Looks like it has a certain coolness, vaguely old Commer van styling, and also possibly lots of potential.
I've never heard of them before but I see it's a two-stroke engine. Oooer! A tad lawn mower'ish and Trabant like in performance I expect.
Has it got any easy'ish more modern engine and running gear, brakes etc upgrading potential to make it less of a hazard to other road users and less of a scary experience when trying to mix it with modern traffic?
It's certainly Trabant-like in performance, except with a bigger body!
But you'd expect that given that the company who made the Barkas vans also made the engines for the Trabant cars as well. But the vans have about 57 bhp while Trabant had only 26. It has all the potential in the world as I can just throw the engine out and put in whatever I'd like, but I don't think I'll be doing that.
Half of the time I don't know what gear I'm in, there is no 0-60 time as I don't think it can even hit 60 miles per hour (unless you're going down hill), and every time you hit the brakes you just have to pray that it stops. And mind you the previous owner said he put new brakes in all around. It's a death trap but I'm not bothered, I'm more enamoured by the history of it. Apparently the Stasi kidnapped people in them (
) and they were used as delivery and police vans all over in the former Soviet bloc countries. At a time when the West Germans were making BMW, Mercedes and Porsche, the East Germans were making this. I think I'll keep it running but keep it as it is just for the sake of history. Oh, and I got it for the equivalent of £250 as well.