Saab kamion.
1987 Audi 80 Allroad
Have you ever imagined a Trabant with the styling of Giugiaro/Italdesign? Here is an unusual story that takes us back more than 30 years in time.
Just some months before the reunification of West and East Germany, the official car magazine of the German Democratic Republic, Kraftfahrzeugtechnik 5/1990, published two black and white photos of a new Trabant without any specific information on its origins. Based on the background pictures, they thought of developing a full model family. As the project name suggests (P 1995), it was foreseen to be arrived on the market by the mid-90s.
29 years thereafter, in 2019, in the German book ‘Trabi Love’, new photos were published of the car together with an interview with Carl H. Hahn, the former Head of VW. Hahn revealed some information on this secret X03 project. He confirmed that VW gave the proposal to East Germany to become the new Trabant model replacing the old 601/1.1.
But what could have led here?
As a new perspective to the story, it is very likely but never confirmed officially, that the project started its life around 1985 as an alternative proposal of Italdesign for the replacement of the second VW Polo/Typ 86C. However, it was not considered as the final version of the VW Polo and the proposal was rejected. One of the reasons might have been economic: given the massive development costs of the new Golf and Transporter, VW wanted to keep the old Polo longer in production, having only a heavy facelift in 1990 and bringing the fully new one to the market only in 1994.
Most likely as a part of the starting agreement between Volkswagen and IFA/VEB Sachsenring (for the construction of a new VW Plant in Zwickau in two phases and a VW Engine Plant in Chemnitz), Carl H. Hahn provided the Italdesign proposal to East Germany to become the new Trabant. Based on the available information, Carl H. Hahn presented the concept personally to the foreign trade minister of East Germany at the end of 1988 in Wolfsburg. The first prototype was sent directly to East Berlin in February 1989, which was followed by a second one thereafter.
The rest is history: the economic situation of East Germany did not allow to realize the project. The mentioned joint venture was established in December 1989 under the name of Volkswagen IFA-PKW GmbH, but it started to produce VW Polos, instead of Italdesign-Trabants. The two prototypes disappeared somewhere in East Germany without any information on their locations.
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1994 Fiat Ulysse - U60
