The Trabant Marketing Department certainly hit the spot when they came up with the “Small Car With A Big Future Strapline” it was not unusual for these these little two strokes to last over 20 years, such was the shortage of supply of new vehicles the old ones were meticulously maintained to standards well beyond those of most ten year old vehicles today.

The Trabant Tramp is an all purpose vehicle based on the Trabant 601, I am not sure when they were introduced but they were obviously in production in 1983 when this one was built for civilian use. The convertible is shown on this clip as being capable of a somewhat suspect 100 kph / 62.5 mph on this undated linked commercial.

Colin the owner of this particular Tramp has a rather interesting collection of military vehicles including a cold war era 6 wheel drive Zil Radio Truck, and an all wheel drive Volvo military ambulance so it is perhaps no surprise that Colin has decided to turn his Tramp into the military Kübelwagen (jeep) variant as used by the East German Military and Boarder Patrols in the 1980’s.

Amongst the paraphernalia Colin has fitted to his Tramp are a decommissioned AK47, first aid kit, axe, hand pump (for the tyres), signals flags, trench tools (spades),

not forgetting an authentic Russian made field telephone with short and long range field radio’s. All wired up ready to go needing only to be connected to the batteries Colin has and someone else with whom to communicate.

Having spent some time resolving a range of 6 volt electrical issues Colin has stripped the car down for a complete respray this winter in order to give his ‘Kleinwagen’ a ‘Grosser Zukunft’. You can follow his progress on this link.

Thanks for joining me on this “Kleinwagen mit Grosser Zukunft” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t for get to come back now !