Frankfurt  - The Trabant, a motoring icon of former communist East Germany, will celebrate its rebirth at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September as an electric vehicle called the Trabant nT, with plans to start producing it by 2012.

A miniature restyled Trabant was first unveiled by the model car maker Herpa at the 2007 Frankfurt show as a possible design for a new Trabant. Herpa then formed a joint venture with two other companies to produce a prototype for this year's show in a bid to attract investors.

"The Trabant nT will neither be a retro car nor a fallback to communist nostalgia. It will be based on the Trabant Universal as a practical and versatile vehicle. With a high demand for electric vehicles the Trabant nT will be purely electric with a range of about 250 kilometres," spokesman Juergen Schnell said.

Combustion engines are not planned but the investor would have the last word, according to Schnell. Herpa has released few other details with the prototype still under wraps, apart from that it will weigh under 1,000 kilograms and be fitted with four seats.

The Trabant, keeping its basic design during the entire three decades of production, was fitted with a smoke-belching two-stroke engine.

Some three million units were produced at the East German works at Zwickau until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The Trabant, also called the "Trabi," still has a strong following of enthusiasts with cars in good condition achieving high prices on the classic car market. (dpa)