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 claiming it as his own. But in central Europe there was a design movement built upon eager little two-stroke turkeys and front wheel drive. The earlier Wartburg 311 and 312 of the fifties and sixties were not so anachronistic. If the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the 2CV, the Wartburg 311 was the equivalent of a Ford Anglia.

A Wartburg 311 estate or Camping-Limosine (I prefer the latter description)

The Communist Bloc understood the need for foreign exchange and launched an export drive to achieve some. Their products were usually very cheap and often that was their only redeeming feature. But the Wartburg 311 wasn’t far removed from an early Saab. The 3 pot engine only had seven moving parts yet was as smooth as a four stroke six cylinder motor and featured service intervals of 30,000 miles!

This little books in German but the pictures are fascinating for an Anglo-Saxon

I came across the Mercedes-Wartburg in this fascinating German language book on East German passenger cars. I once attained a German GCSE and I reckon I get the gist of its description.

Hard use wore out the quality coachwork of the Merdes-Benz 170V

The Gorlitz firm of Schwarz put Mercedes-Wartburgs together using Wartburg 311 bodywork on the chassis of a Mercedes-Benz 170V. These were typical examples of the Schwabian marque, unexciting but solid engineering for the upwardly mobile Mittelklasse, with a 73.5mm x 100mm 1697cc side-valve four cylinder engine. Mechanically they were pretty indestructible and had a production run of nearly twenty years – 1936 to 1955. But after a few years use, and the odd World War, sprucing them up with new Wartburg bodywork seemed a smart move.

These are the sturdy underpinnings given new life by the stretched Wartburg shell

The Mercedes-Wartburg was intended for the local taxi trade and a 25cm extension to the bonnet and wings was necessary to cover the 170V chassis. The Wartburg 311 shell must have been gutted and filleted in the process but apart from the slight stretch and the bigger 16 inch wheels you could almost mistake it for a Wartburg – if you ignored the Mercedes radiator grille. Bearing in mind the age of the 170V, this was probably not a cosmetic item.

The result was no faster than the standard Wartburg but perhaps had more gravitas. Max power was 28kW or 38 PS at 3200 rpm, about the same as a contemporary Wartburg at 4 grand. The boot was smaller due to a 46 litre fuel tank, the interior room must have been compromised due to the transmission tunnel and the service intervals couldn’t have been anywhere near the 30,000 miles of a Wartburg. I see that the top speed (Hochgeschwindigheit – what a great word!) of 100 km/h matches that of the Wartburg 311 Schnelltransporter – a kind of tradesman’s pickup. Wartburg saloons – or Limousines as they were called – managed 115 km/h so would have burnt the Mercedes-Wartburg off, leaving it trailing in their hazy two-stroke exhaust fumes. But performance wasn’t the aim of the Mercedes-Wartburg – it was to keep an old Mercedes going during times of need.

From 1956 to 1960, 15 Mercedes-Wartburgs were made and they all seem to have had that doorstop of a flathead engine. Later Mercedes Benz 170Vs had a 1767cc engine bored out to 75mm and pumping out 52PS. One of these would probably drop straight into a Mercedes-Wartburg but I doubt if many post war Mercedes made it into East Germany. Mercedes–Benz 170Vs always had side valves unless they were diesels but in theur favour there some very attractive cabrios and roadsters, all pre-war.

So the Mercedes-Wartburg is not a hot rod but a custom car – a Kommunist Kustom Kar built for Kruising. Gorlitz taxi drivers liked their faithful old motors so much they rejuvenated them when very little else was available. And since the Mercedes-Wartburg is all about do-it-yourself, this car is close in spirit to that of Engine Punk, which often celebrates the perversity and bloody-mindedness of the irrepressible special builder.

The Mercedes bits had already led hard lives and it’s unlikely any Mercedes-Wartburgs survive today. Wartburg 311s are popular in classic racing and rallying circles these days so chopping up a good un would be a no-no. But there are probably a few sitting around with their floors rotted out and you could easily throw a chassis together and stick a Merc V8 into it.

Well, maybe not easily but the result would be one hell of a Vintage Thing.

Of course, the only way to out do a Mercedes-Wartburg would be to build a Maybach-Trabant – unless anyone made something out of the bits left over from a Mercedes-Wartburg.