Prior to the re-unification of Germany, the Trabant, or "Trabbi" was the East German equivalent of the VW Beetle, or the Mini, in that it was a small, basic, no frills car for the common man. Between 1962 and 1991 over 3,000,000 were made. The 601 version was introduced in 1964, and remained in production pretty much unchanged until 1990. The last few Trabants made between 1990 and 1991 had a 1.1litre VW Polo engine, but by then nobody wanted Trabants anymore. The Trabbi became synonymous with the TV images seen in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, as hundreds of thousands of East Germans drove their small noisy Trabants into West Germany on day trips into the West. U2 for their 1991 album "Achtung Baby" had Trabants on the album cover, and in a way the Trabant was a cool car for a year or two! The fact that it was an awful car to drive, and environmentally unfriendly (thanks to a smokey air cooled two-stroke 2 cylinder engine) led to it's rapid decline into obscurity again! Most East German's held little sentiment for the car once they had access to newer modern cars like the rest of Germany enjoyed.
The bodywork was not metal, but instead was made of plastic resin reinforced with fibres such as cotton. Earlier Trabants were made of resin reinforced paper mache! This model however is made of diecast metal. Like the real thing, this is a no frills model, but it appears accurate in scale and the bonnet opens to show the front air-cooled twin engine. An unusual model overall, and it gets 6/10 from me!
