Here's a letter of mine ^[1] appearing in today's Washington Times:

I remember being in Germany in 1990, not long after the
collapse of the Iron Curtain. A German friend told me of a then-recent
incident that had happened at night as he was driving on the autobahn.
He was cruising along at about 120 mph in his Mercedes when he saw
ahead two faint, flickering lights. "Good thing I slammed on my
brakes," he said, "because the lights were candles in the rear window
of a Trabant. They were being used as taillights!"

The government-made Trabant, I gather, had a top speed of about 60 mph — and obviously also an unreliable electrical system.

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax

(I thank Geoff Manne for the title of this blog post.)

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