Ostalogie takes the stage at this year's Frankfurt Auto Show

September 16, 4:35 PMGermany Headlines ExaminerBuffy Naillon

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A Trabant along street, west (Buda) side of the Danube--photo courtesy of  Kevin Collins via Flickr

Despite being a unified country for the last 20 years, Germans still show loyalties to their old roots. While not true in all cases, at heart many West Germans are still West Germans and East Germans still East Germans. One of the most prevalent demonstrations of this is the German term “Ostalogie”. A contraction of the words nostalgia and East (Ost) in German, the word symbolizes the desire of many former East Germans to reconnect with the days of old. People visiting Germany can see evidence of this in tourist shops from the squat little man--the Ampelmann--on the traffic lights in the former East to that East German of all East German cars, the Trabant or Trabi as it's affectionately. Well, the lowly little Trabi is making a comeback at this year's auto show in Frankfurt, bringing the nostalgia of the past back to the present.

The East German car, the Trabant, wasn't destined to be a car, according to an article on Team.net's website. Instead, its makers deemed it to be a combination of car and motorcycle. Designed with two small seats in front and back and an easy engine to repair, the Trabi, wound up being the staple car in the former East Germany, mostly for economic reasons.

According to Deutsche Welle, about 3.7 million Trabants were created in 34 years that they were manufactured in Zwickau in the German state of Saxony. A person could expect to pay more for a used Trabant—around 4,000 East German Marks than for many new cars. But it didn't much matter. A car was a luxury few East Germans could afford.

The Trabi moved into the outside world's consciousness with the fall of the Berlin Wall; the news footage of the day featured Trabi after drab colored Trabi streaming through the Brandenburg Gate. For some, it was the first time in a very long time if ever that they—let alone their little cars—had seen the other side of the Wall.

But eventually, the pandemonium over the newly reunified Germany gave way to the economic and emotional realities that came along with the fall of the Wall. Germans, along with the rest of the world, learned that just because everyone in Germany spoke German didn't mean that the newly minted unified Germans had anything in common, but the language.

The Trabi was all but completely replaced as the car of choice when East Germans realized that they had a choice about what kind of car they could drive, that they had a choice about a lot of things they didn't before, in fact. According to a 2007 article on Deutsche Welle, there are still about 50,000 plus Trabis on the road in Germany, mostly in Eastern Germany.

Until recently, tourists who wanted to see this famous car very often were limited to seeing it on postcards in tourist shops or in the German History Museum on Berlin's Unter den Linden Street. New Trabants have not been built in Germany since 1991.

But that's about to change. According to an article on Edmunds Inside Line, a new and improved Trabant, the Trabant nT is making an appearance at the 63rd Auto Show in Frankfurt, which opens on Thursday and runs until September 27th. The old version of the car, notorious for spewing large amounts of black smoke will be done away with. The new proto-type will be electric. The car, which should retain its former boxy design, is the pet project of autobuilder IndiKar and Herpa. Solar power will give the car its power. Other details about it are scare at the moment.

Electric cars are one of the great hopes for this year's show, according to The Local. In the recent past, the show has attracted upwards of a million visitors. Projections for this year's show stand at around 750,000. Most European car makers are feeling the crunch with an 11% drop in sales in the first half of the year. Some car makers have been spared a complete crash because of the European version of the “Cash for Clunkers” programs in Germany, Great Britain, Italy, France, and Spain, The Local is reporting. However, the effects of the program are only expected to last until sometime in 2010.

The new Trabant nT is only one car of the projected 100 to be unveiled at this year's show. It remains to be seen if the car's combination of Ostalogie and electric get-up-and-go will be enough to keep at least part of the industry going.

For more info about the auto industry in Germany, read the following stories: