Cold War for car buffs
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Got a bad case of auto-related Cold War nostalgia? The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has the cure.
As part of a new exhibit called Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, LACMA is temporarily displaying three automotive artifacts that are sure to bring back memories of a time when capitalism and communism were going toe-to-toe around the globe.
The cars, a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle, a 1956 BMW Isetta and a 1972 East German Trabant will be on view through Feb. 8 in the museum entrance area.
For autophiles and ideologues of a certain age, nothing says “dictatorship of the proletariat” quite like a Trabant. Millions of these drab sedans were made between the late ‘50s and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the car’s lack of pizazz and performance (not to mention the years-long wait to get one) came to symbolize for many the shortcomings of state-run industry — a useful lesson, perhaps, for the Big Three as they look to Washington for help.
According to some sources, the Trabant name is derived from the Latin word for “companion,” although it is also the German word for “satellite.” (Either way, it recalls the name of the first successful satellite, which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957 and dubbed “Sputnik,” Russian for “fellow traveler.”) More prosaically, ‘traben’ is also the German verb for ‘trot.’
Often referred to as the Trabi, the car’s design changed little over the years. East Germans would keep them for decades and, according to Wikipedia, used Trabis were often worth more than new ones because they were available right away.
Classic car buffs may be more interested in the Isetta, a little runabout produced by BMW in the 1950s and early 1960s. “Powered” by a one-cylinder, 13-horsepower modified motorcycle engine, the Isetta bears little resemblance to the high-performance machines BMW is known for today.
Based on an Italian design, the Isetta was an odd-looking egg — in fact, Germans called the car “the rolling egg” because of its ovoid shape.
The VW Beetle needs no introduction, of course. More than 24 million were built over three decades, and a Bug with a “Stop the War” bumper sticker is enough to induce flashbacks in some folks who survived the ‘60s. And lest anyone think that constancy of design (or lack of imagination) was a strictly Marxist-Leninist construct, its worth noting that the Beetle’s basic motif changed even less than the Trabant’s over the years.
The Beetle and the Isetta, by the way, are on loan from the Petersen Automotive Museum. The Trabant is owned by local artist Richard Jackson.
The Art of Two Germanys exhibit, which features around 300 paintings, sculptures, photographs and other artworks, runs through April 19. More information on the exhibit and several related programs is available at the LACMA website.
-- Martin Zimmerman
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