East Meets West - 1981 Trabant 601S

Luke Vancraeynest jokes that when he bought his 1981 Trabant 601S, he got the full East German experience: He paid for the car, and then had to wait five years to drive it.

In Luke's case, though, the long wait was caused not by the shortcomings of the Eastern Bloc nation's centrally planned economy, but by the simple fact that, at just 11 years old, he wasn't old enough to drive when his Trabant arrived on our shores.

This, naturally, prompts two questions. How does an 11-year-old living in New York decide that he wants to own something as offbeat as a Trabant? And, perhaps more importantly, how do we spread that kind of desire among all of the nation's 11-year-olds? Perhaps no one holds the answer to the second question, but Luke can fill us in on the first.

It seems that Luke, who's now 18, became inspired while watching the 2008 movie Get Smart, the one that cast Steve Carell as Agent 86 and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Among all the cars that appeared on screen, it wasn't the Ferrari 360 Spider, or the 1965 Sunbeam Tiger, or even the 1971 Opel GT that caught his attention. No, it was the 1982 Trabant 601, a car with a bit part, that had him searching IMCDb.org, the Internet Movie Car Database. From there, he did more research.

"I'd always been into smaller cars, everything from Beetles to [Citroën] Deux Chevaux to [BMW] Isettas," he explains. "But Isettas and Messerschmitts can come with quite a price tag. Even Deux Chevaux in recent years have been climbing up in price. [The Trabant] just kind of stood out to me as similar in a sense, and a lot of the descriptions that I read about it said it was East Germany's Beetle, it was East Germany's Deux Chevaux, it was East Germany's Fiat 500."

Produced at VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, East Germany, the Trabant was about as simple as it could be, with no oil pump, no water pump and no distributor. The body panels were constructed of Duroplast, a tough, lightweight material made by impregnating layers of paper, wool or glass cloth with a synthetic resin. The 601 was launched in 1964 as the successor to the Trabant 500, or P50, with an additional 100 cc of displacement and roll-up windows. It changed little during its 26 years in production, when 3,099,096 were made.

Luke's people's-car preferences were well established by the time he was eight, when he and his family went to Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut, for the 2006 Historic Festival, held over the Labor Day weekend. In the camping area, it was a Fiat 500 Giardiniera, the tiny three-door wagon, that got his pulse racing; out on the track, it was a Fiat 600 Abarth, playing its traditional giant-killer role. It was from the owner of the Giardiniera, Charles Gould, that Luke's parents bought him a copy of the A to Z Encyclopedia of Microcars and Scooters, which he proceeded to devour. (His friendship with Charles would later play an important part in Luke's ownership of the Trabant, as we'll see.)

In 2009, with his parents' approval, Luke went looking for a Trabant to call his own. He found one on German eBay. The good news: The buy-it-now price was a reasonable $3,500, which was within his savings. The better news: The price included shipping from Germany to one of three East Coast ports. The seller was a BMW dealer. "I'm not sure what purpose he had the car for," Luke says. "There's some lettering that you can see in a certain light, that's been painted over. I'm not sure what it says, but it's a pretty safe bet that it was used for some sort of advertising at some point. I think its advertising life was something that came upon it after the wall came down."

The car was shipped to Baltimore, and transported by flatbed to the family's home in Pound Ridge, New York. Luke remembers the date: May 7, 2009. "If I remember correctly, I teared up a bit," he says. "The way my mother describes it was, it was a real overcoming by emotions of all sorts, so it was a lot to take in, really."

Charles Gould, the Giardiniera owner, is also the host of an annual gathering of minicars and microcars at his home in Newton, Massachusetts. Luke had begun attending the year before he bought the Trabant, and in 2010 was able to bring the car to the show for the first time--thanks to his mother, who rented the necessary U-Haul trailer.

There are some pretty accomplished mechanics, amateur and professional both, at these microcar shows, and for them, at least half the fun is in helping owners sort out problems with their cars. Luke's car was suffering from a leaking fuel petcock, which got a temporary fix until he could get home and order a new part. (Trabant parts are in fact available; Luke buys his from trabantwelt.de in Germany, which will sell you a muffler for $70, or an armrest for $20.)

Each year, the Trabant got better. "One year it was the points that were the issue, and another year it was getting the carb down to a healthy-ish mixture," he recalls. "Basically, we would trailer it up, and it would either more or less be running okay and we'd be fine, or Carter, Jon, Charles, Steve, Kyle, so many other people--I would like to keep going, but over the years it's been quite a few--would very generously help me out."

Finally, in 2014, Luke got his learner's permit, and graduated from Trabant owner to Trabant driver. He'd done plenty of "yard driving," and had gotten a feel for the shifter, the clutch, and the behavior of the 594.5-cc, two-stroke, air-cooled twin. "It was very fun. It was a great experience," he recalls.

The Trabbi is in regular use, taking Luke on the six-mile drive to school, on errands around town, to friends' houses, and on the occasional long trip, such as the 180-mile drive to the microcar show. He's become quite attached to the car, appreciating it for its individuality, and has learned to accept its limitations--to the point where he can rationalize many of them away.

"I like classic VW Beetles, but everyone likes them... but people really are dumbfounded when they see this car and they have no clue," he says. "It's fairly rare that someone will actually know it. And when they do, it's usually because they grew up with those cars in some Eastern European country or another. That's a part that I really like about it." In fact, during an afternoon of driving in and around Stamford, Connecticut, where Luke and his mother now live, two people--both Polish expatriates--shouted out, "Nice Trabbi!"

What about the Trabant's reputation as a slow, smoky conveyance that East Germans drove only because they couldn't buy anything else? Luke observes that the passage of time has done much to soften the little car's image. "I don't think anybody is outwardly hateful towards it," he observes. "There are people who feel nostalgic about them, and then there are others who say, 'Oh, this is the biggest piece of s*** that we had!' But they usually end with, 'But it was what we had, it was what we used, it was ours.'"

There is a discipline to living as an East German motorist in modern Western traffic. "You will notice, while driving it, that you cannot enter traffic the way you would any other car. It's not ridiculously sluggish, but you certainly need to know the gap you need to get in and get up to speed with the rest of traffic. That's something I've had to learn," he says. Sometimes, it's the other motorists who get in his way, as when he's trying to build momentum for a long, steep hill that's part of his regular drives, and gets caught behind a slower driver.

Still, Luke is philosophical. "I won't lie, I don't dislike driving fast. It's not the only car I've ever driven. It's not really a matter of that. But at the same time, I don't mind driving that slowly," he says. "It's mostly the acceleration that's very sub-par. Once you get it moving, it'll do local speeds very easily, it will keep up with everyone going 45-50 miles an hour, it's as fast as you really want to be going around town here.

"I can have a bit of safe fun while I'm driving, because I can wind out each gear in that car to 4,000 or 5,000 RPM, and I will be keeping up with traffic--I will not be blowing past people or driving in a way that might get me pulled over."

Luke has already turned down the offer of a 2009 Smart Fortwo in trade, and expects to hold onto the Trabant for as long as it lasts. There are no plans to change its appearance, though he wouldn't mind replacing the 600-cc engine with a 900-cc, air-cooled triple from a Wartburg, for some additional help with those hills.

For the immediate future, drives in the Trabant will be an occasional pleasure; Luke has just begun his first year at college, where he will be studying mechanical engineering and German. Wait--mechanical engineering and German? Wouldn't that be ideal preparation for becoming a Trabant specialist?

"All part of the plan," he quips.

1981 TRABANT 601S

Engine Two-cylinder, air-cooled two-stroke, aluminum block and cylinder head Displacement 594.5 cc (36.2-cu.in.) Bore x stroke 72 mm x 73 mm Horsepower 26 @ 4,200 RPM Torque 40-lb.ft. @ 3,000 RPM Compression ratio 7.6:1 Induction BVF type 28 HB single-barrel carburetor Gearbox Four-speed manual, fully synchronized 0 to 50 MPH 22.5 seconds Top speed 62 MPH Overall length 138.2 inches Overall width 59.1 inches Overall height 56.7 inches Wheelbase 79.5 inches Curb weight 1,356 pounds