Word: trabi
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...setting the stage for a most unusual comeback: the foul-smelling Trabant, the oft-ridiculed symbol of communist East Germany, all but disappeared from German roadways after the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. But now its makers are planning to introduce a climate-saving electric version of the Trabi, as it was affectionately known...
...will be an electric car with a solar-panel roof, designed for the city and small trips," Ronald Gerschewski, head of IndiKar, the original Trabi manufacturer, told reporters. (See the history of the electric...
...original Trabi was intended to be East Germany's answer to the Volkswagen Beetle, the symbol of West Germany's economic miracle and rise after World War II. But the Trabi was more a mockery. It had a plastic body and was driven by a two-stroke engine that ran on a cocktail of oil and gasoline that emitted a putrid stench as it rolled with a characteristic clackety-clack along East German roads. (Read about the Beetle in TIME's most important cars of all time...
...Trabi will feature more modern comforts like connections for GPS navigation, mobile phones and even an iPod, said Gerschewski...
...Making light of a very dark past - "Ostalgia" as the phenomenon is known - has come into vogue in Berlin recent years. Visitors to the once divided German capital can browse souvenir stores selling "authentic" GDR memorabilia; stay at the "Ostel", a hostel decorated in GDR fashion; or take a "Trabi-safari," which involves a sightseeing tour in the notoriously rickety Trabant, ubiquitous passenger car of the GDR. Just last week, former Berlin Senator for Cultural Affairs Thomas Flierl denounced as "tasteless mockery" the service that allows tourists at the old "Checkpoint Charlie" crossing between the two sides of Berlin...