Monster Trucks, Now And Then


Instant folk art. hide caption

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Word has it that a Chinese company is buying the gigantaloid Hummer brand from GM, which is getting bought by Uncle Sam.

After the jump, the story behind that monster thing in the photo.

Moritz Hlawatscheck writes:

If you don't know what it is, it's a Trabant (we call them Trabbi). It's more or less the only kind of car that was available for the regular folks in the east when Germany was divided (o.k. there was also Wartburg and Lada but that was already kind of fancy).

Parents used to order them (as they did with the telephone line) for their children when they were born (no kidding) so the car would be available by the time the kids would turn 18. After the wall came down (I was just 8 years old) you saw them an awful lot in west Berlin. To us (from the West) they were pretty annoying because of the smell (the are powered by a twin stroke engine and smell like a moped).

Nowadays you barely see them and sometimes they are "modified" in very funny ways like the one in the picture.


