COBI Wartburg 353 Tourist Set 24543A

COBI's Wartburg 353 Tourist is a 1:35 model built from 77 blocks, 12 cm long, with moving wheels. A brick with the car's printed name is included.

The engine had seven moving parts

The Wartburg 353 ran a three-cylinder two-stroke, and the count of moving components inside it — three pistons, three connecting rods and a crankshaft — is the whole list.

A two-stroke has no valves, no camshaft, no timing chain, no valve springs and no rocker gear. The piston uncovers ports in the cylinder wall as it moves, and that is the entire timing mechanism. There is nothing to adjust and very little to wear out.

The consequences were real. A Wartburg could be repaired with basic tools by someone who was not a mechanic, which mattered enormously in a country where spare parts arrived when they arrived. It also meant the engine needed oil mixed into the petrol, because there is no separate lubrication circuit — owners carried a measuring can and did it at every fill.

The cost was the exhaust. A two-stroke burns its own lubricating oil by design, and the blue haze behind an East German car was that oil. It is why the type disappeared from Western markets in the 1970s and why the Wartburg was finished the moment emissions rules applied.

In 1988 the 353 finally received a four-stroke Volkswagen engine. Production ended three years later.

The Tourist

The estate version, with the extended rear. Over 100 km/h, built in Eisenach between 1966 and 1988.

In the COBI range

Set 24555 is the Trabant 601 Universal, the other East German icon, also at 1:35.

Specifications

Pieces: 77 · Scale: 1:35
Model dimensions: 12 × 5.5 × 4.5 cm (4.7 × 2.2 × 1.8 in)