East German Wartburgs live miserably in Krakow
Some of you may remember my Octorber 2011 visit to Eastern Europe. I reviewed the almighty, almost HCOTY winning, FSO Polonez, drove the Lada Niva, checked out some Polish “trucks“, and spotted a rear-engined exotic a Skoda. While recently going over my pictures from that trip I found images of these miserable Wartburgs, the original 311 and the “modern” 353, still living in Krakow, Poland.
This original 311, a model which I totally do not recall ever seeing in my youth during the early 80s, was parked in the Jewish/Bohemian area of Kazimierz. When I came up to there were two guys leaning against, smoking cigarettes. I asked about and they said that it’s been there for years, except for one day when it mysteriously disappeared, only to come back into the exact same spot about 24 hours later.
The 353, which, much like the 311, was powered by a 1-liter, 2-stroke 3-cylinder engine, and was still used as a daily driver. These Wartburgs were much liked in Poland for their snow-forging front-wheel drive awesomeness. Like the Polonez, they came in a variety of body configurations such as a wagon and a pickup. I don’t know much else about them, so read the wikipedia entry, that way if they wrong you can’t yell at me. 
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<img src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1206/1021230684_0983ffd657.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Eisenach Wartburgtreffen 4.8.2007 879"> Three of the wheels on the 353 remind me of the nice wheels on 123GTs
When I was in Hungary I saw a very pretty and rare convertible 311 much like this one but white.
Wow there's a DKW Junior in the background even!
Woah, I see an E90 BMW!
The 311 actually looked quite modern for a European sedan when it was first shown in 1955. Of course, that was the pre-Berlin Wall days when there was still some exchange between West and East Germany. Even the dreary 353 was fairly up-to-date in style for 1966. Then Soviet stagnation spread throughout the Eastern Bloc as the '60s faded into the grey '70s and that was pretty much the end of automotive advancement.
<img src="http://www.classiccarcatalogue.com/W/wartburg%201956%20311.jpg" width=400>
That 353 looks to be a more modern 1.3 model. It used a VW-sourced 1.3L, 4-stroke 4-cylinder instead of the old 2-stroke. My grandfather had one for years back in Poland.
From Wikipedia:
"In 1988 the new model Wartburg 1.3 replaced the old model 353S, featuring the reliable engine from the Volkswagen Golf.
The new model has four stroke modified engine from Volkswagen with 64 horsepower."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(car)
The 4-stroke cars seem to have the small, round fender lights instead of the larger, rectangular ones on the older models. The older models also didn't have turn signals next to the headlights, but mounted on the fenders.
Ah yes, "The Fumigator"… I seem to recall that these were all safety orange. Or maybe those few that I saw in that particular color were so bright that they faded out the memory of their less eye-searing peers.
Here's one I caught in the wild when I lived in Dresden:
<img src="http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j129/hoopd87/007.jpg" width = 500>
And another posing as a float for Karneval:
<img src="http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j129/hoopd87/054.jpg" width = 500 >
Those cars all seem to be in pretty nice shape. But there seems to be a compressed air shortage.
You say three-cylinder two-stroke like that's a bad thing…
Normally, I'd agree with your sentiment, but when I spent a couple weeks in Berlin in 1982 with my Army outfit, the air there was foul, on both sides of the wall. Due, probably, to the herds of these and other two strokes and the crude farting diesel trucks over in East Berlin. It was no fun at all breathing that soup while running in the morning.
A lot of that might have been the brown coal they burnt for heating and electricity. Not like I want to call the 2-strokes clean. They'd get insulted.
That sounds about right. The air quality there really did suck, I mean, I spent plenty of time in other German cities like Munich and Nuremberg, and the air was fine. I noticed how much it stank in Berlin as soon as we got there.
I like the dirty girls.
Measuring panel gaps must have been fairly easy on the assembly line of the Wartburg 353.
If your whole index finger fits in the gap it might be too wide.
Wartburg was a reasonably popular brand in Finland up until the late 80s. Some people just liked the idea of a brand new car for used car money. It hadn't been farted in by anyone else, and it was so cheap to buy that the horrible resale value didn't matter.
I've driven a very late model (last of the two-strokes) and all I remember was the weird pedals sticking up from the floor, and how the floor shift felt like stirring a bucket of pool balls. It's hard to imagine that the 353 was East Germany's answer to the W126 S class and then some. The freewheel feature was neat though. You can't engine brake with a two-stroke since it doesn't get lubrication if it isn't being fed with fuel, so it'll just coast with the engine puttering along at idle. You don't need to use the clutch to shift gears either because of this.
The original 311 model looks great in my opinion. Especially the wagon with the funky rear windows. The 353 was essentially the same car with a new body on top and while it did make it look more modern it was actually a big step backwards in looks.
As with most other east german products they didn't stand a chance at competing on the free market once the Berlin Wall came down. They did try to stay current by scrapping the two-stroke for a 4-cylinder VW unit but obviously, nobody really wanted them. I understand that completely seeing as the floodgates of used western cars opened.