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The name Trabant means "fellow traveller" in German; the car was affectionately known as the Trabi.
The lifespan of an average Trabant was 28 years. Partly because it took so long to get one after ordering, careful owners became skilled in maintaining and repairing them.
Used Trabants would often fetch a higher price than new ones, as the old ones were available immediately.
When windmill repairman Martin Teucher drives to work before dawn, it's the thumping bass in his Trabant's backseat that keeps him awake, not coffee.
The 24-year-old from the eastern village of Bruchmuehle has tuned his 1980 "Trabi", the smelly two-cylinder symbol of communist East Germany, into the hip-hop generation with a booming sound system and lowered suspension. Stuck to the plastic bumper is a placard reading "DDR".
Fifty years after the first Trabant rolled off an assembly line on November 7, 1957, the boxy vehicle has become the focus of a cheap-chic hot rod culture.
"It's gone from hobby to cult to insanity," Mr Teucher said.
Websites list 130 fan clubs for the Trabant around Germany and others throughout Europe and in the United States. Thousands of people are expected to gather in Zwickau, home of the Trabant factory in Saxony, this weekend for a birthday party.
The Trabant's transformation into a cult object began after the reunification of Germany, when Western autos displaced the car in everyday life, says Bernd Godau.
The 43-year-old bought his first Trabant in 1985 and now runs a fan club in the southern city of Ulm.
The Trabant was designed as the communist answer to the Volkswagen Beetle but it was built on the cheap and little altered before production halted in 1991. The car clattered down East German streets at a top speed of 100km/h, trailing a distinctive odour of mixed petrol and oil.
Consumers didn't get to choose their colour, and if you crashed your Trabi you might wind up with replacement parts that didn't match, Godau remembered.
But with few other options, East Germans were willing to wait for a decade to buy one. The factory in Zwickau churned out 2.2 million of the Trabant 601, the most common model, from 1964 to the mid-1980s.
While a well-restored early model can sell for up to ¬10,000 ($18,600), the 601 can still be had for less than ¬1000 - a proletarian price for a hobby car.
Fan Bianca Moench said she bought her third Trabant in 2001 for 1 Deutschmark from an elderly couple who wanted a good home for the car.
"It needed brakes. There wasn't a battery. The repairs cost a couple of hundred marks," Moench said.
The 44-year-old said she bought her first one in 1993 because it was cheap. Then she fell in love with it.
"It's a smiling car. It laughs," she said, referring to the car's distinctive snub nose.
Today the number of driveable Trabants in Germany is dwindling. About 52,000 were registered as of January 1, about 10 per cent fewer than in the previous year.
Toecher and his friends are building up stocks of parts for the day when the dwindling supply drives prices up. They're also upset about new emissions laws that will make it more expensive to register a Trabant next year.
Standing next to Toecher's powder-blue Trabi near Alexanderplatz in central Berlin, it's clear the car's appeal is as strong as ever.
- Reuters
