A few days ago, I had the possibility to take a sightseeing tour with a Trabant, a car that was very popular during socialism. Then a friend of mine asked me what a Trabant was. So, I decided to write a post about the cars used in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, Hungary is not a superpower of car production, so all the brands represented in the post were or are still imported products. I start my post with Trabant because with this car you can still do tours, and because it has become the symbol of the socialist period. The Trabant was a car made by East German VEB Sachsenring (Zwickau) factory. The first car appeared on the market in 1957, while the last one in 1991. The most popular models still in circulation are Trabant 601 and Trabant 1.1 (the latter one is the most developed version that was produced between 1989-1991). During its history, about three million Trabants were purchased, so it was among the most popular cars on this side of the Iron Curtain.

The other miracle of the East German factory was Wartburg (which was named after the castle in Eisenach). The history of this car is longer, and begins in 1898; obviously after the Second World War, not these old models ran in socialist countries. The factory from 1956 to 1991 sold hundreds of thousands of automobiles, and later it was purchased by Opel. Both Trabant and Wartburg also had versions for the Anglo-Saxon markets.

The oldest factory was Škoda factory which was founded by an Austrian nobleman in 1859, and later bought by the Czech Emil Škoda. After the Second World War the factory started producing cars (the first automobil was produced in the summer of 1945). The models that can still be seen running in Hungary were built between 1983 and 1991. At that time several models were present on the market, most of them worked with rear engines. Since 1990, Škoda has not made versions with this type of engine anymore.

The history of Dacia is a bit different. This factory is newer than the others (founded only in 1967 and based on the license agreement with the French Renault). Up to 1984, around one hundred thousand automobiles were produced. A curiosity: the first Dacia car produced in 1968 was driven by the Romanian dictator Ceauşescu.

Like Frenches, Italians have also invested in the automotive industry of East: this is how the Polski FIAT factory was born in the 30s. The factory was in Warsaw. At the beginning, the parts produced in Italy were used, then the whole automobile was made by using only Polish parts. After the Second World War, the production started again in the 1960s. In Hungary, the Polski FIAT 126 model was especially popular, it was called in Hungarian “Kispolszki”, i.e. small Polski. The factory was purchased in 1990 by the Italian company FIAT.

The last car I chose for the post, is Lada. I left it last for personal reasons: my family in the 80s had a Polski FIAT and later a Lada, so I always think about it with nostalgia.

The first Lada with the name “Ziguli” (VAZ 2101 or Lada 1200) was produced in the 1970s. The model for these cars was FIAT, but the Russians wanted a better car than the Italian one, and so they didn’t copy it completely, the engine for example was different. From the 1980s the Wankel engine was used, that’s power was 70 HP. In the meantime, another other version, the VAZ 2105 appeared on the market which was made also for Western Europe, for example for Great Britain with the name Lada Niva. Until the mid-1990s, the Lada was the most popular car in Hungary, despite the appearance of “Western” cars on the market.