Of all the cars ever manufactured, the East German Trabant may get the least respect. No wonder: The ugly little plastic-bodied sedan has a 72-horsepower, two-stroke engine barely fit for a riding mower. But Liz Cohen has big plans for her 1987 Model 601 deLuxe. She has set out to build a real-life Transformer: a Trabant that, at the touch of a button, morphs into the soul mate of a '73 Chevy El Camino, complete with low-rider hydraulics and a network of motion sensors that allow it to interact with gawkers.
That's only the beginning of the bodywork involved. Cohen, a 30-year-old industrial artist, is also tinkering with her own exterior. She's hired a personal trainer and gone on a protein-packing, five-minimeals-a-day diet. Her goal: to be the first woman ever to have a car and a bikini-clad body, both of her own creation, on a low-rider magazine cover. She wants to achieve a new level of cool, for herself and the Trabant. "A car like this just wants to be loved," she says. "I'm helping make that happen."
Cohen expects to spend 1,000 hours over the course of a year making improvements to the car, changing everything from the suspension to the paint job (she's planning a faux wood-grain look with red Kandy trim). The work won't be cheap, either. Though the car cost just $400, her makeover budget - courtesy of Italian software entrepreneur and art fan Franco Marinotti - is $30,000.
Cohen has already welded in the steel frame necessary to support hydraulics. What's next? Gears powered by three batteries will fold the back half of the roof under the rear seat to create a pickup bed. Speakers behind the grill will broadcast digitally recorded messages in an androgynous mix of English and German when someone approaches. And a pop-up DV camera and a projector will alternately record reactions to the car's transformation by day and project them, like a dream sequence, into the night.
HOW A TRABANT BECOMES AN EL CAMINO
1) Rear half of roof lifts up and the backseat slides flat to become a mattress.
2) Digital videocam pops up from hood compartment to record street scene. AV system projects footage onto pavement or walls.
3) Speaker behind grill plays prerecorded voice fragments triggered by motion sensors.
4) Hydraulic system lifts front to back, side to side, and into a standing three-wheel.
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