Vintage Thing No. 10 - Mercedes-Wartburg
When is a Mercedes not a Mercedes? When it’s a Wartburg. You may not have heard of a Wartburg . Some of us who grew up in the seventies will remember the angular Wartburg 353s as bargain basement family saloons from East Germany. They featured front wheel drive, a freewheel transmission and had three cylinder water-cooled two-stroke engines of 993cc. They were briefly immortalised (!) in the UK thanks to a comedy sketch by Jasper Carrot – lemme take you for a ride in ma Wartburg! Nowadays, it’s not difficult to understand that the Wartburg marque had a problem with brand identity. The Carrot picked up on the unfortunate name but Anglo-Saxons have mixed feelings about two-stroke engines as well, often mixed feelings of the pre-mixed petroil variety. Many disapproved of strokers when used in motorcycles and smoky little passenger cars going “ring-ding-ding” were deemed frightfully downmarket. Some of us (not me) are still highly suspicious of front wheel drive despite Issigonis cla...