Don’t Feed the Trolls: 1963 IWL Troll Scooter

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In Scandinavian folklore, trolls are ugly, evil, dangerous giants that lived in caves and roamed the countryside at night.  Trolls liked to eat humans, or if they weren’t hungry, throw stones at people and descry their villages. Nowadays trolls roam the internet at night and make life difficult for the thin skinned and easily offended.  Either way, an odd choice for a product name.  Find this 1963 IWL Troll Scooter for sale in Puyallup, WA for $3,800 via craigslist.

Like in the decedent capitalist West, on the other side of the Iron Curtain scooters were key to getting the war weary populace moving again after World War 2.  In East Germany, the flattened Ludwigsfelde Daimler-Benz aircraft engine factory outside of Berlin was pressed into service to manufacture scooters.  The factory built bomber and fighter engines for the Luffwaffe using slave laborers and was bombed by the U.S. and then stripped of the remainders by the Soviets as reparations.  The East Germans chose the site to begin producing commercial vehicles and consumer scooters.  By 1963, IWL was onto it’s third model of scooter, the TourenRoller Ludwigsfelde or Troll.

The Troll or TR150 was designed to be a long distance tourer, equipped with a 143cc air cooled single giving around 9hp.  The chain was fully enclosed in hard rubber tubes as was the rear sprocket to extend its life.

This particular example is said to be 100% complete and runs, but will require some work to be roadworthy.  It does still retain its original handlebar-end indicators.  One missing item you would have to deal with is the lack of title.

See a better way to remember the DDR? email us here: tips@dailyturismo.com

Gianni is Daily Turismo’s Pacific Northwest correspondent.