Here we've been writing about Trabants all year and we didn't even realize it's the plastic-bodied two-stroke shrimp's 50th birthday. But a gathering of nostalgic East Germans in the Trabant's hometown of Wickau recently made front page news and prompted us to delve deep into Flicker for a look at alt-Trabant culture.

One photo stream, for example, seems to bounce back and forth between a Trabbi mud rally and a demolition derby, while the custom jobs, like the amazing specimen at left (see more of Spit_Mkl's great Flickr shots here) and this sleek wonder from a 2006 show in Leipzig, are quite the mixed bag. (Suddenly, Liz Cohen's Bodywork project -- where the once-conservative workhorses morph into fun-loving, street-chic El Camino-flavored lowriders -- doesn't seem so far-fetched.)

And let us not forget the stream that, truth be told, we feel unqualified to intelligently comment upon, and yet also feel oddly compelled to share with the world: the ingenious Trannies in Trabbis.

Surprisingly, this ironic treatment of the communist-era subcompact is not unique to decadent Western artists (or to the band U2). As Gunther Hohne writes in his book DDR Design, which Jennifer Stahl translated for us in January, the attitude was ubiquitous:

"When people started calling the 'new' Trabant 'Trabbi,' the word conveyed more condescension than love, in the same way that calling Communist Party Leader Erich Honnecker 'Honnie' implied everything but 'honey.' Both were pathetic contemporaries never freely elected by the East German people. After German reunification the 'Trabbi' advanced as a nostalgic East German cult object only among the younger generation, which saw in it a comical, noisy, stinky, but fun little car."

Though Hohne ended his rumination with an at-once warm and dismissive farewell -- "Peace to you, car body, old plastic execration! -- it's hard to say good bye.

A photo that says it all, from "TheTrabant Model of Science" site.