Word: trabants
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...pussycat. Instead of guarding against intruders, she welcomes anyone into the cottage of her owners. A mother as of March, Asta also seems homesick. She has yet to set paw into her master's Ford, but leaped happily into a visitor's East German- made Trabant and expected to be driven away...
...nearly a half-century, East German workers have held lifetime jobs in companies that had only to meet production goals, without much concern for costs, quality or innovation. The madness in this method is symbolized by the Trabant, the plastic-enclosed, four-wheel motorcycle posing as a small car. Until last November, customers waited up to 15 years for the privilege of buying one for then 22,000 ostmarks, or about $4,000; currently, the Trabant cannot be sold at any price...
Some enterprises, like the manufacturing of the Trabant, are probably unsalable at any price. They may include major polluters like chemical companies and lignite mines. The outdated state steel company faces a bleak future since its products typically cost three times West German prices. The outlook for agriculture is also grim since farm prices in the G.D.R. are above even the inflated European Community level...
After unification, East Germany will adopt West Germany's market-oriented economy, and the going could initially be rough for East German companies and workers. Aging and inefficient East German industries like automobile manufacturing, which produces the pathetic 26-h.p. Trabant, will face competition from modern, powerful West German counterparts like Daimler-Benz. This could cause widespread factory closures and job losses, which never happened in the old centrally controlled East German economy. A report by the European Community leaked two weeks ago estimates that East Germany, which now has a worker shortage, could have 15% unemployment -- 1.2 million workers...
Museums in Brunswick and Munich have bought some of the old clunkers to preserve what is perhaps the humblest symbol of one of the most extraordinary years in German history. Concluded Auto Motor und Sport: "The plain Beetle became a symbol of our economic miracle. The Trabant, its simple counterpart from the East, gave the first impulse to an even greater miracle." Proving, of course, that looks aren't everything...