November 9, 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and if any of you have been watching some of the recent documentaries to celebrate the event, you may have noticed this particular little car keep showing up.

It's a Trabant, an automobile that was produced by former East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke, but is now more recognizable as a symbol of the failed former East Germany and the fall of communism.

The Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle and was powered by a smoky two-stroke generator that maxed out at 18 hp, when you could keep it running. The body was made out of recycled fibers like cotton and wood and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals.

Refueling the Trabant required lifting the hood to fill the six gallon gas tank and then adding two-stroke oil and shaking it back and forth to mix it. Surprisingly, it was in production without any significant changes for nearly 30 years with 3,096,099 produced in total; the Trabant 500, also known as the Trabant P 50, produced from 1957 to1963 and the Trabant 601, or Trabant P 60 series, produced from 1963 to 1991.

Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell and then immediately abandoned their cars. This made the Trabant a kind of automotive liberator!  There is a painting of a Trabant by Birgit Kinder on a segment of the Berlin Wall that was made into a public gallery which commemorates not only the breaking of the wall in November 1989, but the wretched Trabant, the car driven by most East Germans in 1989.

Photo - Getty Images

When we were contacted by a marketing firm asking us to inform our readers about the DriveSharp software, recommended by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, our response was as it always is, "we only write about products we have personally used and will give an honest opinion, good or bad." A week later, DriveSharp arrived in the mail.

DriveSharp is a brain game that works on improving and widening the scope of your peripheral vision while training your brain to keep track of as many things as possible. Being baby boomers who have killed way too many brain cells though the years who now have to dodge the increasing number of folks who think they can "text" while driving, we thought it might be a good idea to check this out.

In six weeks we logged in over eight hours of the software's training sessions.  Can we say  that we are better drivers because of it?  Check out our full product review, DriveSharp, Software To Improve Your Driving to find out.

The Royal Automobile Club's annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run is celebrating its 113th anniversary this November 1st and 2nd which makes it the world's longest running motoring event. It attracts highly valuable Antique pre-1905 cars from all over the globe. For the spectators, it's a rare opportunity see these extraordinary automobiles on the 60 mile run from Hyde Park in central London to the seafront on the Sussex resort of Brighton.

The Emancipation Run, as it was called at its initiation on November 14th, 1896, celebrated the passing into law of the "Locomotives on the Highway Act" which raised the speed limit for "Light Locomotives" from 4 miles per hour to 14 mph. The event was considered to be a red-letter day in the history of British motoring, demonstrating that the automobile was here to stay...even though only 14 of the 33 starters reached Brighton. Since then, with the exception of the war years when gas rationing was in force, the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run has been an annual event to celebrate motoring.

Today, royalty and personalities from the worlds of television, stage, music and sport often participate in the annual run which takes place on the first Sunday every November. Few events on the international motoring calendar can claim the individuality, personality and character of the 557 fine examples of early automotive engineering that will participate in the 2009 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.

2009 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run Spectator Information

Photo: 1902 Murray Runabout

Toyota  Motor Corporation announced that they will host a Classic Car Festival at their Toyota Automobile Museum, in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, on Saturday, November 28. The festival will be the third hosted by the Museum, and is aimed at promoting and developing Japan's automobile culture and encouraging interaction among car fans.

To mark its 20th anniversary, the Toyota Automobile Museum will display prized classic cars from its collection under the theme: "The 100-hundred-year History of Automobiles and Personal Mobility Beyond 100 Years".

To illustrate the past and future of personal mobility, seven classic cars from the Toyota Automobile Museum will be driven side-by-side with vehicles such as the i-REAL, a vehicle that  has been described as a "wheel chair on steroids".

We wonder which classic cars Toyota will use from the museum that might best demonstrate the major advances their futuristic i-REAL has made.  Could it be Leonardo da Vinci's Self-Propelled Cart or maybe the Baker Electric.

Either way, we think the classic would still be our choice to get around in.  Check out Top Gear's video of the i-REAL and see if you would agree.