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Origins
Heinz Melkus, Dresden's racing patriarch, achieved the DDR's most improbable car in 1969: the RS 1000, a gullwing-doored sports coupé built around Wartburg's three-cylinder two-stroke — mid-mounted and tuned toward 70 horsepower — under a glassfibre body shaped for genuine aerodynamic slipperiness. Around 100 were built through the 1970s, sold to approved motorsport participants; the RS 1000 raced throughout the Eastern Bloc, giving socialist Germany a token of sporting glamour its planned economy never sanctioned twice. The car's existence required Melkus's singular status — racing school proprietor, national champion, persistent negotiator of permissions. Reunification made survivors treasures, and a family revival briefly built modern successors. The original remains unmatched: the Iron Curtain's only gullwing, smelling faintly of two-stroke and defiance.
Melkus RS1000 · Thomas doerfer · CC BY-SA 3.0
