That's actually a historical car on an many engineering standpoint.
First composite material (sort of a plastic+cotton mix).
First unibody.
and I forget a number of mechanical firsts too. That car's design, a task refused by the state, was actually done part time and clandestinely by the engineers because they knew they could do something truly unique, new and durable. They won. There are Traban clubs all over the world. It's become sort of a cult.
There was a whole TV special made recently about them.
People have come to see Anderson's style as silly, but what they don't understand is that he has mastered the look of 1962 so well it only seems silly but is actually pitch perfect.
A German teacher of mine bought a Trabbie as a young lass after reunification because they were so cheap and she didn't care what happened to it. She said she once saw group of guys pick one up and throw it into a dumpster.
A German friend of mine says sometimes people in W. Berlin would get drunk and go into E. Berlin and go Trabant-tipping...like, 4-5 drunken idiots would have no problem lifting one of them up and flipping it over.
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