It wasn’t too long ago that having no AC in non-luxury West German cars was normal. Maybe 20-25 years ago, cheaper cars like the VW Golf started to have factory AC without having to order it for a couple hundo extra. Back when the Trabant was built in the East, you probably had to get a Mercedes or BMW if you wanted AC in your car.
My base 87 VW Scirocco had AC. The mid-tier and up German cars, at least for US import, usually had AC from the 80s on.
My base 1991 Golf had no AC. It also had no power steering, power windows, ABS or airbags.
The 87 had manual everything, except oddly electric mirrors and the drivers side was even a heated mirror. But the scirocco was an up market version of the Golf, and built in (West) Germany, were as USDM Golfs and Jettas were made mostly in PA I think.
I would love to see it get NCAP tested. It would probably do similarly to a roofed one since all structure is in the frames but the driver would just fall out.
Looks much better than a regular trabant, still depressed but summer depressed.
