ZWICKAU, Germany, Oct. 4 — With their two-stroke
engines, they sputtered along the roads of the former
Communist East German like souped-up lawn mowers.
They were boxy and homely. Their plastic bodies came in
four drab colors. They were so light, a handful of college
students could play pranks on teachers by carrying them
away to unknown spots. But East Germans had to wait 15
years and pay more than a year's salary for the privilege
of owning one.
This, of course, was the Trabant, a clattering, bone-rattling
heap of socialist technology that was the principal mode
of personal transportation for almost four decades in East
Germany and that by the fall of Communism became
despised as representing everything wrong with the system.
.
Once East Germans had the opportunity in 1990 to buy
an Opel or a Volkswagen made in the West, orders for
more than 1.5 million Trabants fell to zero in three months.
But how things change. The Trabi, as it is affectionately
known in Germany, has developed a cult following.
There are Trabi owners associations. There are Trabi
rallies every summer. Trabis have been turned into stretch
limousines,
checkered taxis, dune buggies. Owners can convert their
trabbies into convertibles for $1,300.
And for the ultimate socialist-capitalist mix, change the
front grill, put on some chrome trim, and you get a Trabillac.
In this town, where all the 3,096,099 Trabants were built,
the last 444 new ones go on sale next week, at the
equivalent of $13,600,
nearly 20 times the original price.
Ulf Rittinghaus, managing director of Sachsenring
Automobiltechnik, which produced the Trabis, says
that the Trabi sale has generated 600 inquiries, including
one Japanese auto maker that offered to
buy the entire lot.
"It is absolutely unsafe and terrible, but it is one
of the nicest old legends we now have in Germany,"
Mr. Rittinghaus said.
"It is the last product that exists intact as it did
during the socialist times."
Some rather strong social and emotional currents
underlie this new love for the Trabant.
Five years after German reunification,
many in the east are caught in a deep melancholic
funk in which they long for the former days when
everyone had a job, rents did not rise,
no one was dismissed, child care was free
and food was cheap and always on the table.
"After the war the Russians took all our automobile technology
and equipment, literally 32,000 pieces of machinery, and we
had to build the Trabant up from nothing," said Frank
Bretschneider, a technical engineer in the Sachsenring plant.
"So we have something to be proud of. The only trouble was
the political system stopped technological development of the
car, so at the end we were producing cars in 1990
with a 1960's design."
To be sure, sitting squeezed into the front seat of one of the
new Trabis that will go on sale next Wednesday,
with its thin door panels, plastic strap door pulls
upholstered map shelf underneath the simple black
dashboard, reminds one of Volkswagen beetles of the
early 1960's.
