AHC: Keep Sachsenring in the car manufacturing business

The challenge: with a POD no later than 1985, have Sachsenring, the makers of the Trabant, remain in the business of automobile manufacturing in 2010. Bonus points if this occurs in a reunited FRG.
 
What did they have to bring to the table? Engineers, a workforce and buildings.

Maybe they could do a deal with another car maker to build them for the FRG and Eastern europe market?

Something like the Nissan Sunderland plant.
 

ingemann

Banned
I think they need to create a export oriented model for that to work. Maybe a Trabant with other motor, of course if they can survive long enough, the Trabant isn't the worst car to put an electric motor in. In fact if they could already do so in the eighties. Of course they would get a car which could only drive 50 km/h, and only having electricity for 3-4 hours. But they could sell it as a cheap city car, using it for transport of people and goods in cities, where its small size and weight would be an benefit. If GDR set up the infrastructure for this it may give Sachsenring an lease on life long enough, that VW or BMW buy them and setting it up as the first successful electric car company.
 
What did they have to bring to the table? Engineers, a workforce and buildings.

Maybe they could do a deal with another car maker to build them for the FRG and Eastern europe market?

Something like the Nissan Sunderland plant.

Or Skoda, which is still in business, as part of?fiat?

This would require a very different reunification. Valuing the Ostmark at a reasonable rate, and having some temporary movement barriers, say, might have allowed some ddr industry to survive. Whether Trabant is one of the possible survivors, i cant say.
 
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