Reminds me of the first time I saw a Trabant. We were on the autobahn at night in southern Germany somewhere in 1991. The slow lane was moving slower than usual plus there was a haze of blue-black smoke in the air. It didn't take too long to find the reason for the slow traffic and the cloud of pollution. It was a strange, dirty, kinda rusty and quite ugly car, one which I'd never seen before. It still had East German plates on it which was my first clue to its level of quality! :) LOL
They exist. Im from east germany were it was build. Here it is a iconic car and many people drive this and tune it up. A friend of me built an hayabusa engine with bigger Turbos in this car. It has reached over 250kmh on the Autobahn and goes 0-60 in 3,2 Sec. .Also, an Trabant with Honda engine (0-60 2,4sec) exist. And some other tuned "Rennpappen"(racecardboards, a Nickname of the Trabant )also. I am currently building an 2jz trabant with over 700hp and widebody (15-25cm wider fenders). Mine isn't a sleeper anymore after the restoration and tuning but the trabant from my friend is an ultimate sleeper which kills almost every stock Porsche.
I remember seeing some rather naff comedy film in the 90s which was based around the whole idea of some East German inventor modifying his Trabant into something that could get him over The Wall... basically putting something on the engine that made it ludicrously fast and economical, and jumping it over a ramp. Then becoming disillusioned with the west when everyone tried to steal his design for their own purposes, eventually trashing the mods and going home... very odd. Anyway, there's plenty of scope for wedging e.g. a Hayabusa motorcycle engine in there and making something that could, if not beat the 1000hp modified Mustangs, at least have a fighting chance against other more stock run-what-ya-brungs. Common mod for original Minis, Smart cars, Westfield/Caterham ultralights and the like.
Well, usually engines do loose some power over their lifespan, and no matter what you do, unless you completely rebuilt the engine you'll never get it up to the original hp again. So if it still has 25 of 26 that's outstanding.
In 1970 there was a double victory of two Trabants in the Monte Carlo Rally in the class of the cars up to 850 cc. The GDR-team was felicitated by Grace Kelly and Rainier. The Trabant was the overall weakest car with 46 HP and the spikes tyres were self-made. Nevertheless, the two Trabants won against the Minis and Fiats with bigger and more powerfull engines under heavy winter conditions.
@@michaelboyko5024 The story is true and proven and there's no place to make fun out of it! They took a weakened and rusted Trabant to falsify the crashtests with the aim of selling more new cars. Doing the tests correctly the Trabant was better than its western counterpart's!
Not having a seatbelt is a very important part of the weight reduction.And 50MPH was the speed limit on East-German country roads.No truely communist car would go faster.
@@michaelpielorz9710 I dont know where you got this speed limit number, but I was born in the GDR and in town we had 50kmh => 31.05 mph, outside town it was 100kmh => 62.1mph and on the Autobahn 120kmh => 75mph . Mom and Dad drove our Trabant 601 up to 60 on the countryroad and let me tell you the car has a stiff riggid case construction and the body on top is made of fibre inforced resin parts - in a crash there is nothing realy to reduce the impact force - even if it is a slow comi-car...seatbelt maybe is not a bad choice ;)
you know, trabant, simson and wartburg were all meant for easy fixing for the people of the GDR and every screw and every part was so well thought through, that most of it can be fixed in so little time, because you don't need to de-build the whole car.
When I was a teenager, we took a ride with my friends in a Trabant, and we were able to reach 90 km/h with 3 of us in the car. It had a stock engine. It definitely was an unforgettable experience to drive that thing. Especially off road.
@@thecow2756 not really, the stock 2 stroke engine could go 120km/h and even more in an ideal scenario. the one seen in the video is just poorly maintained, the engine is in poor condition and so is the transmission (hence why the guy is rebuilding the engine right now) plus the trabant was originally designed to run on leaded fuell, which i doubt he is using here, you can still get it at airports that allow vintage planes to start and land, you don't need a lot of it, just mix a little into the fuel mix and it'll run a lot smoother with fewer backfires.
@Tian kay It was the 1.1 Liter Volkswagen Polo engine, which was the second weakest car engine available in 1985. It had to be throttled down to 30 kW as it turned out to be far too strong for the rest of the Trabant. That car was a mess. In a NACP crash test it would get five tombstones instead of stars.
@@tristan6509 No, it was NOT recycled plastic, but a mixture of cotton and polyester resign - heavier and more expensive than sheet metal. Nevertheless rust was a severe problem on this car, as the frame was made from cheap steel with a more or less symbolic rust protection.
Well, perhaps modern ignition with CPU might help to wake up all the horsepower? You could have a switch on the dashboard Normal and Sports mode, or Caterpillar One and Caterpillar Two modes... :) good luck with your Trabant!
The golf cart would have hammered that Hungarian deathtrap, it's probably got a better power-weight than the Trabant (even if it's electric, those motors get a decent amount of horsepower)
John Doe I've seen them in the wild in East-Germany before the wall came down, and that as someone who lived in the Netherlands. One was allowed to visit family for events like holidays after all, as long as all the paperwork was in order. I've also seen them in Hungary as well though, just as much as having seen the Yugo in Yugoslavia (before that came tumbling down as well). ;)
@Ambrose Burnside You know what is also a nice vehicle? A DAF with variomatic automatic transmission, which is a seemless transmission that makes the car go as fast backwards as it can go backwards. It is a Dutch car and we used to race them backwards across the former Formula 1 circuit of Zandvoort. Great fun that was to watch.
I wonder if a more powerful engine could be squeezed under the hood. The body is light so it probably wouldn't take much power to get it moving. I doubt the stock transmission could take the extra power, and of course, a gas tank would have to be installed. A Trabant street rod, that would be an interesting vehicle. It would also be a little embarrassing to get blown off the road by a Trabant.
@@redstickham6394 If you put in a more powerful engine you'd also have to change a lot of the rest. Neither the suspension, nor the drive train or any other things were designed to work with a powerful engine. This car was basically built to drive in cities in a time when the only bigger vehicles were buses and lorries. Today it is totally unsafe. If some guy in a SUV hits you in your Trabbi you're fucked.
That sounds like the time when I told my friend in the US that I had a Simson in Hungary as a teenager 25 years ago. I looked it up and it had 3.7 HP. Maaaan , he couldn't stop laughing. I had to mention the .7 , come on , that's almost 25% of the power it had :D He was riding a Hayabusa at the time and I had the Yamaha MT10
First thing first, design dual resonator exhausts for both cylinders, do a basic 2stroke cylinder "tuning" , reinforce everything connected to the crankshaft to prevent it exploding at 10000rpm , get dual carbs on it... U might get 50hp out of it :D At least DDR rally teams did back in the day :) Greetings from Hungary
Add resonators,cut the top of the cilynders to increase compression to almost diesel,leave the crank and bearings alone,they do fine.Make water cooled cilinder heads and add high speed ignition.Change the carb with a bigger one .This can easily have 140-160 Hp and weigh just 600 kg.Would eat a.lot of fuel thogh .Its made to be only 26 hp so that it eats less fuel .
Maybe you don't know, but there existed racing Trabant in its time! Made 180 to 200 km/h and had a quite good road handling (would easily win against any US-car). I actually watched a race of that Trabants and was quite surprised. On a circuit with many curves and only one straight section, the Trabant were clearly faster than the Ford Mustangs due to much better handling!
you very likely talking about this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lCDJngP9Sdc.html was at the track back then. Fun too watch but to be honest, the M3 driver was very gentle with his car. Never the less, good driving by Wolfgang Ziegler. He won the championship in the lada-trabant series, so he knows the car very well
Josh Adamson He rather shouldnt put a rollcage there, it would be heavier than the whole car. The frame is literally made from fabric with a glue like thing and compressed together
The track time is not bad actually. A lot better than I would have expected. Cool video. :) Back in the day I thought the US did not allow these cars in due to the emissions and safety but glad they allowed a few after all.
There is a guy in Poland who put an Audi TT engine in his Trabant. Because it’s so small and light it beats Porsches and other cars in accelerating. It’s lovely to see this as well from my country, Hungary. We had an estate version of these when I was really small. 😀
I remember this car from when I was in Hungary. We ran out of gas and I'm sitting there thinking "this will be fun on some back road in the middle of nowhere" and then the driver goes "dont worry I just need to open the reserve tank". On the way to the gas station he was telling me that you must shut off the valve before filling the reserve tank or it will drain into your main tank and if you run out again you will not have any reserve.... I guess it happened to him once before.
Trabi is the best car ever!! Just looking at it brings so much joy, and everywhere you drive it, there must be a sea of smiles (once the smoke clears). Thanks for making my day with this awesome video!
A sub-30s 0-50mph time with only 25hp is pretty damn good, particularly as you probably weren't revving it absolutely as hard as technically possible to avoid blowing it up (I bet it can hit at least 50 in third; they were _allegedly_ good for just about 60 in top when new, and that's about what I'd estimate for that much power vs those lacking aerodynamics). Must be even lighter than it looks...
I'm sorry I haven't laughed this hard in a long time... Now I remember why I subscribed to your Channel ...lol You both deserve a participation trophy 💓💓👍
It depends. If you go against wind its only about 55 MPH. So 49 MPH is not so bad at all at first try. Not mentioning that, this short distance is not enough to accelerate up to the top speed. This is not an imperialist racecar.
aaahhhhh...not just 100kph. Back in the days when I was a child my father and some other guys were racing on the eastern german autobahn. Some of them where even doing 115kph (around 72mph). That was a great advantage when you raced another Trabant which was just doing 112kph. But even though, please keep in mind that the Trabant's maximum speed is around that value american people are ALLOWED to go on an interstate. :-D
OMG, this is hilarious. Back in early 1990’s spent some time working in former East Germany. The car which we were given to use was a Trabant. Fueled by premix gas from the pump, paper machae body, fuel level checked with a stick, etc, etc.... And an absolute blast to drive around. For weekends we rode around in the plant owners 500 series Benz. For speed it’s the Benz, for absolute fun it’s the Trabant.
If (or when) I get a Trabant to modify, I have already decided what engine is going in it. A Wartburg engine. It's still very communist and smoky, but it would be way faster and sound quite good.
Hey man! Funny stuff, but you know that you could actually get Trabis in Hungary that would make the Mustang owners cry, right? With a Hayabusa engine i.e.? By the way in your comments you mention you would put a Wartburg engine in another one if you had, like a "tuned one". They actually made late models in 1990s with 1.1 VW Polo engines, that went into the Wartburgs as well. But if you look up on RU-vid, you'll find all kinds of solutions. But the orig engine can also kick some ass, they did use these cars in Rally, you know. And there is the next point. Actually, even if the car is tall, the center of its gravity is so low that it is very difficult to roll it over. You can get it to lift one wheel off the ground relatively easy, but it is not at all easy to roll it. Those goons were wrong in their assessment!
Hello! Congats to the Trabi! As far as I can remember there were some slightly tweaked ones what can reached even 90-95 Km/h. Average good conditions can run 80-85 max. And not for a prolonged time... Keep it up, it is a living peace of history. :)
jesus guys, its mechanical thing. Owner just have to do some stuff to bring power back. Trabant engines were renewed at around 50K Km. After that you had to rebore and change pistons and stuff. Doesent matter how old it is, its just about how do you care about it. And i am from former comunistic country so i know Trabants very well :)
After the Iron Curtain fell, all of the people of the Sowjet Union and the GDR came over to us in the western part of Germany in their Trabbis. They were doing barely 140 km/h (ca. 90 miles) and we all had big BMWs or Mercedes going at least 200 or maybe even 250km/h (140 to160 mph). A friend of mine had a new BMW 750i and used to "play" a game we called "Trabbischaukeln" roughly "Rocking the Trabbis". Whenever he saw a Trabbi on the Autobahn, he went as fast as he could and passed the Trabbi pretty close, which resulted in the Trabbi rocking from side to side pretty badly. To be honest, it was pretty stupid and really dangerous, but we were young, had a lot of money and didn´t really care about all that. Sorry to all of you Trabbi drivers out there we rocked.
DarkWolf Gaming LOL the frame would bend under the load of a V8 engine even if we're talking about lightweight small block V8s. Trabants are basically made from paper 😂
It is a carburetted 2-Stoke, you literally can´t turbo this with any sence. The Pressure would push the fuel back into the fuel tank. It would be possible to supercharge it, though. Even if you would need to move the carburettor to another spot in the engine to have enough space for the Supercharger and this would mean, that you have to have a Fuel Pump, which this car hasn´t...
That was the greatest Trabant video ever!! I actually remember it growing up in communist Poland 1980s as a dream of many people those days. It was a first car one off my class mates
0:27 _Ahh-!!_ I'm running! I'm running!! CLASSIC SERPERNTINE MANEUVOR! SERPENTINE! SERPENTINE! _SERPENTIIIIINE!!!_ Bwahaha, I was expecting a sleeper here, but oh, well. You turned some heads and rolled some eyes, and that was enough.
