By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Just the other night I was watching “What’s My Car Worth?’ and feeling a bit despondent about the astronomically overinflated prices that a lot of owners (egged on by the stand-to-gain auction companies) believe their cars should command. Seriously: $70K for an Impala? Oh well, I thought, at least you can still get an AMC Eagle for under a grand. Or a Trabant. Hey, yeah, a Trabant! I’ve wanted one ever since U2 used them for their ZooTV set back when I was a kid. And now one has shown up on eBay in Washington State, just down the road! Oh, but wait, it looks like the seller’s probably got the reserve set at around 4 grand. Yep, for a duraplast car with a two-stroke motor and a kind of speckled history of kimpchy-cob repairs. The seller’s rationale for jacking the price is interesting, but the Trabant has acquired such a culty hipster following over the years that I’m sure there’s someone out there who will actually pay that for it. Check out the auction here.

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

I was at this hot rod party out in the cornfields of upstate New York once when this dude with flamethrowers on his ’55 Chevy backed up against a gasoline-saturated brush pile and lit it off. The detonation and resulting fallout left burn spots on primer, headers, and clothing alike, and it was a wonder it didn’t start a raging wildfire. This bunch of Euro hipsters sitting around an Ikea-perfect campfire and struggling to light it up with a two-stroke Trabant motor seems quaint by comparison, and a lot more safe. Cute, too.

Lighting the fire with a 2 stroke trabant )

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

I’ve always been fascinated with the cars of the Soviet Union and East Germany, so I was stoked to see that MicroManz is driving his 1981 Trabant around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Sure, the build quality might be sub-Yugo, and the 600cc two-stroke isn’t going to win any drag races, but I dig the styling of these little guys. If you have a suggestion for Photo of the Day, IM me!

Want to tour Berlin in a Trabant? I wonder what would be cheaper—taking the guided tour with Trabi Safari, or buying a Trabant and a guidebook? Read the full article at The New York Times.       

I’m not generally a fan of "art cars," but it seems to me that if you had a stamp collection you didn’t want anymore, this isn’t the worst possible way to dispose of it. The car reportedly belongs to a stamp dealer in Berlin, so maybe he just sees it as a way of moving out unwanted inventory—nice job! More pics below the jump.

Source: Spluch.

Continue reading "This Trabant Could Mail Itself Around The World" »

Update on the Yugo: since yesterday, the seller removed that deal-breaking 3500-dollar starting bid, so the Yugo convertible is now a NO RESERVE auction with 7 bids, currently at $405—now that’s more like it! However, the now priced-to-move Yugo isn’t the only Eastern-bloc oddity that’s surfaced on eBay in recent days. The seller of this Trabant apparently hasn’t learned by the Yugo’s example, and has a reserve price probably set somewhere in the stratsopshere. It’s too bad, because I’ve always wanted one of these Duroplast-bodied, two-stroke beauties, and would be more than happy to show up with $405 cash and a tow dolly to take it off his hands.

Model car manufacturer Herpa bought the rights to the Trabant and has announced a partnership with specialty car manufacturer IndiKar to produce an all-new, operational version of everyone’s favorite East German workhorse. Don’t expect the new Trabbi to hit showrooms anytime soon, but if it does, let’s hope it has something other than the 2-cyl 2-stroke engine or it’ll never pass US emissions. Full story at and press release at WorldCarFans.