Trabant @ William Boothlaan Rotterdam

The first of the Trabants left the factory of the VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Saxony on 7 November 1957. The Trabant was a relatively advanced car when it was launched in 1958, with front wheel drive, a unitary construction, composite bodywork, and independent suspension. Its greatest downfall was its engine: by the late 1950s many small cars in western countries already used cleaner and more efficient four-stroke engines like that in the Renault. Budgetary constraints and raw materials shortages forced the use of an outdated but inexpensive two-stroke engine in the Trabant. When released, the Trabant was technically equivalent to the West German Lloyd automobile, which had an air-cooled two-cylinder four-stroke engine in a similarly sized vehicle. However, the Trabant was quite a modern vehicle regarding some of its technical solutions:[citation needed] it had a front transversely-mounted engine since the late '50s, and front-wheel drive in an era when many east and west European cars were using rear-mounted engines or front-mounted engines with traction on the rear wheels. In West Germany, for example, there were very few cars with front-wheel drive in the 50's. Volkswagen, German Ford and Opel had adopted front-wheel drive after 1970. The main drawback of the Trabant was the fact that it was produced largely unchanged; it became heavily obsolete even since the 70's mainly due to its two-stroke engine, so its exports in Western Europe were limited. LINK read more