Trabi friends active for 30 years

Created: 05/01/2023, 18:00

By: Henry Dinger

They have had a decisive influence on the Bavarian Trabant Club: Founding member and long-time 1st chairman Peter Benkner (l.), his wife Renate and the acting chairman Peter Wecks.

The fire engine station wagon is one of three Trabis from Weck's roadworthy collection.

© Henry Dinger

The Bavarian Trabant Club has more than 100 members.

Its chairman lives in Neufinsing.

Neufinsing

– The Bavarian Trabant Club eV was founded in 1992 in Munich.

The association has been a registered association since 2009.

Since then, Peter Benkner from Esterndorf has been at the helm until 2021.

Armin Wecks from Neufinsing is now the first chairman.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Erding newsletter.)

A few weeks ago, the old men Eichenried played a bet in a Gaudi friendly against an "Ossi" selection.

The campaign was great fun, but flushed a serious 2250 euros into the donation fund for the children's cancer charity.

Of course, the game, which was intended to commemorate the encounter between West Germany and East Germany in the 1974 World Cup preliminary round, should not be without East German vehicles.

So organizer Torsten Grahl had invited the Bavarian Trabant Club (BTC) and the Simson Club Erding with their cars and mopeds.

And so it happened that Armin Wecks' bright yellow and red Trabi convertible was the center of attention in the final photo.

The East German Volkswagen fitted the theme quite well, because the West German kickers received a bright green VW Beetle convertible as a prize for winning the 1974 world championship.

However, Weck's Trabant was only converted into a cabriolet after reunification using a conversion kit, and there was no official version for sale in the GDR.

As a result, the two-stroke engine built in Zwickau, Saxony, is even more conspicuous here in the BMW and Audi stronghold.

Because the Trabis are among the exotics in the street scene anyway.

Since 2021, Armin Wecks has been the 1st chairman of the Bavarian Trabant Club eV, which is based in Neufinsing.

The club currently has more than 100 members from all over Bavaria and beyond.

"You can't say exactly how many vehicles are there," says Weck's clubmate Peter Benkner and laughs, "that changes almost every day".

Wecks has stored three Trabis, a Wartburg and a Queck Junior caravan in various garages.

All are registered and are driven regularly at any time of the year.

"But I use a western sheet metal for my company car," says the native of Lower Saxony, who works as a commercial manager in Munich, with a wink.

Colorful mixture: The lovingly maintained vehicles of the club members also show the different body types of the Trabi.

However, the convertibles are post-reunification conversions.

An open vehicle ex works was the "Kübel" without fixed doors, which was reserved for the army in the GDR and was exported to western countries in a civilian version with the nickname "tramp".

© BTC

The association came into being in Munich in 1992, when a handful of Trabi fans formed a club.

Peter Benkner from Munich was there at the time.

He had bought his first Trabant in October 1989 for 2,500 marks, the car was six months old and came to the West with East German refugees.

Even if some of his acquaintances smiled at him, the trained master mechanic doesn't let anything get on the two-stroke engine.

"A Trabi is very much a real car if you treat it like a car," says Benkner.

It is very reliable, "and if something breaks, it's usually not the fault of the Trabi".

What he means by that: You should be a bit of a Trabi whisperer in order to be able to interpret the quiet warning signals in good time that can announce a defect.

Wecks confirms that the little one from Zwickau is reliable, on his last vacation he drove 3,500 kilometers without a breakdown.

Over the years, the club grew and was also put on a legally clean footing on April 4, 2009 with the founding of a registered association.

Benkner was at the helm from 2009 to 2021, his wife Renate was always at his side as secretary.

The couple met in 2005 at the Trabi meeting in Schierling, to which the native of Teublitz had actually only accompanied friends.

This was not only an initial spark for the love for her husband, but also for the Duroplast vehicle: Shortly after the wedding on April 1, 2006, she had her own Trabi.

"But I married myself to have the technical knowledge of it," she says with a smile, alluding to the profession her husband learned, who now works as a diagnostics engineer.

For many years, the club was based on their huge property in Esterndorf near Dorfen.

There has been a festival here every year since 2006, to which more and more visitors came.

Overall, the Trabi friends have an extremely active club life.

Twice a month there is a regulars' table alternately in Moosinning and Winhöring, plus meetings all over Germany and neighboring countries.

And sometimes it's quite adventurous.

Like in 2012, when a convoy of 22 cars, some with trailers, drove to Switzerland.

"We filled up a small gas station there, and people really looked around," recalls Renate Benkner.

A small group with Trabi and Queck caravans was more often in Sardinia or traveled more than 4000 kilometers through Morocco for four weeks.

After Corona had also slowed down the satellites, a separate meeting is finally on the agenda for 2023.

From July 14th to 16th, the BTC is organizing what is now its fourth Trabi meeting in Schierling and is hoping for active participation.

"The last time in 2018 there were almost 120 participants with their vehicles," says Armin Wecks.

At the end maybe a little side fact about the game FRG-GDR 1974 mentioned at the beginning. The later Anzinger Sepp Maier stood in the west goal, the east goal was guarded by Jürgen Croy from Zwickau.

He, in turn, learned his first job as an electrician in the Trabi forge, VEB Sachsenring, and for years competed successfully in the so-called company sports association (BSG) Motor/Sachsenring.

In the 1990s, Croy also supported the idea of ​​an association to erect a stone monument to the Trabi in his hometown.