Germany - Zwickau - Trabant car factory in former DDR.

A new Trabant car shell is lifted by forklift from a truck at the East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, Saxony. A worker carefully manoeuvres the unfinished bodywork into a crate where other vehicles await completion on the production line. The Trabant was the most common vehicle in East Germany - Like the Beetle in the West, its Peoples' Car with a 595 cc, two-cylinder air-cooled engine. It had space for four, was compact, light and durable with its distinctive body shape constructed from Duroplast panels attached to a galvanized steel shell. It was in production without any significant changes for about 34 years, becoming a symbol for the cheap, cheerful and polluting possessions for Communist Europeans. When the Berlin Wall eventually fell, Trabants coughed and spluttered onto West German roads for the first time.

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Filename: DDR_travel03-06_1990.jpg
Copyright: © Richard Baker. No copying, screen grabbing, transmission or publication without permission.
Image Size: 5185x3520 / 4.3MB; www.photoshelter.com/support/license; https://www.bakerpictures.com/contact; DDR GDR old heritage history past era bygone historical historic ideology Germany East Germany former German politics political Socialist Communist Cold War Eastern Bloc Warsaw Pact enemy opposition 1990 reminder Communism indoctrinated car ownership property Trabant factory forklift lifting new unloading manufacturing production worker job work bodywork frail two-cylinder peoples' car Zwickau Saxony common vehicle distinctive panels compact small construction industrial industry grim yellow constructed Duroplast polluting environment philosophy
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A new Trabant car shell is lifted by forklift from a truck at the East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau, Saxony. A worker carefully manoeuvres the unfinished bodywork into a crate where other vehicles await completion on the production line. The Trabant was the most common vehicle in East Germany - Like the Beetle in the West, its Peoples' Car with a 595 cc, two-cylinder air-cooled engine. It had space for four, was compact, light and durable with its distinctive body shape constructed from Duroplast panels attached to a galvanized steel shell. It was in production without any significant changes for about 34 years, becoming a symbol for the cheap, cheerful and polluting possessions for Communist Europeans. When the Berlin Wall eventually fell, Trabants coughed and spluttered onto West German roads for the first time.