🏎️ Max Finds the car that proves Communism didn't work

presented with…

Good MORNING, dear readers. It’s Monday. It’s summer. Things are good on this side of the email.

They’re so good, in fact, that I decided today we should mix it up a little bit…

And write about a car being sold by a dealership called ‘Big Boys Toys’

Which… yes, I agree it seems like from that name they specialize in unmarked white-panel vans. But today’s car is NOT one of those. It’s…

A 1992 Trabant 601 S de Luxe!

What Makes The Trabbi So… Maybe Not Cool… but… Unique?

• It is perhaps the most IRONIC CAR OF ALL TIME

• It is historically, impressively, AWFUL

• Mystery Unique Section NUMERO THREE (no spoilers)

Today’s Edition is brought to you by Morning Brew

But First, the Highlights…

• 🌏️ Driven around the world: 0.00008x

• 🎼 Song to Get the Vibes Right: Nikita by Elton John

  • Which, interestingly, is about Elton having a crush on an East German guard.

• 🏇 Can beat 26 horses in a fight

• 💰️ Price: $24,093

It is the Most IRONIC CAR OF ALL TIME

Now, dear readers, you may be curious about what actually IS a Trabant? They don’t seem to be around today. You’ve almost certainly never seen one, and if you did, you probably didn’t notice. So… what is a Trabant?

IT, dear readers, is a vehicle so steeped in history and contradiction that it could very well have been designed by Alanis Morissette herself.

As ol’ double u double u dos (World War 2, if you’re a little slow this morning) ended, Germany was divided in half. The spoils of the Allied victory.

West Germany was controlled by Britain, France, and everyone’s favorite U S of A.

To quote myself from the Isetta episode we did a while back, West Germany “was democratic, promoted individual freedoms/entrepreneurship, and had things like universal healthcare.” Sounds pretty sweet, right? So sweet that West Germany’s turnaround is generally regarded as an economic miracle.

East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union, which followed a more Communist, centralized approach to government…

And they didn’t do a very good job of it.

To quote myself again (it’s called recycling, and its good for the planet, dammit) “the contrast [between East and West Germany] was such that the Soviet’s built the Berlin Wall in 1961 to prevent the mass exodus of East Germans from Soviet control into West Germany.”

The Trabant, as you may already be able to tell, was born on the somber side of the Berlin Wall. It was the Volkswagen Beetle of the East; designed for the masses, with the frugality of a monk and the reliability of a chocolate teapot.

But, what makes this thing ‘the most ironic car of all time’?

The Trabant we're looking at today isn't just any Trabant. This is a special edition that celebrates the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. That's right. A car that embodies the very essence of communist engineering commemorates the fall of the symbol of the same regime that spawned it. It’s like rain on your wedding day, or a free ride when you’ve already paid. Isn’t it ironic?

(pretty proud of myself for circling back to that Alanis Morissette reference)

It is historically, impressively, awful

Now that you know how and when the Trabant was born, you might be wondering more practical things like… Is it any good?

And, just a note: if you were still wondering that after reading the title of this section, you have my permission to take the rest of the day off, because you’re clearly delirious.

So, let’s talk about the “features” of the Trabant. You can count them on less than two hands worth of fingers:

• It drives

• You can sit in it

• It has some lights on the outside

• It has a speedometer

• It sometimes has seatbelts

• I am struggling to think of a sixth thing

“Max, thanks. You just described things that every car has”

Yes! True!

The difference is… those things are ALL the Trabbi has. Yeah, that means…

• It doesn’t have a fuel gauge, you have to use a dipstick

• It doesn’t have a tachometer, you just have to guess

• It doesn’t have indicators for your headlights or turn signals

• It doesn’t have a glove box, just kind of a glove… bucket?

• It didn’t have any seatbelts for a WHILE, but eventually they caved and put seatbelts only in the front

Even the windshield washer button is screwy. You have to manually plunge it, like a Windex bottle.

And before you go all hipster optimism on me and say “Minimalism iz kewl” please understand that there is a difference between minimalism by design, and minimalism by necessity.

There’s a reason this Trabant, which was one of the last ones ever built, looks exactly like the ones that were made 40 years before.

Trabbi’s were virtually unchanged in that span because of East Germany’s lack of capital & raw materials.

And it wasn’t just lack of features, it was poorly designed from its inception.

The fuel tank, for example, is located on top of the engine in the front of the car.

What do you design a car such that you put a tank of combustible gasoline on top of a hot engine, and then that car rear ends someone?

Fire. A big, huge, deadly, fire.

And it’s so terrible, it’s actually kind of charming

Before I dive into what I mean here, let me briefly quote the Wikipedia page for this Trabbi:

“The build quality was poor, reliability was terrible, and it was loud, slow, and poorly designed.”

Okay, here’s my philosophy on this:

“If you’re going to be bad, be really bad.”

Despite being a shining beacon of all things not to do when designing a car, there's something undeniably alluring about the Trabant. It's like the 'The Room' of cars, so astoundingly bad that it circles back around to being, in a bizarre twist, kind of good. Or, not good… but interesting? I’m not really sure how to put it into words. Unfortunately, however, it’s my job to try. So I’ll keep writing.

The Trabbi wasn’t even built out of metal, it was built out of Duraplast to save money. Duraplast is like a weird fiberglass variant, and what that ended up meaning is that these things don’t really rust, and never really go away.

They have the lifespan and acceleration of a below average tortoise.

It’s all of this accumulated awfulness that ends up making the Trabbi a pretty incredible conversation piece if you own one. It’s a piece of history and… a symbol of how far we’ve come.

So, I’m happy that Trabbi’s exist. It’s okay to do something poorly, on occasion. The real crime is to do nothing at all.

I promise to step off that soap box if you buy this car & let me take it for a drive. Maybe we even can go to next year’s Trabant Parade at the National Spy Museum together.

And remember…

MaxFindsCars.com is not, technically, free! By subscribing, dear reader, you have agreed to tell your friends about it.

In fact, I believe the contract specifically stated you had to each subscribe 100 of your closest friends, colleagues, enemies, exes, priests, pets, & sugar mommas. I’ll have to check the fine print to be sure, but you all may as well get started spreading the word in the meantime.

That's a wrap for today. New Editions come out every Monday & Friday! While you wait, go out and drive! And if you want more, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

• 🏎️💨 Contact for advertising

• 🏷️💲 Contact to promote a car sale

IF YOU’RE FUNNY, MEAN, OR NICE ENOUGH, YOUR REVIEW MIGHT GET FEATURED IN A FUTURE NEWSLETTER…

LIKE THIS ONE