AN Oxford car enthusiast has sidelined his Mercedes in favour of an East German Trabant car in a bid to combat the rising cost of petrol.

Philip Guy Davis, from Walton Street, Jericho, has owned the Trabant for 15 years but had not used it since 1999.

Fed up with the increasing cost of filling up his Mercedes 280SE, he decided the time was right to revive his rare Trabant 601 estate and says the decision has slashed his fuel bills.

In Oxford on Tuesday, the average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was 136.4p per litre, with the UK national average 134.88p. In March, the average was 133.46p, up by 55 per cent since November 2006, when a litre of unleaded petrol cost just 86p.

Mr Guy Davis, the promoter of Oxford’s Famous Monday Blues night at the Bullingdon pub, in Cowley Road, bought the car in Germany in 1996 for £250 but reckons it is now worth £1,500-£2,000. At the time he drove it across Europe to get it back home to Oxford.

He said: “I got the Trabant out again because the Mercedes was getting through £10 of petrol a day just driving around Oxford, whereas the Trabant will last a week on £10 of fuel.

“I took it to Cheltenham at the weekend and it cost £12 in fuel to get there and back, when using the Mercedes would have cost me £35.

“In a funny way it makes sense, though the Trabant is something of a challenge to drive. You have to concentrate and remember where the gears are, because they’re back to front, and you have to put oil in the fuel tank with the petrol, as it has a two-stroke engine.”

He added: “I just like to drive something interesting. We had to do quite a lot of work, as it hadn’t moved for so many years.”

The now immaculate car was given an overhaul and fitted with a new brake system at the Aladdin garage in Hayfield Road, Jericho, to get it through the MoT test.

But one original feature of the car will soon disappear – its numberplates from the now defunct German Democratic Republic, the old Communist East Germany. Mr Guy Davis has been told by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency they will have to be replaced with standard UK numberplates.