An eastern german idol named Wartburg

The Wartburg was a car marque manufactured in East Germany.

The name “Wartburg” derives from Wartburg Castle on one of the hills overlooking the town of Eisenach where the cars were manufactured.

From the 1950s, Wartburgs had a three-cylinder two-stroke engine with only seven major moving parts (three pistons, three connecting rods and one crankshaft).

Main model – 311

The basic architecture of the pre-war design, forcibly acquired from Zwickau-based Auto Union, was retained, albeit with the chassis lengthened by 10 cm, which combined with long overhangs to create a larger car with a relatively spacious four-door sedan/saloon body.

The name “Wartburg” came from the very first model produced in 1898 at the Automobilwerk Eisenach factory, three decades before that company was acquired by BMW, and nearly five decades before the plant’s location in the Soviet occupation zone placed it under state control. The “311” designation followed the tradition of the plant’s previous owner, BMW, whose Eisenach-produced passenger cars had all been identified by a three-digit number starting with a “3”.

The use of a separate chassis facilitated the adaptation of the car to a range of differing body shapes. On the other hand, the use of a separate chassis with the frame rails running under the passenger compartment’s floor during a period when automakers elsewhere in Europe were increasingly standardizing on self-supporting car bodies, left the Wartburg approach looking increasingly dated, and also added to the car’s height, while “low-long-sleek” was becoming the order of the day in car styling.

The 313-1 was a two-seat roadster, sold as the Wartburg Sport, built from 1957 until 1960. Of 469 cars that were built, about one-third were exported to the United States. A plethora of other body styles were available, including a rare four-door military utility roadster, coupés, and several station wagon versions.

Background of 311

Production of the Wartburg 311 was already underway at Eisenach by the end of 1955. The car was a development of the existing EMW 309. This was the car previously identified as the IFA F9, which, in turn, had been based on the 1940 DKW F9 scheduled for launch in 1940 until war intervened.