Trabant models

Trabant was an East German car brand built by VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke in Zwickau, Saxony, in what was then the German Democratic Republic. The first Trabant left the line on 7 November 1957, and production of the small car continued for more than three decades.

Its body panels were made of Duroplast, a hard plastic produced partly from recycled cotton waste and phenol resins and mounted on a steel frame, and it was powered by a small two-stroke twin of 499 cc, later 594 cc. The range went from the P50 (later called the 500) to the 600 and the Trabant 601, which became the long-running mainstay from 1964. The last model, the 1.1, used a 1,043 cc four-stroke engine derived from the Volkswagen Polo. Production ended in April 1991, after more than 33 years. Sources give different totals, from about 3.1 million to 3.7 million cars. See also Wartburg and Horch.