23 Jan Marathon Trabant at FMM

Mid-January there was an interesting new arrival at FMM in the form of a marathon Trabant, manufactured in the then East Germany from 1957 to 1990. Little is known of the history behind the journey but it appears as though in 1992 the car was driven from Teltow, a town in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district in Brandenburg (near Berlin) to Ahlen, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia in the district of Warendorf, and then onto Cape Town. The timing coincides with the final demolition of the Berlin Wall that helped pave the way for the reunification of Germany and the journey was undertaken by two Teltow administrative employees, Eberhard Derlig and Guido Zenkert, apparently at the request of a South African minister…! Engine damage brought the car to a halt in Zaire but it looks as if a mechanic, Jörg Kaulich, got the car running again and oversaw the completion of the journey. This car is in remarkably good ‘as arrived’ condition, and will be suitably refurbished by FMM. Altogether a truly intriguing story worth researching, so ‘watch this space’…