Connect to share and comment Want your own "little Sputnik?" You
may soon get the chance. Even so, East Germans had to wait up to
15 years to get their hands on a Trabant. Some 3 million cars
were made before production stopped in April 1991. Some 40,000
are still registered in Germany today. The old Trabant had one
green credential: The body was made of a material called
Duroplast — a resin plastic reinforced by waste cotton from
Russia — making it the first mass produced vehicle to use
recycled organic materials. So why would people buy a new and
greener version, 20 years after unification? “ I would buy a new
improved Trabant,” said Sabine Anton, a filmmaker, who left East
Berlin two years before the Wall came down. “At least something
of East Germany would survive." There is even a word for those
looking to cash in on warm feelings for the old German
Democratic Republic: Ostalgie, which combines the German words
for east (ost) and nostalgia (nostalgie). A recent poll showed
that 20 years after unification