Tuesday, 2 December 2014

I Thought I Would Make This A Russian Post As The Next One Has A Russian/Soviet Subject,

what has eight wheels, two engines, no doors & can float? 


it would seem this unique auto might fit the bill, but it isn't a one-off vehicle as one might assume, it also appears to have no name, in fact two were made as part of a joint venture between the USSR and East Germany, sometime in the early 1980s,

the car was built over a Trabant chassis, but it did not have the 600cc two-stroke engine that provided later-model Trabbies with a meagre 23 horsepower, instead, the engineers behind the venture installed a pair of Ural motorcycle engines side-by-side that produced a claimed 77hp, 


Eastern Bloc engineering allegedly had its limits and an 8WD vehicle was belived to be beyond them, some commenter's have speculated the central quartet of tires was raised above street level to provide support in sandy, muddy or snowy conditions, which does make some sense, it's also possible the extra wheels provided buoyancy, when inflated the vehicle was intended to be amphibious, this feature seems to be backed up by the structure of the roof, it is designed to slide back to provide ingress and egress, so there is a door! 

now for the sad news, with the collapse of the USSR, funding for museums and other non-essential state-supported enterprises dried up so this one of a pair was evicted from its digs in the museum and consigned to the street below, that was in 2007, this and the other one made excepting for these images have not been seen since.


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