#trabant #trabant610 #ddr In this video, we track down the prototypes from Sachsenring Automobilbau Zwickau. Together with Michael Schinz, we clarify who was responsible for the fact that none of these Trabant prototypes were built and we answer the question of whether the Trabant 603 was actually sold to VW. So it should be exciting again.

A normal day in the GDR, there is a standstill everywhere, everywhere?
Not in the VEB Sachsenring Automobilbau Zwickau, where the successors to the Trabant have been eagerly built since the 1960s.


In 1958, the General Director of the Association of Publicly Owned Automobile Manufacturing Companies, Kurt Lang, called for the rationalization of car production and a limitation of the range. The separate production in Zwickau and Eisenach should in future be replaced by a basic car type with standardized components. The targeted annual output was 200,000 vehicles.

Starting in 1960, both locations independently developed the so-called Perspective car, subject to specific parameters.
In 1961, the prototype shown here was developed by Sachsenring Zwickau as a front-wheel drive car. The Eisenach automobile factory developed a prototype with an underfloor engine and rear-wheel drive. Both prototypes did not meet the requirements. The project was aborted without success.

The Trabant P 610 was the successor project for the failed RGW car P 760. The P 610, later designated as the P 1100/1300, was a cooperation between the VEB Sachsenring, the VEB Automobilwerk Eisenach and Skoda from the former Czechoslovakia. The development ran between 1973 and 1979. The functional models were developed with Skoda engines with a displacement of 1.1 liters in Zwickau and 1.3 liters in Eisenach. The start of series production was planned for 1984.
In November 1979, the development had to be stopped on the instructions of the GDR government.

Many thanks for the great cooperation
@Förderverein August Horch Museum e.V.