The Trabant – the finest car ever to come out of East Germany – will return as an electric.

Herpa, a German automaker, has bought the rights to the car and will show off an electric prototype at the Frankfurt Auto Show, according to Reuters. 

The Trabi became a cult hit in the west after the wall fell and East Germany, as a country, went out of business. The poor performance and erratic driving made drivers long for a simpler time when cars went 25 mph and accidents were common. The Trabi was also a green ahead of its time. The shell was made out of a recycled paper pulp. If this were the mid-1960s and you were spy, it'd be a Trabi you'd see in the rear view mirror.

I even drove one myself. My cousins who live in the countryside where the border used to be, bought one from a farmer on the eastern side for a few bucks. I was able to crank it up to about 20 mph. Fumes spewed all over the place, it sounded like a lawnmower and we had to continually tinker with the choke. Their Trabi is the standard communist gray, which may have been the only option. See photo.

This could be a hit. "It's a super idea, but I'm not sure who will buy one," Daniel Pohl of a Trabant fan club told Reuters. "Trabant und Ostfahrzeugfreunde" in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Some of those words wouldn't even fit into the trunk.