The Trabant 601 (or Trabant P601 series) was a Trabant model produced by VEB Sachsenring in Zwickau, Saxony. It was the third generation of the model, built for the longest production time, from 1964 to 1990. As a result, it is the best-known Trabant model and often referred to simply as “the Trabant” or “the Trabi”. During this long production run, 2,818,547 Trabant 601s were produced overall and it was the most common vehicle in former East Germany.
HQM Sachsenring GmbH is a Zwickau-based company that supplies chassis and body parts to the automotive industry. Sachsenring was one of the few manufacturers of vehicles in East Germany, its best known product being the Trabant, produced between 1957 and 1991.
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, [also know as the] GDR, [or] DDR, was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in eastern Germany as part of the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state, it described itself as a socialist “workers’ and peasants’ state”.
The use of Duroplast in Trabants and subsequent GDR jokes and mockery in western auto magazines such as Car and Driver gave rise to an urban myth that the Trabant is made of corrugated cardboard.