Driving a Trabant-And Living to Tell the Tale

摘要

In a banner driving year that included a chance to slip behind the wheel of a Ferrari F430 and a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe, I decided it would only be fair to balance these automotive extravagances with a test drive of the worst car I could possibly imagine. Nothing built in my lifetime fits that description better than that antithesis of proud German engineering, the Trabant.rnMost Westerners got their first long look at the Trabant after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened up the once-off-limits nation of East Germany. The car's cartoon appearance and stone-age engineering made it the butt of numerous jokes, quickly rivaling the vast store of those told at the expense of Lucas in England.