History
Karl Gustav Hiller was a businessman in the 1800s who wanted to manufacture "Pom-poms" (why we have no idea). His machines and he travelled to the UK to show off his invention, which then he got a license to build "Safety bicycles" from Rover (The same people who made the cars in later half of the 20th century). He made a company called "Phänomen-Rover" which produced these bicycles. He then found out that he could attach a motor onto these to create motorbikes. In 1905 he released his first car, the "Phänomenmobil" which was a car powered by a two cylinder two stroke engine which he produced up until 1920, as he then found out they could not be in the market. In the 1930s the Reichspost (the board who comissions things) commissioned Phanomen to start making trucks for the Wehrmacht in World War 2. After the war, when the factory had been blown up, the Soviet Union saw potential in some old truck plans and asked to see where the people are who made the plans, unbeknownst that they all died in a fire. The SED (Social political government thing, aka the only political party in the GDR) ordered a new factory to be set up, with the new name Robur, so not to clash with any copyright issues. In 1957, Robur set out to start making trucks. The name Robur stems from the Latin name of oak tree, Quercus robur, its logo being "Robur" in a crankshaft fashion. As time progressed Other production facilities were added to the plant, including the Bautzen Body Work , the Winter Car Body Zittau, the Car Body Work Hall , the Gorlitz Fire Truck Work and theKamenz Engine Work . In the latter, diesel engines with 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 cylinders were developed on the basis of Robur. The Garant was replaced with the L01800. When it was presented at the "Leipzig trade fair" of 1961, it was so popular that it was hastily released with a new grille. Robur built a factory in africa to sell africa-spec Roburs, which didn't go down well. After many years of good sale, horrible interior design (with what appears to be a baby whale shaped, zipped locked engine bay in the middle of the cab,Robur made a couple of prototypes with lisenced Deutz engines. When the GDR collapsed (and since Robur was a publicly funded company) Robur ripped everything out its offices in Zittau and closed itself down when Germany reunificated. However, the story does not end there, a company called "Robur-Fahrzeug-Engineering" brought the company and all its know how and now produces engines for Mercedes, but in a different part of Germany, in Innsbruck, since Zittau's Robur Werke is now far from saving. Today all that remains of Robur Werke is a car-park, a block of flats in the HQ and a quite astonishing amount of Roburs still left in the main factory. All the models:All-wheel drive vehicles
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Various Media
In the film "Goodbye Lenin", Robur crowd control trucks can be seen, with massive shields on them.
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The videos above are ones of the most popular model, the LD3000. In the GDR, you needed a license and a warrant from government to buy one of these, if it fitted your profession. They wanted to limit the amount of Roburs produced since they had enough power to smash through border controls, found in crash tests.