Go Trabi Go was a major box office hit, attracting 1.5 million viewers in both parts of Germany, making it one of only three unification films that enjoyed success at the box office. This success has been described as being partly due to the love/hate relationship many East Germans had with their "Trabi", which was the most well-known and ridiculed symbol of East Germany.

Stephen Kinzer of The New York Times described the movie as a way for East Germans to laugh "not precisely at themselves, but at the absurdities of the system under which they lived until last year."  He likens the Trabi as a symbol for the people who built it, who "survive[d] through difficult times and ultimately triumph[ed]".  The film was also praised for its rollicking portrayal of the car as a main character while still getting across the problems of the "East" in the newly reunified country by using the car as a metaphor — slow, breaking down and ridiculed by the West.

The film was criticized for relying almost solely on crude clichés and mostly ignoring politically sensitive issues.[6] Another reason for criticism was that the film paints the main characters in a humble, fair and nice way while their West German counterparts are depicted as vulgar, mean and shallow.