Retro: Barkas | TV car showroom

Like postwar Czechoslovakia, young East Germany urgently needed large numbers of vans and small trucks. From the wreckage of the pre-war Framo-Werke car factory in Hainichen, Saxony, which produced various light commercial vehicles, including tricycles, what remained after the occupation of eastern Germany by the Red Army was a V501 light van /2 with a half liter DKW engine. Its production was resumed under the banner of the IFA conglomerate simultaneously with the establishment of the GDR in 1949. The improved model was called V901, and starting with its modernization V901/2, the cars were already powered by a 0.9 Wartburg engine liters . That strange word Barkas derives from the Phoenician language, where Barkas means “lightning” but also “fast.” Recall that this first Barkas had 28 horses. But this was already written in the late 1950s and Karl-Marx-Stadt was already diligently working on a modern successor.