Bratislava

Bratislava – Bratislava Transport Museum (Trabant 601)

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This is the sort of car that really makes you feel like you’ve gone back in time, not to a glamorous era of chrome fins and leather driving gloves, but to something a bit more, well, functionally beige although at least it came in a choice of colours. It’s the Trabant 601, East Germany’s answer to the question no one in the West was asking, namely “How can we make a car that sounds like a chainsaw and smells like a lawnmower?” And yet, it is iconic.

This particular example, now safely imprisoned in the transport museum, would have rolled off the production line sometime between 1963 and 1991 (the last one fell off the production line on 30 April 1991) which doesn’t narrow things down much, since the design changed about as often as the Politburo. In an admirable commitment to aesthetic consistency, they decided not to modernise it at all over its 28 year production run. But why update perfection and all that?

The body isn’t metal, because that would be far too decadent. Instead, it’s made of Duroplast, which is what happens when you take cotton waste and add a lot of hope. To give them credit, it’s very eco-conscious as if you leave it out in the rain long enough, it may compost. The doors feel like they were designed by someone whose previous job was building filing cabinets, and there’s every chance they were. The logo on the front – a sort of stylised “S” stands for Sachsenring, the manufacturer. You can still buy Trabant badges on eBay for about £4, which feels both entirely fair and somehow excessive.

Inside, someone’s posed a mannequin behind the wheel, looking like she’s about to pop to the Intershop (and I am referring to the East German shops during the communist period, this isn’t a new business venture for Richard) for a packet of tea and some state-authorised toothpaste. The whole set-up includes picnic rugs, plastic chairs and a general feeling of socialist melancholy. There’s something quite charming about how defiantly unglamorous it all is. It’s not retro chic, it’s just well, rather retro. And not even on purpose.

It’s easy to mock the Trabant, and I merrily have, but there’s also something genuinely admirable about it. People waited years to get one of these. It was the people’s car, assuming the people didn’t mind an annual cloud of oil-smoke and the occasional need to push-start it on a cold morning. It’s also probably the only car that improved in value after reunification purely because it became an ironic statement. So yes, it’s slow, noisy, smelly, and makes a Sinclair C5 look like a Bugatti. But it’s also got character, which is more than can be said for most modern hatchbacks. I’d never drive one, obviously, but I’m rather glad it exists.