This weekend just gone saw this years Classics On The Quay, a varied gathering of wheeled machinery hosted graciously by Colchester Kawasaki. I won’t bore you with all the cars that always show up at events like these; there are only so many times I can see a Porsche Carrera GT or a Bugatti Veyron before it gets a bit samey. Instead, I’ll report on those cars which are either a bit more leftfield, or at least a little closer to the Hooniverse Heartland.
Let’s start with a couple of Duroplast beauties. A brace of Trabants, Emphatically not what I was expecting to see today.


You all know the Trabant. If you were trapped behind the Iron Curtain in the ’70s or ’80s, and you weren’t a high-ranking party official or in some other position of power and influence, if you signed the right paperwork and produced the right credentials then you might, just might, have found yourself on the eternal waiting list to own one of these. This, the P601, was The Official Car of Communism, or may as well have been.

The “Trabbie” wasn’t really a car at all. Proletariat motorists weren’t given the opportunity to cross-shop against other choices, it was this or nothing. The all-powerful Socialist Unity Party weren’t really all that bothered about any private individuals owning cars at all, but they acknowledged the need for people having a way of getting to work in the morning. So Sachsenring of Zwickau (what the “S” in the emblem means) were supported in developing the P601, which would keep some of the downtrodden mobile, for pretty much the next 30 years.

Don’t let an increasing, fashion-led resurgence in popularity and a cheeky, characterful silhouette fool you into thinking the Trabant was in any way a pleasant car. Yes, you or I would probably jump in and take it for a spin today and end up with spectacular grins across our stupid faces, but that’s just because we’re silly. We’d all love a go in a Trabi, we all think it would be a bit of a giggle. But the reality of one of these being your sole car was rather more grim.
Despite being (engine aside) technically no inferior to anything else in Eastern Europe at launch in ’63 it rapidly became a joke, and quite a sick one at that. This cramped, slow, noisy conveyance was all the population were seen to have deserved. While those at the top enjoyed lavish appointments at home and on the road, Klaus and Klaudia Public would clatter noisily and dirtily around, the acrid blue smoke of that 28hp two-stroke, twin-cylinder in tow close behind… as well as slowly filling the cabin. It’s interesting to note that, in the ’80s both the cars in the photo above were on the market at the same time. For all that the East-Berliners knew, every car on the road the other side of the wall could have been a 944.
So, if you’re going to have a Trabant for pure grin-inducing purposes, you better make it one of these:

The Trabant Kübel, still built on a steel frame, and still with body panels made from a blend of Soviet cotton waste and recovered phenyl resins, was a completely different machine from the windscreen backwards.
Like the well-known VW Kübelwagens, and the Mini Moke, for that matter, the Kubel made do without doors. There was a roof, if you wanted it, with all the structural integrity of tissue and coathangers. For a degree of weatherproofing canvas panels could be fitted to fill the void on each side.

These utilitarian contraptions were, obviously, developed with the military and certain government agencies in mind, but this particular machine is a slightly later civilian version, the type which would become known as the tramp. Interestingly, only 926 of these were ever made, the majority being exported to Greece, where the standard-fit auxiliary heater of the Kübel probably wouldn’t be so useful. The Mil-spec version numbered over 8000.

This seems like the perfect machine if you want to experience the joy of driving a Trabant without having to suffer the misery of, er, driving a Trabant.
(Images copyright Chris Haining / Hooniverse 2015)