On the East Side Gallery - a 1.6km-long chunk of Berlin Wall preserved as an alfresco art exhibition - is one image that sums up the city's tumultuous history: a painting of an East German Trabant car smashing through the concrete barrier. This, of course, is pure fantasy. With bodywork made chiefly from compressed Russian cotton held together with resin, the 'Trabi' would struggle to survive a head-on collision with a cardboard box, let alone a wall.
Since German reunification in 1991, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes have largely chased the once ubiquitous Trabi from Berlin's wide boulevards onto the scrap heap - or more ignominiously, into the farmyard, where they make good homes for chickens. But 15 years after the last one spluttered off the production line, some Trabis remain in action. A small fleet has been assembled in the German capital for a tourist venture that lets visitors roam the city behind the wheel of a socialist icon.
On a Berlin side street I meet Erich, a cheerful, powder-blue 1989 Trabant P-601, and Benedikt, an equally cheerful and - thanks to face-freezing temperatures - equally blue Trabi Safari guide. After a lesson on how to negotiate the wobbly four-speed gear lever mounted on the steering column, a turn of the ignition kicks Erich straight into action and we lurch towards the city traffic ahead of a smelly plume of exhaust fumes.
We're an immediate head turner, not least because of the distinctive two-stroke engine rattling beneath the Trabi's bonnet. With Benedikt giving directions from the back seat, a style of driving that must have been all too familiar in the cloak-and-dagger days of East Germany's notorious Stasi secret police, we head down east Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee, where Erich looks instantly at home among the grim 1960s housing blocks.
After pausing at a set of traffic lights I put the engine through its paces, roaring from zero to 90km/h in a leisurely 25 seconds. 'The Trabi has a top speed of 110km/h,' deadpans Benedikt over my shoulder. 'But only when the wind is blowing from behind. On a steep hill.'
I try to imagine Erich careening down The Peak into Central. It's an amusing idea, but then there is the problem of deceleration. The Trabi's 26-horsepower engine isn't strong enough to assist braking, so shoving it into a low gear merely cranks the revs up to a deafening scream. Its non-power-assisted drum brakes perform surprisingly well on the flat. This is mainly because they have only the car's lightweight chassis to contend with, which is fine unless you're giving a lift to a former East German Olympic shot-putter.