Microcars from East Germany..Trabant, AWZ P70 Zwickau.

Trabant

The Trabant (/trəˈbɑːnt/; German pronunciation: [tʀaˈbant]) is an automobile which was produced from 1957 to 1990 by former East German car manufacturer VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau. Although it is often seen as symbolic of the defunct East Germany and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in general, it was a sought-after car in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Trabant had a hard plastic body mounted on a one-piece steel chassis (a so-called unibody or monocoque), front-wheel drive, a transverse engine, and independent suspension – unusual features at that time.

Called "a spark plug with a roof", 3,096,999 Trabants in a number of models were produced over nearly three decades with few significant changes in their basic design. Older models became popular with collectors in the United States due to their low cost and fewer restrictions on the importation of antique cars. The Trabant also gained a following among car tuning and rally racing enthusiasts.

Trabant means "satellite" or "companion" in German, derived from the Middle High German drabant (“Hussite foot soldier”). The car's name was inspired by the Soviet Sputnik satellite. The cars are often referred to as "Trabbi" or "Trabi". Produced without major changes for nearly 30 years, the Trabant became the most common automobile in East Germany. It came to symbolize the country during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as images of East Germans crossing the border into West Germany were broadcast around the globe.To acquire a Trabant, East German buyers were placed on a list; their waiting time depended on their proximity to Berlin, the capital.

The Trabant had a steel unibody frame, with the roof, trunk lid, hood, fenders and doors made of Duroplast, a hard plastic made from recycled cotton waste from the Soviet Union and phenol resins from the East German dye industry. It was the second car with a body made of recycled material; the first was the AWZ P70 Zwickau, produced from 1955 to 1959. The material was durable, and the average lifespan of a Trabant was 28 years.

The car had four principal variants:

• The P50, also known as the 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 1,043 cc (63.6 cu in) VW engine

AWZ P70 Zwickau

The AWZ P70 "Zwickau" is a car which was produced in East Germany by VEB Automobilwerke Zwickau (AWZ) between 1955 and 1959.

It succeeded the IFA F8 using the same 684 cc two cylinder, two-stroke engine but with a completely new Duroplast body. The saloon was introduced in 1955, followed by an estate version in 1956 and a coupé in 1957.

In 1958 AWZ was united with the former Horch factory to become the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau and the AWZ P70 became the Sachsenring P70.

The P70 was replaced by the Trabant P50 in 1959 after 36,151 examples had been produced.