4 ms·
It was a terrible car in some (many) respects, but it definitely is not "the worst car ever built". The Trabi has a lot of things going on for it. 1. It is ver
by Wyndtroy2012 7y ago
It was a terrible car in some (many) respects, but it definitely is not "the worst car ever built". The Trabi has a lot of things going on for it.
1. It is very light. The motor is tiny, the whole thing is like 600 kilos (not absolutely sure, but I know for a fact that 4 normal men can pick it up to move it to the side a bit).
2. Given its size, there is quite a bit of space inside
3. Since it is so small and light, it is very easy to drive. You literally don't need the clutch: there is a clutch pedal, but you don't need it -- you can switch gears as long as you are not pressing the gas pedal. (The gears, btw, are very light, and the "stick" is not a stick, it is on the wheel -- you can operate it with one finger without taking your hands off the wheel.)
4. With electronic ignition (it can be installed easily on top of the stock model) the motor behaves quite well.
5. It is cheap, not only because it is bad, but also because it is just cheap. Not many moving parts, nothing fancy in it, you get the point. I don't know how accessible spare parts are nowadays of course (this was the problem back in the day as well; finding spare parts was a bitch).
It isn't a "good" car, given what we expect from cars these days, but for a city car it is quite OK. Still not as dirty as a diesel ;-)
PS: there is an old Trabant joke that goes like this: a car collector from the US hears about it and wants to have one. He orders it and has it shipped over. On arrival, he looks at it in confusion, then writes back to the sender: "I wanted the car, not the toy model!"
- interfixus 7y agoIn my far younger days I had the great good fortune to own a Morris Mini - the original doghouse, not the modern pastiche. That car did weigh 600 kg, and I happen to know for a fact that six men could easily pick it up and carry it a distance. I also know that it had a length of very close to 3 meters, and that the basement ramp where those six men put it was 3.10 meters wide. As they said when they fetched me, "You may wish to grab something to drink".
- ptaipale 7y agoMany of us have done that to people like teachers who owned a Fiat 600 or 127.
- interfixus 7y agoYou may be thinking of the Fiat 126, sort of an updated 600. The 127 was a somewhat heftier hatchback, more like a VW Polo or Ford Fiesta.
- ptaipale 7y agoIt surely was 127 - heftier, but still definitely hand-movable by a half a dozen of adolescents... Fiat 127 is front-wheel-drive and bigger than Fiat 600, but still weighs under 700 kg.
- perilunar 7y agoI once saw some uni students drive a Fiat 500 into an elevator in a building, take it up to the second floor, and drive it around the hallways.
- _iyig 7y agoBesides its similarly light weight, the 3-cylinder Geo Metro was short enough to fit sideways inside a typical American parking space. Thus college kids would often lift and turn it, between two other occupied spots.
- runxel 7y agoAlso you can do everything by yourself. No need for a mechanic. The motto goes "Hammer, Zange, Draht, kommste bis nach Leningrad". ('hammer, pliers, wire: it'll get you all the way to Leningrad'). And you have to consider, that this car basically never got an update (P 50 and P60 are pretty much the same car, just a different motor. The P 601 was built from 1964 til the end of Socialism. The 1.1 doesn't really count).