Remnants of things past - trade-in program for old Trabant cars

E: The Environmental Magazine, Sept-Oct, 1997 by Robert Furlong

Taking inspiration from Hungary's constitution, which stresses the right to a healthy environment, the Budapest city council recently urged owners of the communist-era Trabant to turn in their seriously polluting cars to be recycled. Getting the cars off the street is an attempt to address an environmental problem that affects everything from smog in the central districts to water quality in the once-blue - and now poisoned - Danube River.

The doubling of nitrogen oxide emissions in Budapest since 1990 has been attributed largely to the use of cars, whose numbers have increased 46 percent in the last seven years. The Trabant is the worst offender, releasing 10 times more pollution than the average western car, even more than its Cold War siblings: the Russian-built Lada and the East German Wartburg.

The "Trabi," equipped with a modest two-stroke engine, has become an icon of the post-Cold War era, one of its few enduring symbols. There are still 70,000 operating Trabants in Budapest, more than 300,000 in Hungary and a million in Eastern Europe.

The Trabant's East German designer, Werner Reichelt, made history in 1955 by building the car's body entirely from recycled materials - cotton wastes and phenol resins. Four years ago, in a fitting irony, Reichelt was given the task of recycling the smog monster he created. Working in the original Trabant plant in Zwickau, Reichelt developed an environmentally-safe method of turning retired "Trabis" into bricks.

The city council offered those who agreed to trade in their Trabants a 10 percent discount toward the purchase of a new Seat Marbellara car, which retails for about $10,000. But Andras Lukacs, head of Budapest's Clean Air Action Group, an environmental lobbying organization, said the offer would only help the rich who could afford a new car.

"Most owners of Trabants are low-income people for whom the 10 percent reduction does not help at all," Lukacs says. His group pushed for - and got - an additional offer: a two-year transit pass comparable to the Trabant's worth, about $200. Would Trabant drivers take either deal? Unfortunately, not many did. Only 1,451 owners traded in their Trabants for a two-year transit pass; 708 took the 10 percent Marbellara discount. Deemed a failure by city, officials, the offer was discontinued. "We counted on several thousand participating in the program," says Budapest's environmental program coordinator, Zoltan Molnar. "People just weren't interested." Or maybe they still love their dirty, Trabis.