Getting underway
Like all of my builds, this one was built replicating a brand new Trabant that had just rolled off the production line. The paint I used was actually imported from a Trabant shop I found on the internet, the paint still being made by the same company that used to supply the factory. It’s an acrylic enamel, and although I decanted it from the aerosol to use through my airbrush, it really wasn’t a nice to paint to use. In the end it was well worth it after I had finished the model knowing that the colour is the exact shade that would have been used on a real Trabant. The colour is called Glacier Blue, and was one of the most popular colours used on the 601s.
Body shell
As with the majority of my builds, I started off by working on the body shell and getting it ready for paint, there really wasn’t much work to do to get the body ready for paint. Just make the build a lot tidier, I fixed on the headlamp rings, and the trim pieces that run along the tops of the front wing, doors and rear wings. On the real Trabant, these are U-shaped aluminium extrusions to hide the screws that are used to fix the Duraplast panels onto the body shell and are topped off with a black rubber trim.
The bonnet was held in place with strips of masking tape so I could line the headlamp rings in place before using liquid cement to fix them in place permanently. The rear lamp holders were also fixed onto the body shell. As all these parts need to be painted in the same colour as the body, the body shell, bonnet, boot lid, roof panel, bumpers and interior side panels were first given a few coats of grey plastic primer, followed by a few coats of the Glacier Blue and set aside to dry while I carried on with the rest of the build.
