The Car Museum

"In autumn 1948, the Horch factory began work on the Pionier tractor, based on a pre-war design. On May 18th, 1949, the first of five prototypes was completed; in the summer of 1950, series production began. The Pionier was the most used tractor in GDR agriculture at the beginning of the 1950s" {slightly paraphrased from the original text}


Today James and Sten and I went to a car museum!!!  Fun ensued!!

The car museum is housed in an old car factory and takes up a lot of space, which meant that we were there for hours and hours. But I didn't mind. Because cars!

The (in)famous "Trabant"

The (in)famous "Trabant" was manufactured in East Germany from 1957 through 1990. It was a one-piece steel chassis with a plastic (compressed paper/cotton) body, 2-cycle, 2-cylinder transverse engine, front-wheel drive, independent suspension. Required the owner to use a combination of oil and gas, like 2-cycle lawn mowers. Polluted like crazy. Took forever to get one -- there was quite a queue of eager buyers. Years of waiting, in fact.

And now it's a serious collectors item. Which is why Grandpa Gerd has one!

Trabant with a Trailer! Very popular in the GDR!

We also saw some variants of the basic Trabant. My favorite was the one with the attached trailer. A lot of these trailers were home-built by enthusiasts.  Mainly because it was impossible to afford a commercial model! And the wait list was far too long!

Another famous German car

I was disappointed that there was only one or two Volkswagens, but there's probably another museum specifically for them somewhere else. They weren't manufactured in the GDR, that I recall. I think it was a West German thing. But it was still fun to see at least one of them!

After a wonderful morning/afternoon of browsing through the cars, we went back to the Becher's for some dinner at the big covered table in the backyard (which was our tradition).