Just a non political observation about Quebec's RHD ban

[marsgal42]

Last time I was in Germany (Dusseldorf) I saw a lot of Trabants around. I couldn't tell if they were some sort of anti-status symbol, or if people just bought them as cheap bangers and ran them until they fell apart.

My dream eastern-Bloc car is the Tatra 603. I've seen a couple in real life. The engine sounds like a cross between a 911 and a Camaro... http://www.tatra.demon.nl/cars_history_T603.htm

...laura

[mararmeisto]

T R A B A N T ! ! ! Ja, way super cool! It kinda looks like a knock-off of the VW Type III, but they spent all their industrial espionage funds on getting the looks right and forgot to develop an engine for it.

Check out this video montage of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYu18ZduhQ&feature=fvw

[impalator]

It's actually funny..... Upon the fall of the Berlin Wall I was on a road trip in Germany with a friend and on the freeway there are many people doing 160+ km/h... my buddy and I managed to go 220 km/h before he freaked out and took the foot off the pedal - in his dads Lancia Thema 8/32 (that is a nice, fairly high end and comfortable Italian full size limousine with an 8 cylinder 3.2Liter Ferrari engine....) now imagine that Eastern Germany had just opened up that Summer and there were tons of Wartburgs and Trabants all maxing out at around 100km/h "racing" about the Autobahn... and then you got the crazy West-Germans in their BMW's, Audi's and Mercedes' doing double that speed... a recipe for disaster...

Mind you, with our L300's we would be right in line with the Trabbi's as far as top speed is concerned (and almost in line as far as spewing smoke out the tailpipes...)