Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. But history has been kind to the Trabi. Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator.

Trabant 601 (1964) The car's moment in the spotlight came with the fall of the Berlin wall, as citizens of the DDR spilled over the newly open East-West border in their "Trabis." There are still some 33,000 Trabants roaming the streets of Germany today.

The Trabi was often called Rennpappe ('racing cardboard'), as it was mainly made out of plastic. People called this kind of cheap plastic 'cardboard'.

The Trabant was a very basic car with a pre-war DKW-designed twin-cylinder two-stroke engine. Initially the engine produced 15 hp. The bodywork was made of lightweight Duroplast, which gave this later 26 hp model a reasonable top speed of 105 km/h (65 mph).