Wartburg models

Wartburg was a car brand from Eisenach in Thuringia. The name first appeared in 1898 on the Wartburgwagen built by Automobilwerk Eisenach; it was dropped in 1904 and returned in the early 1930s on the BMW 3/15 DA-3 Wartburg, built when the factory belonged to BMW.

In East Germany the state-owned VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach (AWE) revived the name in 1956 on an updated IFA F9. The Wartburg 311 followed from 1956 to 1965 as the first model of the new generation, and the Wartburg 353, introduced in 1966, became the brand's best-known model. Like the Trabant, Wartburgs used two-stroke engines, here a three-cylinder unit with very few moving parts, until 1988, when the Wartburg 1.3 received a licensed four-stroke Volkswagen engine. After German reunification AWE was dissolved, and production ended on 10 April 1991. After that, Opel acquired the Eisenach factory site from the dissolved state-owned company. See also Trabant and BMW.