Late the other night, Autopian contributor Emily Velasco messaged me via Telex: “CHECK WIREPHOTO MACHINE,” the Telex read. I unhooked myself from the sleep-restraint harness and slid down the pole into the main communications sphere. The wirephoto machine was clicking and whirring with the intense business of a trouserful of bees. Eventually, the machine ejected the photo you see above. To explain the image, Emily sent a Fidonet message explaining that her friend John spotted this Wartburg 353 driving around the suburbs of Denver. A Wartburg 353 in America? Holy crap.
This is a wildly, deeply unlikely car to see in America, or, really, anywhere outside of a few locations in Europe. Hell, I even made the Wartburg 353 the subject of a Cold Start a number of months ago, where I marveled at the car’s almost complete absence from America:
You know what car is strangely interesting and pretty much completely absent from America? The Wartburg 353. Yes, the mighty East-German car that was the Lincoln Continental to the Trabant’s Pinto, this boxy, two-stroke, big-ish fella was actually exported to a lot of places, like the UK, where it was dirt cheap and called the Wartburg Knight. There was a nice roomy wagon version, a car that seemed to be the answer to those buyers who wanted the dynamic, shoebox-like look of a Volvo 240 but without all that tedious performance and much, much more smoke. Also, the chassis is just weird-looking.
And now one pops up in Denver of all places? A three-cylinder, two-stroke wagon with the all sleekness of a copy machine and almost the performance? It’s incredible! Who is this absolute champion who is tooling around the Mile High City in a car once nicknamed “Farty Hans?” I’m so very impressed.
The wagon versions of these were called the Tourist models, and were nearly Volvo-like in their unashamed utilitarian boxiness. In the UK these were sold under the model name Knight, because I suppose that just feels more British, somehow?
Honestly, I think this is a fantastic classic car choice: roomy and practical, bafflingly unusual, crammed full of old Eastern Bloc anti-charm and extremely unlikely to get you in trouble for speeding. Plus, so much two-stroke exhaust!
Should we watch that Serbian punk band’s Wartburg song again? Probably!
Yeah, that was the right call.
Oh, I’m not going to be around much today, because I have to shoot some videos of driving some cars you helped me pick out! So be good for everyone!
I really wish Jason would stop with the amusing obsolete tech references.
I understand them all it makes me feel really old.
Why i am older than him and dont get any of his references.
This Wartburg collector gentleman might worth a visit.
https://youtu.be/qpgN4SLd1nI
One fun thing: there’s, as far as I can tell, three lineages of car that share a common ancestor, the DKW F8, that this is part of one of.
Basically, in the aftermath of World War II, the DKW factory and designs ended up under East German control, and the F8 became the IFA F8. That got a new body with the Wartburg 311, an updated chassis with the 312, and then an extremely 1960s body with the 353. (And then a transverse VW engine with the 1.3, but.)
The designs also ended up in West Germany, and Auto Union made them as the Meisterklasse (F89), 3=6 (F91, 93, 94), and 1000. Then, the powertrain lived on in the unibody DKW F102, which then got a Mercedes-designed 4-cylinder 4-stroke engine as the Audi 60/72/75/80/Super 90 (F103). That car was replaced with the Audi 80 (B1) after VW bought Audi, and eventually the Audi 80/90 became the Audi A4, which of course still exists today, using the same drivetrain layout as the 1930s DKW F8 (although obviously with more cylinders, strokes, displacement, and power).
Then, my understanding is that the Saab 3-cylinder 2-stroke used in the 93, Sonett I, 95, 96, and Sonett II (which then lead to the 99, 900, and ultimately 9-5) is a licensed clone of the DKW F8’s powertrain.
I love the name Wartburg. Sounds like German for skin tag.
ein Grosse Beschribung. (yes I know that is Deutschlish)
Colorado has a THRIVING car culture, Torch! Lots of classic car enthusiasts of all stripes, and myriad twisty mountain roads to drive them on. You should check it out, my dude.
True! I was in Manitou Springs some years ago, and I was delightfully surprised by all the daily-driven old iron. That orange VW squareback…
We have a lot of older cars here: I saw a 308 in Lafayette this morning, a JDM right hand drive land cruiser last week, one of those kei fire trucks, but all those were like oh yeah weird… But the Wart — I’m the person who took the pic — was all what on earth I don’t even have a guess as to where that came from much less what it is. (Interestingly it also didn’t sound like a two stroke. There was a conversion kit to put a BMC A engine in it so maybe?)
We have a cold dry environment so if you keep up on the antifreeze you’re unlikely to rust out here, I guess.
Yeah, but what’s the oil mix situation? Does it have separate tank? Do you have to add two stroke oil to the petrol and then give the whole car a good ol’ shake?
These are the questions we need answering!
Add oil to the petrol…just like an RX-8…(dons flame-suit)
well you’re not wrong
It never had a separate oil tank. This was Japanese technology for spoiled capitalists 🙂
We’d pour our oil in the tank, before filling up. Making sure to measure carefully.
In DDR/GDR they had a lot of these, so they actually sold 2-stroke premix in the gas stations. Not in the other Eastern European countries.
We once visited GDR for a day and filled up. We were all happy, here’s the car in its real element, etc etc.
The car got a smoke tail several hundred feet long. In the afternoon we crossed the border back to West Germany (a wonderful adventure I wish to no one), and were at the border with Denmark in the evening.
There, they had signs of the prohibited imports. Little crossed pictograms. No drugs, no this, no that, and there was also a pictogram of a crossed polluting/smoking car. We were idling our 353 and one could barely see the car behind it. T’was fun.
Wartburg or NOburg!
On an iron-curtain adjacent note, There is a dealer in Massachusetts, Alphacars (no personal affiliation), that has accumulated a top-shelf stash of Soviet-era inventory. All bought and imported well before the…current..um…issues. When they were perhaps regarded as ironic/cool to some. Now, not so much. The prices will induce heart palpitations. I don’t think they’re really serious about selling them. But they are pretty interesting to review.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1995-nissan-rasheen-2/
The Wartburg 353 a car that Nissan saw a blurry faxed photo of and used it as inspiration for the Rasheen
Three cylinder and 4-doors? They’re not getting up I-70, not without getting run over by semis with flashing hazards. Pretty unique for a city car.
They’re surprisingly not *that* terrible, partly because they only weigh about 2,000 lbs.
Top speed is maybe 80, but they can hold 65-70, and 0-60 is about 12 seconds, which is not far off a lot of workaday American economy cars of the 60s and 70s
Dang, that’s only a second slower than my Thunderbird with 5 fewer cylinders and half the weight. Two strokes are marvelous in that way I guess.
0-60 in 12 seconds? Seriously? Not far off from economy cars of the 60s? That’s not far off from economy cars of the 2000s! That is noticeably faster than my daily driver.
They were very nimble.
Also, being a FWD with a decent McFerson suspension, they handled very well for their time (and market).
Front rotoros, rear drums. Ours had NO brake booster. Brake pedal was hard as a rock, and about that efficient.
Pedals (clutch and brake) were like mushrooms growing from the floor/firewall (they were not articulated on the top like normal pedals, the pedals were like daisies, with the stem “growing” from the firewall).
Top speed was exactly 85mph. The funny part was that the car was able to keep that speed with a full family loaded in, with luggage and all.
Acceleration was, alas, far from 12s for 0-60. The stated acceleration in the user manual was 14s for – errr – 0-50mph. Why they chose that exact metric – I dunno.
All in all, we drove thousands of miles on Euro highways and Autobahns and never had a single issue. The car was nimble from zero to – say – 45 :). T’was enough for most big city traffic. Cruise speed was an easy 75-80mph.
The only time we felt the fact that we were not driving a Western car was on a red light on a slope in Monaco. We almost burned the clutch on that one. And we had to make a right rather than continue straight (up the slope 🙂 ) to not remain stuck. For reference – that would be like the San Francisco streets in Bullit.
Oh, and one more thing – whatever love relationship the GDR/DDR and the USSR had – it didn’t show in sales.
IFA products (IFA trucks, Wartburg, Trabant, MZ motorcycles, Simson mopeds, all made by the IFA conglomerate) were never, or barely, sold in the USSR. And inversely, Ladas could barely be seen in the GDR. Unlike all other Eastern European countries, which had both Soviet and GDR machines on their markets.
Oh, and just like on the Trabant, there is no engine brake. It’s a freewheel system. But, unike on the Trabant where it was permanent, on the 353 you could disable with a lever it and get some engine braking. Which was scarily irregular because 2-stroke. So no one ever used it.
Also, ours had the cooling fan on permanently running on the accessory belt. Later models had electric fans.
AND, we had louvers in the grill, which closed and opened with a lever and cable system from the cabin. To close the grill in winter. We never touched it.
Trabant should be resurrected as an EV brand (everybody’s doing it!) using lead acid batteries and a rear projection touchscreen for infotainment.
I bet Torchinsky could illustrate that but he might have lead acid flashbacks.
James May talks a little bit about the history of Wartburg in his ‘Cars of the People’ series. I think it was in episode 1.
I would buy a car called Tourist.
I wonder if the prison in Wartburg is called Compound W?
BOOOOOOO!!!!
Wart’s your problem?
Some people refuse to see the fungi-cide of life.
*puts Canopysaurus on the Group W bench*
I do love the once highly fashionable but then soon forgotten way of putting giant steel/chrome frames on the headlights! As seen on Lancias, Saab 96, Citroën Ami and that certain Ford Taunus from the early sixties 🙂
– And nothings says eastern block more than black rubber non chromed window surrounds 😉
For the uninitiated, the chorus of the song translates to:
Wartburg limousine*
The longest machine
Four meters of sheet metal
And five meters of smoke**
The song is the middle part of a trilogy, preceded by Blue Trabant, whose plastic shell gets eaten by pigs, but the motor lives on in a chainsaw, and followed by Car Core. The latter song describes the Wartburg being modified to the point of “being up to 150 times faster than a Porsche” thanks to mods such as four odometers, jumbo-jet-style wipers that can make short work of even a flock of chickens, and “American tires, like the ones pilots put on their planes”. The gang goes on adventures in their new machine, until it is totaled by a drunk Czech dude in a Skoda. The entire trilogy, as well as the rest of Atheist Rap’s opus, is well worth a listen.
*The word “limuzina”, a cognate of “limousine”, is used in Serbian to mean “sedan” as well
**I tried and failed to think of ways to preserve the rhyme; open to suggestions!
Genius!
This also explains the Trabant’s funeral (which seemed to be rather personal) and the cartoon of the pig with a knife and fork.
It’s just a little weird how quickly everything changed for Wartburg – they went from the 50’s stylish 311 which was available in all sorts of good colours (and the wagon was even available with a fabric sunroof and safari windows) to an incredibly muted box in just one generation.
Someone at a local auto shop seems to run a side hustle in selling obscure old project cars (they’ve currently got an NSU TT on site, although I can’t find a listing for it) – a couple years back, they had a 311 Tourist and a Trabant Wagon at the same time, from my old pictures I must’ve been more taken with the Trabi as it was in the good colours, and only have Farty Hans photobombing.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Wartburg_W311_Tourist_%282048654950%29.jpg
Good to see that the Wartburg 353 in Colorado has the East German Stasi license plate concealer option installed and deployed.
“Cold Fart,” surely.
A “Wartburg Surprise” definitely sounds like something you would look up on UrbanDictionary.com
That sounds like an HR violation waiting to happen
“That sounds like an HR violation waiting to happen”
It’s only a violation if:
1). You’re not handsome
2). You’re not attractive
3). You’re unattractive
Otherwise you’re good.
I think reason 2 might be why HR doesn’t like me o.O
Meanwhile, let us take a moment to pour one out for the Trabi.
I don’t know why the TFL guys haven’t been all over this thing, between Roman’s Czech heritage and Andre being Russian they’ve been all over the Eastern European stuff and they’re based in Boulder.
I’m curious how that East German two-stroke would get past a smog check. People manage to make their Trabis street legal, so there must be some grandfather clause.
I wonder too, my state requires emissions tests for everything model year 1968 and newer, if you register as a classic car, you don’t have to do it ever again, but it would still have to pass one final time before the registration was issued. Most private imports from that era would be fine since it’s just a simple tailpipe test and gas cap vapor check, but a 2-stroke anything wouldn’t have a prayer
It’s going to be state dependent. In Pennsylvania where I live, if it’s over 25 years old you can register it as an antique, there are no final inspection requirements and you just pay a double registration fee then you are registered for life. Basically you end up being limited to 5000 miles a year, which is the normal limit for emissions inspection in the first place. Most rural counties in PA don’t even have emissions inspection so it would not even be an issue there.
Smog checks in Colorado are county-by-county. This one has Colorado plates but might not be registered in Denver proper.
It has blue plates which I think are collector plates. Limited to 4500 miles/year, so they are probably more lenient with the testing.
It was in Longmont, and has collector plates. Longmont has the same emissions requirements as Denver, though: you have to pass Air Care Colorado for the year your car is titled, but if that year was before 1975 there are no requirements. So I’m presuming it was old. It also didn’t sound like a two stroke so it might have been an engine swap.
Smog check? What’s that? My state laughs at your “smog check”!
The last smog check I saw was 40 years ago in Chicago, and the smog was cured by slipping $20 to the inspector.
It’s simple, you won’t pass it 🙂
Keep in mind that despite being made by the very same conglomerate that employed Walter Kaaden, and held all the secrets of 2-stroke exhaust tuning (till Ernst Degner ran across the border to Suzuki with them, and released the genie out of the bottle), the cars had close to zero exhaust optimisation.
Our 353 had a 4-stroke type exhaust header (straight pipe) coming out of the engine, into a straight pipe, into a small 4-stroke type muffler. Zero exhaust tuning, no expansion chambers, nothing.
It was always smoking, dozens of feet behind it, except with very good oil (which ours was lucky to have throughout most of its life).
In its first year, during what was mostly its break-in period, it was giving us 13.5mpg at top speed (85pmh 🙂 )
After that, it cleared up somehow, and got to 21mpg.
The engine had zero optimization around it in stock form. It did 55hp for 1000cc.
Because the engine was light, it was often used in water sports (single seat speedboats mostly). People were pulling about 120hp out of it with some work.
Same for the Trabant. It made I believe 26hp stock, and GDR local racers were pulling about 75hp out of it on track.
So, zero optimisation for pollution as well.
Looking at the first ad up there, where you can see the insides of the C and D pillars. Were they really so featureless, or could the artist just not be bothered to render any details? It’s like a Matchbox car.
Also, the Denver photo is so much more perfect with the pinnacle of anonymous crossovers, a Murano, lurking in the background. That’s a Murano, right?
According to that rendering, the interior appears to be completely empty except for a steering wheel. Because extravagant luxuries like seats are evils from the decadent West.
I vote artist who just couldn’t be bothered. Unless the top of the tailgate window really was lower than the top of the rear side window on the left, but higher on the right.
If you can’t even be arsed to get the perspective right on some rectangles you aren’t going to bother doing your best work on anything that isn’t forging papers to get yourself to the West
As long as you continue to pretend to pay us, we will continue to pretend to work.
It’s a Mazda CX-7, which for all the anonymous styling, was sort of weird (launched with a turbo 4 as the sole engine option for a couple years before everyone was doing that).
I see they even selected the most popular factory color: Artificial Limb.
That could be German taxi beige, by no means a rare color for these since they were the only 4-door cars made in East Germany.
I vaguely remember taxis in East Berlin being white with blue (or maybe green) stripes – beige was reserved for the decadent West. But my much stronger memory was of Polski-Fiat 126s being used as taxis – a car lacking in every requirement to perform the task at hand (namely number of doors, legroom and boot space).
I dated a girl with a 126.
I had a 2CV at the time and was shocked that it was possible for a car to have even less of everything.
A 2CV? You mean one of those grossly oversized luxury land yachts?
https://live.staticflickr.com/5302/5600648065_1cce953440_c.jpg
When you drive a 602cc car with a manual hand pump for the windshield washer you forget just how much luxury you’re enjoying.
There used to be a law in West Germany/Germany (from about 1970-2005 I think) stipulating that taxis had to be beige. This bizarre law is actually one of the main reasons that car wraps are now a thing – taxi companies would wrap their cars (almost invariably a W123) with beige wrap, so they could peel it off after 200,000 miles and resell a used taxi as a car with pristine paint (that also wasn’t beige) for a much higher price.
That’s just too funny