It’s only fitting at Jalopy that we have a Trabant, the ultimate in vehicular simplicity and robustness. With a galvanised unitary constructed chassis, duroplast body panels and only five moving parts in the engine what could go wrong?
Our Comrade will be providing updates, the first of which starts at the beginning.
It was after another lapsed MOT on the car that I decided that I should go and buy something mechanically simple, older and more easily maintained. the prospect of lying underneath the modern vehicle making brake pipes to fit in some inaccessible region of the engine bay and above a fuel tank at the rear.
The options were endless, from older and probably rustier to the legendary toughness of a Saab, which is well covered by the Jalopy team anyway. So my mind wandered through a range of potential vehicles whilst searching the dreaded fleabay. Most of these were dismissed and many were simply too expensive, but I was soon going through the cla$$ics section and filtering my searches. Whilst doing this I was talking myself into simpler and simpler vehicles, such as the Renault 4 and 2CV, but usable examples were a bit too much, the latter even more so now.
What I needed was something with the mechanical simplicity of a small capacity motorcycle and reasonable rust protection. A Lotus would be ideal apart from failing comprehensively on the first bit, so it could have been a Ginetta, one of those Ford Siesta based ones. Whilst they could be found cheap enough, either option spelled trouble, what you gain in some areas you lose in others. Then it came to me, the simplest car I could reasonably get my hands on, a Trabant. A quick change of search and there was one going at auction at about the £500 mark. 1969 registered and with historic tax status there was an immediate benefit. I thought, surely that’s too cheap and bid it up to £510 and thought if I win it fine, but I doubted it.
I didn’t have long to wait as it ended in a couple of hours and I’d won. Errr, I just bought a car I announced to the household, who replied what do you mean you’ve just bought a car? Showing them the auction win brought a series of what on earth is it and where is it questions. Which was a good point, where is it?
Turns out it’s in London and I didn’t fancy attempting to drive an unproven old 2 stroke to North Derbyshire (Jalopy is somewhat midlands centric) even if it was Mot’d and taxed. So after arranging some payment for it I managed to track down those specialist hauliers who usually manage expensive vehicles. A few quotes were received and one was coming back empty from a job and for a little bit more than a train fare and fuel back it would turn up, so I didn’t need to take a day off work.
It only took a couple more days until I could survey my purchase and it arrived on a trailer behind a big Land Crusher 4×4. It looked pretty solid, with the metal structure in good order. The odd battle scar I’d assumed from London, but the owner’s information had mentioned garaging it. It turned out that I’d paid less for the car than he’d spent on renting the garage for 6 months. It seemed that this car had been through a few hands. This was all very well looking at the paperwork handed to me but I still hadn’t got it going and it was in the middle of the road and it was dark.
I had no idea what any of the controls did, they are all in German, except I’d worked out the key starter and I had a ticking over Trabbi. Finding the choke lever helped settle it down in the cold weather, this was approaching winter after all. Lights were more obvious, but I couldn’t for the life of me make it go forwards. I tried to pull away and each time I did I slipped the clutch lots and still stalled. I could make it go backwards though and ended up reversing up the drive until I could figure out how to drive it. I needed some instructions, and some daylight…
Comrade