Die 1970er Jahre als „Sattelzeit“ im ostdeutschen Automobilbau.

The article discusses the 1970s as a period of decline in the innovation and manufacture of passenger cars in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The quarter-century-long dependence on two relatively unchanging vehicles, the Trabant and the Wartburg, resulted in their being regarded as anachronistic cult objects representative of a failed economic system. The ambitious attempted innovations during the 1960s are viewed as a precursor to stagnation in innovation and financial failure reflective of the larger economic problems of the GDR region's regime in the last two decades of its existence.