stuff that's much better. This one cost the owner $3,000. Speaking of money, there's a funny little story. You see, the East German government didn't want to make enough cars for everybody. Waiting lists lasted several years, and if you wanted one straight away, you had to pay a lot more money for a second-hand model. Communism did that in many countries.