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Comment by Anotheroneagain | Hacker News Reader

Were the soviets that far ahead? Because the T3 trams from the 60s were already made of composites.

You mean the Czechs. They also created the cloth/vinyl-clad microcars, the Velorex - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velorex

Parts of the DDR era Trabant cars were also made out of composites.

Papier-mache, to be exact. ;)

Afaik it wasn't paper mache, it was made of cotton fiber and used some kind of resin as a binding agent.

Paper uses wood pulp.

Wood pulp and cotton fiber aren’t that different, are they?

They are? Generally fiber length determines how tough a given composite will be. There's a reason why clothes are made out of cotton fiber not wood.

Clothes are often made of (treated) wood fiber - it is what rayon/viscose is. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayon]

Clothes made of ‘bamboo fiber’ are made of rayon, for example.

Cotton is also normally mercerized [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercerisation], or treated like Denim, etc.

It’s all made of cellulose at the end of the day.

Well, to be precise, it was a resin + cotton + wood pulp mixture.

Also, totally un-recyclable. Good riddance!

In the eastern block we used to call it eastern BMW - Bakelite Motor Vehicle (although bakelite wasn't exactly the composite used as it seems). Or that repair set for it comprised of just carpet tape. It didn't have that great reputation, at least not in 80s.

I think the Trabant was just fine when you compare it to the cars designed in its era - the 50s and 60s, I think it stands up to the Bug pretty well, its just they didn't bother updating the design for decades, and by the 80s, it looked like a relic out of time.

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