The Trabant ( ; German pronunciation: [t? A'bant ] ) is a car manufactured from 1957 to 1990 by former East German car manufacturer VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau. Although often seen as a symbol of the dead East Germany and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in general, it was a car sought in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Trabant has a hard plastic body mounted on a one-piece steel chassis (called a unibody or monocoque), front-wheel drive, transverse engine, and independent suspension - an unusual feature of the time.
Called "spark plugs with roofs", 3,096,999 Trabants in a number of models were produced for nearly three decades with some significant changes in their basic design. The old model became popular with collectors in the United States due to its low cost and fewer restrictions on the importation of antique cars. Trabant also gained followers among car tuning and rally racing fans.
Video Trabant
Overview
Trabant means "satellite" or "companion" in German, derived from Middle High German drabant ("Hussite foot soldier"). The name of the car was inspired by the Soviet Sputnik satellite. Cars are often referred to as "Trabbi" or "Trabi". Produced without major changes for almost 30 years, Trabant became the most common car in East Germany. It came to symbolize the country during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when a picture of East Germany crossing the border into West Germany was broadcast all over the world. To obtain Trabant, East German buyers are placed on the list; their waiting time depends on their proximity to Berlin, the capital.
Trabant has a unibody steel frame, with roofs, trunk lids, hoods, fenders and doors made of Duroplast, hard plastic made from recycled cotton wastes from the Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry. It is a second car with a body made of recycled material; the first being the AWZ P70 Zwickau, produced from 1955 to 1959. The materials are durable, and the average age of Trabant is 28 years.
The car has four main variants:
- P50, also known as Trabant 500 (produced 1957-1962)
- The Trabant 600 (1962-1964)
- The Trabant 601 (1963-1991)
- The Trabant 1.1, produced in 1990-1991 with a VW 1.043Ã £, cc (63.6Ã, cuÃ, in)
The engine for the 500, 600 and the original 601 is a small two-stroke engine with two cylinders, which explains the simple performance of the vehicle. It weighs about 600 kg (1,100 pounds). When production ceased in 1989, Trabant delivered 19 kW (26 horsepower) of 600 cc displacement (37 cuÃ, in). It takes 21 seconds to accelerate from zero to a top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph).
The engine produces highly smoky fumes and is a significant source of air pollution: nine times the hydrocarbons and five times the carbon monoxide emissions from the average European car in 2007. Fuel consumption is 7'l/100 km (40 mpg -imp ; 34 mpg -US ). Because the engine does not have an oil pump, a two-stroke oil must be added to a 24 liters (6.3 Ã, Â ° C; 5,3Ã, Â ° c) fuel tank with a ratio of 50: 1 (or 33: 1) of the material burn to oil at each filling. Contemporary gas stations in countries where two-stroke engines are commonly sold mixed oil-gas mixtures at pumps. Today, the owner carries a two-stroke oil container in the car for this purpose. Because Trabant does not have a fuel pump, its fuel tank is above the motor so that the fuel can reach the carburetor due to gravity; this increases the risk of fire in the front crash. The previous model did not have a fuel gauge, and the dipstick was put in the tank to determine how much fuel was left.
Famous for its boring color schemes and narrow and uncomfortable journeys, Trabant is an object of ridicule for many Germans and is considered a symbol of the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Known as a "spark plug with a roof" because of its small size, the car gets public affection and something that follows the sect. The design has remained essentially unchanged since it was introduced in the late 1950s, and the last model was introduced in 1964. In contrast, the West German Volkswagen Beetle received a number of updates (including efficiency improvements) over the same period.
Maps Trabant
History
Origins
Trabant is the result of a planning process intended to design a three-wheeled motorcycle. In German, Full production
The first of the Trabants left the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau factory in Saxony on November 7, 1957. It was a relatively advanced car when it was officially introduced the following year, with front-wheel drive, unit construction and independent suspension. Trabant's biggest drawback is its engine. By the late 1950s many small Western automakers (like Renault) had cleaner and more efficient four-stroke engines, but budgetary constraints and lack of raw materials mandated a cheap (but inexpensive) two-stroke engine at Trabant. It's technically equivalent to a West German Lloyd's car, the same-sized car as an air-cooled four-stroke engine, two cylinders. Trabant has front and transverse engines in front and steering in an era when many European cars use a rear mounted engine or front-mounted engine with rear-wheel drive. The biggest disadvantage is that production is largely unchanged; the two-stroke car engine made it obsolete in the 1970s, limiting exports to Western Europe.
The Trabant air-cooled engine, 500 cc (31 in the engine) - was upgraded to 600cc in 1962-63 - derived from pre-war DKW design with minor changes during the production process. The first Saab car has a larger two-stroke engine (764cc), water-cooled, two-cylinder. Wartburg, the East German sedan manufacturer, also uses water-cooled engines, three cylinders, 1,000 cc (61 Â ° c), two-stroke DKW.
The original trabant, introduced in 1958, is P50. Trabant's basic model, it shares a large number of parts exchanged with the latest 1.1s. The 500Ã, cc, 18Ã, hp (13Ã, kW) P50 evolved into a 20Ã, hp (15 kW) version with a fully synchronized gearbox in 1960, and received 23Ã, hp, 600Ã, cc engines in 1962 as P60.
The updated P601 was introduced in 1964. Basically this is a P60 facelift, with a different front fascia, bonnet, roof and rear and the original P50 base. The model remains virtually unchanged until the end of its production except for the addition of 12V power, rear coil spring and updated dashboard for subsequent models.
Trabant's designers expected production to be extended to 1967 at the latest, and East German designers and engineers created a series of more sophisticated prototypes intended to replace the P601; some exhibited at the Dresden Transportation Museum. Each proposal for the new model was rejected by the East German government due to the shortage of required materials in larger quantities for more sophisticated designs. Consequently, Trabant remains largely unchanged for more than a quarter of a century. Also unchanged is its production method, which is very labor intensive.
The Trabant 1100 (also known as P1100) is a 601 with a better performance of 1.05 liter, 45HP VW Polo engine. With a more modern look (including gear mounted on the floor), it is quieter and cleaner than its predecessor. 1100 has front disc brakes, and the wheels assembled from Volkswagen. It was produced between 1989-1991, parallel to the two-stroke P601. Except for engines and transmissions, many parts of the older P50s, P60 and 601 are compatible with 1100.
1989-1991
In mid-1989, thousands of East Germans began loading as many Trabants as they could and went to Hungary or Czechoslovakia on their way to West Germany on the "Trabi Line". Many had to get special permission to move their Trabant to West Germany, because the cars did not meet the West German emissions standards and polluted the air with four times the European average.
The licensed version of the Volkswagen Polo engine replaced the Trabant two-stroke engine in 1989, the result of a trade agreement between East and West Germany. The model, Trabant 1.1, also has slight improvements to brakes and signal lights, renovated grille, and MacPherson struts, not leaf-spring chassis. When 1.1 began production in May 1990, the two German states had approved the reunification.
By April 1991, 3.7 million vehicles had been produced. However, it soon became clear that there was no place for Trabant in the re-unified German economy; inefficient and labor-intensive production lines survive with government subsidies.
The Trabant ceased production in 1991, and the Zwickau plant in Mosel (where Trabant 1.1 was produced) was sold to Volkswagen AG; the remainder of the company became HQM Sachsenring GmbH. Volkswagen rebuilt the Zwickau plant, which is the center of machine production and produces several Volkswagen Golfs and Passats.
1990s and later
According to Richard Leiby, Trabant has become "a symbol of technological and social backwardness of the East German state." Trabant became famous in the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when many were abandoned by their eastern owners who migrated to the west. In contrast to Lada Niva ,? Koda Estelle, Polski Fiat and Yugo, Trabant did not sell well in Western Europe.
A Trabant could be purchased with just a few Deutsche Marks during the early 1990s, and much was given. Although prices recovered when they became collector's goods, they remained cheap cars. In his project Bodywork , performance artist Liz Cohen transformed Trabant 1987 to 1973 Chevrolet El Camino. Trabant planned to return to production in Uzbekistan as Olimp during the late 1990s, but only one model was produced.
Former Bulgarian Foreign Minister and Bulgarian Club of Bulgaria founder Solomon Passy owns Trabant who was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 2002 and who took NATO Secretary General Manfred WÃÆ'¶rner, George Robertson, and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer for rides. In 2005, Passy donated a vehicle (which has become a symbol of the NATO accession of Bulgaria) to the Bulgarian National History Museum. In 1997 Trabant was celebrated for passing the moose test without rolling over, just like the Mercedes-Benz W168; Thuringian headlines read, "Come and get us, moose! Trabi escapes from the Class A killer test".
Trabant entered the world of diplomacy in 2007 when Steven Fisher, deputy chief of mission at the British Embassy in Budapest, used 1.1 (painted as close to the British racing green) as his diplomatic car. The American Trabant owner celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall with Parade Trabants, an early November annual rally held in Washington, DC The event, sponsored by the private Spy Eye Museum, includes street tours in Trabants, rides, live German music and displays on East Germany.
Car settings
Trabant's first tuning drive starts at the start of production, utilizing car weight and front wheel drive traction. His old-fashioned appearance and two-stroke engine sound made him popular among car tuners in Central Europe.
Some variations exist in two general groups. The first maintains a two-stroke-engine sound by tuning the original two-cylinder engine for higher performance or using a two-stroke propulsion unit designed for other cars, such as the Wartburg 1000cc). Because Trabant is light - 750 kg (1,653 lb) - a small increase in engine power can rapidly increase its power-to-weight ratio. Some fans have used Trabant that is durable and easy to set for rally and other racing types.
The second group includes various modifications of increased traction of the car to replace the engine, leaving only the body on top of a powerful modern car (eg, Sascha Fiss Volkswagen Lupo GTI). Other modifications incorporate Trabant's body with Japanese superbike engines, such as the Suzuki Hayabusa (a combination known as Trabusa). Some of these cars have rated power of more than 150 hp (112 kW). Trabant's light weight provides a power-to-weight ratio of 11 pounds/hp (149 W/kg), delivering performance vehicles comparable to modern mid-range sports cars.
Planned reintroduction
The Herpa company, the Bavarian miniature vehicle manufacturer, purchased the rights on behalf of Trabant and showed the newTrabi scale model at the Frankfurt Motor Show 2007. Plans for production include a limited run, possibly with BMW engines. The Trabant nT model was launched two years later in Frankfurt.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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