I continue to find evidence of obscure European brands having been sold during the Great Import Boom of the fifties that I hadn’t previously known to be imported.. The Wartburg, East Germany’s finest! And just how many did Willy Witkin sell before the boom went bust in 1960?
Or perhaps I could interest you in a 1960 Maico?
Available for immediate delivery! As in, we’re desperate to get rid of them, since import sales fell off a cliff in 1960. And don’t forget, the Maico 500 “is capable of darting along at 50 mph.”
There’s a website about the Witkin Wartburg effort, http://www.wartburgusa.com/ that includes a page of anticommunist hate mail the importers received, it being just a few years after the McCarthy era and basically all over by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The really interesting thing is that in every one of those letters there is at least one spelling mistake.
Plus de change, c’est la meme chose!
Ahem… It’s “Plus ça change…”
But point well taken.
Rather hard to drum up enthusiasm for the car, when the name of the thing is something akin to “pimple-town”.
Paul, you’re too far from Europe. A lot of those weird and wonderful marques were in my ‘Observer’s Book of Automobiles’, first edition, late 1950s. I wish I could find it. It must have got lost in various international house moves. I still have ‘The Dumpy Book of Motors and Road Transport’ (1957) which is pretty good and has more obsolete models. For Wartburg it lists a ‘4-door Limousine, front wheel drive, powered by 900 c.c., 3-cyl., 3-port, 2-stroke water-cooled engine. The photo is similar to the one you illustrate, different from the Wartburg that was most famous and ubiquitous in East Germany – looks more like an old Skoda.
Actually, Paul is originally from Europe and is familiar with those cars, just not the fact that they were ever imported to the US. I have the 1964 and 1968 editions of the Observers’ books; they are quite comprehensive for their tiny size but don’t say anything about what markets the cars were sold in. As others have noted, the Maico 2 stroke dirt bikes, especially the big 501, had a great reputation … at least for peak power, if not rideability or reliability.
I didn’t mean to malign him! 🙂 Actually I have just found my 1st edition Observer’s Book – it doesn’t have the Maico, but it does have something small and cute called the ‘Champion Type 400 Mk II’: 2-cyl., 398 cc, 15 bhp (!). Correct me if I’m wrong but I think I read somewhere that Champion took over the Maico assets at some later date. Neither Wartburg nor Maico appears in this edition, actually. My memory got it wrong. But Wartburg is in the Dumpy book.
I’ve written up the Wartburg here several times:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/curbside-classic-1988-1991-wartburg-353-1-3-the-east-german-audi/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/1961-wartburg-camping-the-vista-cruisers-inspiration/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-cohort/cohort-pick-of-the-day-2-wartburg-on-the-go/
Including very recently: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-cohort/cohort-pick-of-the-day-wartburg-312-5-camping-limousine-the-east-german-vista-cruiser/
The Maico, not yet.
Wartburg could have used a better name for the USA…didn’t anybody realize that?
‘Blemishburg’, for starters.
the East German attempt at a West German Borgward and teh sporty Borgward Isabella which were great cars
The Wartburg, one of East Germany’s finest? Well, I guess it’s better than a Trabant…
Probably better than a Maico too. I’ve never heard of them, but an advertisement that tries to sell me a dealership franchise opportunity along with the car itself is the most crimson of red flags…
Maico also manufactured legendary dirt bikes in the 70s and early 80s. They were not at all like the little cars shown here. Big and bad with powerful engines and tall suspensions, they were what you bought to show up the Japanese brands when your KTM wouldn’t start. They received a lot of attention in thd motorcycle magazines, but never were huge sellers, as they were a bit pricey.
Maico Brako is an old saying. Maico’s were indeed superior dirt bikes up until ’82. They were the best handling and fastest 2 strokes out there most years. They were a bit brittle, especially hubs and wheels, and were maintenance intense but rewarding. Make mine a 490 Mega, possible the finest handling dirt bike ever built.
There is a pdf history of the marque I found online somewhere, probably linked in some Rick “SuperHunky” Seiman article. They also made scooters as well as micro cars briefly. The Maisch brothers privately owned Maico and near the end it became a family soap opera. One of the brothers was a Nazi party member as well, you probably had to be to be in business.
another interesting side note to the Maico story. An Indian engineer, Selvaraj Narayana, went to work for them in Germany and I don’t believe he spoke any German. He worked for them until the end and then went to KTM in Austria where he is still a high ranking executive last knew.
That Maico 700 looks like a Karmann Ghia convertible…
I doubt those 2 cycle engines were really that good on fuel mileage…
I might be interested in a Maico 501cc single cylinder motocross bike, though, at those prices…
I have a big picture book from the 1960’s of sports cars around here somewhere…
In Cleveland alone there used to be 85 different brands of cars manufactured along with different brands of motorcycles so there is still a lot for us to learn… and forget… LOL!
I’m in Toledo, Ohio, and lots of vehicles were made here, as well… and still are…
.
Willy Witkin Wartburg.
Wouldn’t matter how good a car was, that name is an impossible hill to climb. Designing, engineering, building, and importing a car is expensive. Spend just a little bit on appropriate marketing.
I have a hard enough time saying that I have a Ford Fiesta with a straight face. No way I’d want to tell my employer or father in law about my Willy Witkins Wartburg.
You need to accept it as it is, Wartburgs and all.
A Willy Wartburg sounds like an unpleasant venereal disease. Not something you’d want to casually mention in public without a full explanation. 🙂
“I spotted Dick in his Willy Wartburg the other day. He looked a bit sore.”
It could’ve been worse. Willy Wonka Wartburg, anyone?
Good funny comments, gents! I had never heard of the Maico, either. Wartburg? Naturlich! Notice how the ad from Willy does not let on that it was made in East Germany. That alone is a red flag.
Omitting the “East” part is better than this ad from a Eugene, Ore. Wartburg dealer, advertising that the Wartburg was “by BMW.”
Well, there were Wartburg cars built by BMW prior to WWII, but… this ad is stretching the truth just a tiny bit…
Uh-oh; better get Maico!
…what? Oh!
<Gilda>
Nyever miyeend!
</Radner>
There’s a good lesson in status here. It’s always about personality, not technicality.
Saabs were also 3-cylinder 2-stroke cars with freewheeling and a funny name. They became BIG status symbols in academia and in racing. DKWs were closely related to Wartburgs, and they sold reasonably well for a while.
I’ll bet those “hand-crafted interiors” were pretty decent, since they were made for Party members and for export.
Ralph Millet was able to make the right connections for Saab, and Willy Witkin wasn’t able to do the same for Wartburg.
I must say, on paper it looks quite appealing. Apart from the name.
I first started devouring everything written about cars around 1962, and I remember reference books on all cars sold in the U.S. mentioning the Wartburg. I’m astounded by the number of nameplates that were sold in this country in those pre-homologation for safety and smog days.
Kind of like when I attended the Tokyo Import Car Show in 1994, and saw the variety of brands that were sold in Japan then. Probably because Japan and the EU had reciprocal recognition of homologation, so manufacturers didn’t have to go through the rigmarole to sell a few hundred units in Japan and could set up a sales office with dealers in maybe Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and get maybe 90% of the potential market for quirky imports with little effort.
My family went to a car show around this time, and there was a Wartburg there. I don’t remember being aware it was from the DDR, and it didn’t make much of an impression on me. My mother, who had a way of mangling names, called it the Warthog.
Interesting to see the word, East, omitted from the Wartburg ad.
I wonder what other vehicles built in communist countries were “officially” imported and sold in the United States beside Wartburg and Yugo. Yugo was introduced at 1984 Los Angeles International Auto Show and finally went on sale in 1987 (two years before the breathtaking implosion of communist Yugoslavia).
IIRC Czech Skodas were briefly imported into the US around 1960…
Wartburgs, Skodas and other, more “normal” cars were sold in St. Louis at a dealership owned by Ben Stepman. He was also the earliest dealer for both Toyotas and Subarus
By the 80s the sold out and moved to the Las Vegas area.
He quickly got bored with retirement, bought a failing Dodge dealership, turned it around helped by large advertising buys.
He soon added Hyundai. But he just couldn’t stay away from communist cars, so when the Yugo became available he became the largest dealer in the world.
I worked with guys who had worked for him in St. Louis and all agreed he was their favorite boss ever.
People flocked to Yugos thinking “an import so cheap, it just has to be good!”