Trabant Turbo Quattro is a Muscular Marxist Mashup [w/ Video]

Perhaps no car was more emblematic of the Cold War than the Trabant. Produced by the East German automaker VEB Sachsenring in the city of Zwickau from 1957 to 1991, the Trabant (or Trabi, as it was affectionately known) was known for its exterior body panels made from a plastic derived from recycled industrial wastes like cotton scraps and phenol resins and, until 1989, a two-cylinder two-stroke mini-smog-factory chugging away under the hood. It truly was a car of its time and place, both of which disappeared with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But that doesn’t mean the Trabant (which is German for “satellite” or “companion”; the car was launched around the same time as Sputnik, after all…) can’t be updated to be better suited to the present…

This particular Trabant has been propelled by a long line of perky Volkswagen Group inline-fours over the course of its lifetime (appropriate, considering the last three years of Trabi production saw the two-stroke twin replaced by the 1.1L four-stroke four from the contemporary Volkswagen Polo), but none of them were as mighty as the current engine: A 1.8L turbocharged inline-four yanked from a first-gen Audi TT. Oh, and the builder of this thing – a Polish guy named Arek – also crammed the TT’s 6-speed manual transmission and quattro all-wheel-drive system into the Trabant, and he tuned the engine to produce 266 horsepower and 273 lb.-ft of torque. The brakes are also Audi parts, the suspension is a hodgepodge of Audi, Renault and Honda components, and the car retains the TT’s anti-lock brake and stability control systems.

Arek says his Trabant Turbo Quattro will blast to 62 mph in 4.5 seconds, which means onlookers won’t have much time to gawk at the rich brown paint, flared fenders and 16” 5-lug steel wheels wearing Toyo tires on the outside. Nor does it leave them a chance to peek through the windows at the custom dashboard, full roll cage and BIMARCO sport bucket seats. But as problems go, those aren’t particularly bad to have.

Source: Top Gear Poland