The one and only time I saw a Trabant was at a car show in The Bronx. The owner got it through customs on the condition that it NEVER be registered and licensed, Even though other imported cars over 25 yrs old are exempt from safety and emissions regs Trabants are such dangerous sh*tboxes that no state would allow it to be legally driven, even as an antique. The wonders of socialism. Jay Leno has a Soviet built limo,used by a high ranking Russian officials in his collection from The 1980’s. The engine is a knockoff of the 312 cu in Ford V8 used in the first T Birds in 1955. A good engine, but shows how technologically “advanced” the socialists really are.
I had always thought that Soviet limos were equipped with Daimler-Benz engines because reliable.
Yeah, they were junk. One of the guys in my unit bought one “over there” and somehow he fixed it up well enough and he got it to pass inspection. Surprisingly enough. He drove it all over, this was in the 1990s. When East Germany fell, so many of those things were left abandoned on the side of the road it was a big problem for the former West Germany.