East German cars

[doubleyeller]

As posted in the lazy spotters thread, recently spotted this Trabant parked in the street in Manchester.

Which got me thinking: aside from Billy's Wartburg a year or two back, there has been no ownership of DDR cars on here.

Going back to when they were current (1991 back) : were Wartburgs / Trabis sold in the UK as per Skodas and Ladas? Anyone got any smokey 2-stroke tales of unreliability to relate? How cheap were they?

I suppose for example if you lived in Thurnscoe and only had to get 3 miles in a straight line up the road to't pit at 4am, and to the supermarket once a well then they were probably good enough really!

Doubleyeller collective

[horriblemercedes]

Wartburgs were sold in the UK (anyone know someone who has a Wartburg Knight?) but Trabants were not 

[D.E]

Afaik all RHD Trabants are later conversions, the factory never made any. 

[barefoot]

I had a trabbie as my daily for six years. It was lhd, two stroke and ok, It never really smoked and I wouldn’t have another. Bought and sold for £400. What more can I tell you?

[LightBulbFun]

2 hours ago, doubleyeller said:

Which got me thinking: aside from Billy's Wartburg a year or two back, there has been no ownership of DDR cars on here.

Pretty sure @TrabbieRonnie has 2 of the things!  (trabants that is)

2 hours ago, doubleyeller said:

Trabis sold in the UK

I do wonder about this

was anyone autoshite enough back in the day to bring over a Trabant from East germany to the UK when new?

like are there any Trabants registered in the UK from new? I know they where never officially sold here but I do wonder if anyone ever brought one over regardless somehow

[Inspector Morose]

Thee were a few of us on here that used to trip Trabants back after the wall came down. Apart from me, I think Mr Bickle used to do it was well. Proved to be a useful bit of extra cash plus a bit of fun.

Some of the more memorable trips include finding a hycomat in true time warp condition, ‘inheriting’ some tramps that came over in the back of a load of IFA W50s that Leavesley has bought to try and sell along with their other ex-military stock. We broke the tramps for parts (no papers, no identification) and made a profit but I think Leavesley weren’t so lucky as I used to see the W50s in their yars for years afterwards.

one of the last sorties was spectacularly unsuccessful as only one Trab was found. Cue four generously proportioned chaps cannonballing a dubiosly registered baby poo coloured Trab back to the UK from near Zwickau.

No brand new Trabbis were ever registered here although some of the 1.1s that came over were pretty new at the time. Wartburgs were not sold in the Uk after 1976 although there was one enterprising company that bought a load of 353s that had lay at a docks (somewhere around Egypt, I think?) . They advertised a ‘refurbishment’ service for your old Knight where they used the new parts from the dockyard cars to thoroughly refurbish you own.
Yeah. So thoroughly were they ‘ refurbished’, they almost looked like someone had just used the RHD bits of the old car and swapped that, along with its identity, onto a dockyard car, given it a blow over and hey presto! A completely rebuilt, as new, Wartburg! 
If you come across a Knight Lancastrian, it is one of those rebuilt jobbies. You might notice their similarity to a much later 353W that has had its identity taken from an older UK model. But that never happened. No, not ever. Honest.

[horriblemercedes]

35 minutes ago, LightBulbFun said:

Pretty sure @TrabbieRonnie has 2 of the things!  (trabants that is)

I do wonder about this

was anyone autoshite enough back in the day to bring over a Trabant from East germany to the UK when new?

like are there any Trabants registered in the UK from new? I know they where never officially sold here but I do wonder if anyone ever brought one over regardless somehow

It would've been a bit of work. It wasn't as simple as just walking into a dealership with some cash and buying one.

 

To be honest, I doubt they would've sold you one as a UK citizen without a GDR address and identity documents

[D.E]

5 minutes ago, horriblemercedes said:

It would've been a bit of work. It wasn't as simple as just walking into a dealership with some cash and buying one.

 

To be honest, I doubt they would've sold you one as a UK citizen without a GDR address and identity documents

To be fair, you wouldn't necessarily have to buy one in the Eastern bloc, they were sold new here (and some other countries in continental Western Europe) as well.  That would have been a lot easier.

[horriblemercedes]

1 minute ago, D.E said:

To be fair, you wouldn't necessarily have to buy one in the Eastern bloc, they were sold new here (and some other countries in continental Western Europe) as well.  That would have been a lot easier.

I admit, I didn't know that Trabants were sold new outside the bloc

[D.E]

9 minutes ago, horriblemercedes said:

I admit, I didn't know that Trabants were sold new outside the bloc

They were in a price range similar to the 2CV, but not nearly as popular.

[bangernomics]

I have a DDR simson schwalbe? It only has two wheels but it smokes like a traditional Cold War era vehicle should.

[Barry Cade]

I had an 89 Trab 2 stroke for a while..

 

[martc]

1 hour ago, bangernomics said:

I have a DDR simson schwalbe? It only has two wheels but it smokes like a traditional Cold War era vehicle should.

Interestingly* the Scwalbe was another DDR product never sold officially in the UK.

AFAIK the only IFA products (Industrieverband Fahrzeugbau ('Industrial Association for Vehicle Construction') was the state owned enterprise which produced all of the DDR's vehicles under different brand names, you could say it was their BL) sold here where the Wartburg 353, branded as the 'Knight', the MZ TS125 Alpine, TS150 Eagle and TS250 Supa 5 followed by their more modern ETZ variants (and before this the ES250 (not sure about the smaller ES's)) and the Simson S50 followed by the S51. And, of course, Multicar, the only surviving DDR automotive brand, still with us as 'Hako' - they make those small road cleaners/sweepers popular with local councils for cleaning footpaths etc.

All of the MZ's where a real success story here, the 125 was often the number one best seller in the UK in the '80's. Simson sold quite a few mopeds as well. I think the UK was the largest western European market for MZ, Wilf Green in Sheffield was the importer for both brands.

 

 

[Richard_FM]

My school friend & his Dad a few second hand MZs in the 1990s when they were cheap as chips & easy to fix up.

Someones I would help out when they needed an extra pair of hands, & Brut was almost the only thing that would get the smell of 2 stroke fuel of my hands!

I think the number plate from one they stripped down is still at my Mum's house.

[MiniMort]

Breaking out the Glass's Guides, I can tell you that the Wartburg 1000 (or 311 as it was known in East Germany) was first sold in Britain in April 1964. It was replaced with the improved 312 in September 1965 and the estate model followed in January of 1967.

The more famous boxy Wartburg (the 353) was sold in Britain as the Knight from January of 1967 as well. It got faceifted in July 1969 and August 1971 respectively and seemed to get withdrawn from sale at some point in 1975 or 76.

[sierraman]

I’ve tried but can’t seem to find any pictures of a Wartburg Lancastrian. Seem to recall they were in a copy of Practical Classics sometime in the late 90’s. 

[barefoot]

I can confirm that when I was a kid, our neighbour Bill, bought himself a 2 litre '66 Corsair & proclaimed, 'this will see me out!'. Much to everyone's surprise it did, & his wife Norma, (known to her friends as 'clutchfoot') replaced it with a Wartburg Knight. She was legendary. She used to back it out into the street in huge blue clouds of smoke and on occasion, she would pull straight off, but more regularly the thing would 'hunt' until it choked itself to death & she'd have to perform what felt like a very drawn out restart with traffic building in both directions.

[barrett]

23 hours ago, Inspector Morose said:

‘inheriting’ some tramps that came over in the back of a load of IFA W50s that Leavesley has bought to try and sell along with their other ex-military stock. We broke the tramps for parts (no papers, no identification) and made a profit.

This seemed like an incredibly dark turn of events before I remembered that the Trabant jeep thing is called a Tramp.

I've driven a two-stroke Trabant, it was brilliant. I've driven a two-stroke Wartburg and it was also brilliant. I'd have either in a heartbeat, although a Wartburg would be much more useful as just 'an car' these days. Seem pretty much unkillable, and they're really charming and pretty good to drive. As certain engineers will tell you, two-stroke engines could be significantly more efficient than an average Otto cycle engine, but they were killed off by public indifference and a lack of development. Our old DKW 3=6 is probably the smoothest, most relaxing 1950s small car to drive at speed. The engine is almost entirely silent, just a low turbine hum, and ridiculously smooth in operation. They only pop and bang and smoke at idle, really, and a sorted two-stroke is a much better engine than the shit British small cars had at the time. I've never understood the 'huh huh East German huh huh smokey' received opinion bollocks tbh.

[Inspector Morose]

My 1957 311 (the grey one) next to a mates 312 at some show somewhere. I drove that back from Poland after swapping the original engine for a scrapyard 353 lump. Years later I found the original engine in Gilford after a chap had bought it from the fella I’d bought the 311 from.

Looked nice, handled well but was full of rather dubious repairs to the structure and mechanics. My daily at the time was a  353S that  had come, indirectly, from Nick Larkin of Popular Classics.

It’s about time saabnut arrives here to remind me that my 1.3 is still sitting behind his shed.

[wuvvum]

They were a good looking car those 31Xs IMO.

The only Wartburg I've ever driven was Ed Weeks' green 353, which had been lowered somewhat, but I was really impressed with how it drove - smooth, nippy, lovely column shift gearchange, and the engine note was hilarious.

[sierraman]

48 minutes ago, Inspector Morose said:

My 1957 311 (the grey one) next to a mates 312 at some show somewhere. I drove that back from Poland after swapping the original engine for a scrapyard 353 lump. Years later I found the original engine in Gilford after a chap had bought it from the fella I’d bought the 311 from.

Looked nice, handled well but was full of rather dubious repairs to the structure and mechanics. My daily at the time was a  353S that  had come, indirectly, from Nick Larkin of Popular Classics.

It’s about time saabnut arrives here to remind me that my 1.3 is still sitting behind his shed.

Sad bastard that I am I recall him having a Wartburg on a B plate when he wrote for PC in the 90’s? Is it the same one? 

[sierraman]

Here it is. Like a man on a mission I HAD to find the article. Hasn’t been on the road since 2012 by sounds of it, could be in a garage someplace.

[sierraman]

From what I can ascertain the Lancastrian was the result of a failed export to Egypt with 1978 model year cars. For whatever reason they sat on the docks for 3 years then ended up being reexported back to the U.K. at which point a garage called Simpson’s of Colne stepped in - which to this day still trades as a Skoda dealer. Around 82/83 they offered to rebuild existing Wartburgs around the RHD set up of the rusty U.K. cars in to the Egyptian cars.

Technically then I guess since they fitted used parts then they should have been a Q plate but most retained the early seventies plates. So in summary old rack and steering into a new car which then sold for circa £2,000.

Small numbers presumably built from NOS RHD steering racks were registered new as FCK8**Y. Most of these seem to have crapped out in the mid 90’s so they did well to last that long. The one in the article looks as if it was a lower spec one without the chrome, just painted bumpers? 

[barrett]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

Here it is. Like a man on a mission I HAD to find the article. Hasn’t been on the road since 2012 by sounds of it, could be in a garage someplace.

Pretty sure that's still in Ed's shed awaiting some attention. No doubt it'll see the road again, but I think he's got plenty of other things on his plate these days

[Inspector Morose]

5 hours ago, sierraman said:

Sad bastard that I am I recall him having a Wartburg on a B plate when he wrote for PC in the 90’s? Is it the same one? 

B—-FOG aye, that was the one. Turned out to be a good one too. The S was the sporty model with floor change (most 353s were column change), front spoiler with built in fog lamps and a DDR copy of a twin choke downdraught Webber carb. 

[Datsuncog]

Haven't seen it for a while now, but there was a local giffer running a 70s-looking left-hooker Wartburg with a fairly recently issued Northern Ireland numberplate...

Stuff of legend.

(Sorry for the low-res dashcam crop - I do have a few marginally better pics of this car but can't put my hand to them right now!)

[Pieman]

5 hours ago, sierraman said:

From what I can ascertain the Lancastrian was the result of a failed export to Egypt with 1978 model year cars. For whatever reason they sat on the docks for 3 years then ended up being reexported back to the U.K. at which point a garage called Simpson’s of Colne stepped in - which to this day still trades as a Skoda dealer. Around 82/83 they offered to rebuild existing Wartburgs around the RHD set up of the rusty U.K. cars in to the Egyptian cars.

Technically then I guess since they fitted used parts then they should have been a Q plate but most retained the early seventies plates. So in summary old rack and steering into a new car which then sold for circa £2,000.

Small numbers presumably built from NOS RHD steering racks were registered new as FCK8**Y. Most of these seem to have crapped out in the mid 90’s so they did well to last that long. The one in the article looks as if it was a lower spec one without the chrome, just painted bumpers? 

That's the story I was trying to remember earlier - I used to know a guy (since emigrated to the Far East) who lived in Colne and raced Legends cars, I think he had something to do with that garage and had lots of info on the Wartburg rally cars of the 70s.