Barkas

Barkas was the East German manufacturer of small delivery vans and minibuses named the B1000. The former plant of the Framo company in Karl-Marx-Stadt was nationalized by the GDR government. (Karl-Marx-Stadt is now known as Chemnitz since German reunification, as it was before 1953). Production started in 1961 and continued until 1991. Originally the B1000 had a three cylinder, two stroke engine of the old DKW tradition, but shortly before production ceased, for the model named B1000/1, it was replaced by a four-stroke engine manufactured under licence from Volkswagen. Altogether 175,740 B1000s and 1,961 B1000/1s were built.