These rear engined devices were a blast to drive, with tail-out shenanigans a-la Porsche 911 being easy to emulate. His shaky little import business was marketing Bertone X/19s after Fiat said arrivederci in 1982, but the end of that venture was in sight. Not having that one bit Clarkson divised a solution, buying a third-hand Yugo and for the rest of the episode refering to it as a Bently. Yugo-mania also swept through Hollywood for a time and was the star car in movies such as The Birdcage, Drowning Mona, Die Hard 3, The Crow, Inspector Gadget and 101 Dalmatians. Or wasting half a grand. Back in another shop (an independent who specialized in Fiats) there was some general loose talk about popping a 128 engine in there; but given a verbal estimate, I cut it off. When the coroner first jumps into the water to check Mona's dead body, he is neck-deep in water. @Zackman: No the real experience was driving that thing in Atlanta rush hour traffic at 80+ MPH. DROWNING MONA 1/2 Tasteless but sporadically uproarious black comedy. After 330,000km with two Yugos, I must be destined to eternal vacation on BOra-Bora . Trivia: Kind of reminds me of a first generation Rabbit/Golf, which Ive always considered the gold-standard for the best styled small car. It is a measure of the local intelligence that when the car and driver are dragged to shore some hours later, the doctor checks her pulse. Also, familiarity is important in servicing a car.Lots of American mechanics wouldnt bother to learn the finer points of working on Yugos because there were so few of them and parts were slow to arrive when needed. Sloppy or ignorant engineering plays a part most times; but its MANAGEMENT thats supposed to identify problems and stop them as soon as possible. Todays story, though, has nothing to do with anybody like that. . Danny DeVito (Chief Wyatt Rash) and Tracey Walter (Clarence) appeared in Matilda (1996). GM had tried to buy Zastava in 2007, but the deal fell through. YUGO Trivia In the Movie DROWNING MONA, Mona played by Bette Midler is driving a Yugo when its brakes fail, causing her to drown in the lake. Also, this post made me curious: how did Subaru make the transition from dangerous sardine can to granola FWD/AWD family compact in the US? With no new product in the pipeline, Bricklin would either have to find another car to flog or get an honest job, so there was a mutual meshing of interests when he arranged a visit to the Red Banner Factory in Yugoslavia that turned out the new apple of his eye in 1984. I would love to find one of those. The car was a modest success with just under 8000 sold in the first year, but when the 360 was pilloried by Consumer Reports as being unacceptable because of its numerous safety issues, the bottom dropped out of the venture and the last few cars sat on dealers lots for years before they were practically given away. Ive got a couple of rusted out British cars one of which I repaired The rust was caused by poor window sealing on both water rusted it way out however the spares one was driven full of rust which spread it all through the unpainted box sections. if(document.getElementById("unic-ccpa")) { Nevermind that their cars are horribly unreliable, people still buy them. I have known folks like that too. The thing that I remember most was the shifter and the transmission. So we come to the end of the Yugo saga in America. Sorry, Jeff, but I dare to notice that you dont know so much about Zastava (factory and cars, their projects and people, its country and history) and dare to write about. VW, in its first days, had all the same problems as Zastavabut with a product that was continually improved, they overcame it inside of five years. Lucinda (Kathleen Wilhoite), the local garage mechanic, checks out the death vehicle and confirms the sheriff's suspicions: The car was rigged. Its like almost any car; get to know its issues, and if you have the mechanical inclinations to deal with them, theyre pretty simple cars otherwise. The effort collapsed along with Yugo sales in America. The man is Malcom Bricklin. Bricklin is still nominally involved with a venture called Visionary Vehicles and appears on its website today.The end of his Yugo adventure left him short of funds to repay an impressive list of creditors, investors and employees and even the IRS took its pound of flesh later on. Enterior wall panels were thin cardboard with painted on carpet flecks. The Yugos bait was a stunningly low MSRP of just $3990. This was enough to keep them afloat (even with such strange offerings as the BRAT and XT) until 1989, when they really hit their stride with the introduction of the Outback and the successful Paul Crocodile Dundee Hogan marketing campaign. Visit Dealer Website. But the proof of the pudding is the tasting; and I have YET to see a government-built car, or other product or service, which could stand head to heat with private competionstand on MERIT. Though set in Verplanck, "Drowning Mona" was shot entirely within an hour's commute of Los Angeles. Actually, Perry did a much better job of it than I could have. I dont buy junk to begin with, maintain them, and only have minimal issues with them. In 1969, Subaru started producing a larger, much more traditional (well, mostly) car, the 1000. The cars in the movie were provided by Apple Motors in Denver, Colorado. Joe Friday (Dan Aykroyd) had a gold one in the Dragnet movie. The next Yugo we were to get in the US, the Sana/Florida, showed even more independent development of a Fiat design by the Yugoslavs. Secondly, I would be one of those people who had a good experience with a Yugo. It wasnt four door Yugo, that was Chevy Citation, if I remember correctly. Except that the belt managed to get into the TIMING BELT caseand pop THAT off. Also i believe that the whole project couldnt last very long because Crvena Zastava never had economic strength to satisfy such demanding market, which requires first class quality, excellent dealer network and a newer and bigger model every year, just to stay in business. Almost everyone in town is a suspect. Usually, these ultra-cheapo cars suffer from goofy styling touches, but the Yugo comes off as pretty clean, which is all the more astonishing since its an original design where no body parts interchange with the Fiats upon which it was based. Subaru was just a little behind the curve in terms of design and safetyas befits a smaller company. Not sure they sold very many. As a result, in mid-1986, Yugo America began selling cars at a starting price of $3,990 (equivalent to $9,863.56 in 2021) for the entry-level GV ("Good Value") hatchback equipped with the 1,100 cc overhead-cam five-main-bearing engine and four-speed manual transmission. Holy mackerel, Goe, what a story and experience! Me and my friend Jerry (from Sam Bonds) drove a Yugo at a wrecker yard in Coburg some years back. That's not who I am. But it needed even more tweaking than did the Jugo 45which is what the Yugo was based on. It failed, of all places, on the Bonneville salt flats area in Utah. The Yugo became the default entry level car for people that knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. This is all fictional of course. You had to know FIATS and and what Yugo klooged up to meet EPA regs and how to unklooge it. Here, it is well known that you change the timing belt every 40K miles. So whats my point? I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it., Theres got to be a comeback there! He was a priest for several small parishes in the mountains of a N. Eastern state, I forget which and came around a bend to get from one parish to another when he hit the poor animal and it was enough to total that car out but he got that many miles out of it. In Spain it was called "Todos la queran muerta" (everyone wanted her dead), Too good of a movie not to be on this site in HD. couple of months ago when I was in Athens. R/S AUTOLINE INC. (1.3 miles away) 1215 W IMPERIAL HWY, Suite 213, BREA, CA 92821. Ive been toying with seeing if I can find one thats been stored in a garage somewhere and buying it to replace my aging truck that leaks oil and coolant and tide the time before I can buy the new Fiat 500. Mona Dearly (Bette Midler) is an anagram for "only a dream". The Renault Alliance and 18i were still being sold in 1984-85 when the Yugo debuted. First, salt as a melting agent on roads was relatively new. The Proton is only a Malaysian Mitsubishi exactly the same awful car Hyundai built as trhe EXCEL. Danny DeVito and Bette Midler appeared in Ruthless People (1986). 1987 brought about several other trims, the GVL, GVS, GVC,which were very similar other than the door panels and seat upholstery. There where lots of Yugo's used in the movie, but this was my favorite scene. No parts fell off of it, the car generally was in good condition (other than some stains on the seats that I didnt care to speculate about). But the reason it hit the Japanese cars harderwas that while many American cars were still frame-on-platform, and had some beef in the underbellyand even the unibody models were over-engineered for rigiditythe Japanese models had pared weight and beef to a minimum. As for the FloridaBricklin was itching to bring it in. Nasty Mona Dearly (Midler) drives her car into the Hudson River and drowns. It is difficult to overstate how rustprone 1970s Japaneese cars were. A minor investment bank salvaged Bricklins investment in the venture in a complicated deal that settled some of his stale old debts and sent him far away from Yugo America. At first glance, the car looked up to date- Front wheel drive, rack and pinion steering, decent mileage. But even before then, Subarus had features that endeared them to snow-belt climates, like dual radiators that got the car to warm up quickly. Kei cars still exist, but the engine size and dimensional standards have been increased somewhat, and the newer Kei cars tend to be very tall, boxy affairs to create the maximum possible cubic footage of interior room within the package limits. For the rest of the scene, he is dry from the waist up. Good account. Both were good strong running vehicles and the only thing I remember having trouble with was remedied by tightening up the battery to starter connection on one of the cars. All Rights Reserved. And this works both ways after war ended in ex. I know this is hardly the point of your blog entry, but as someone with a passionate interest in the region, Im compelled to mention that Yugoslavia broke apart mainly due to its heavy debt burden. View Cars. A lot of Wehrmacht occupation troops went home in tiny little pieces because Zastava knew what they were doing. Now they are all scared by digital cameras and this are just some memories from the other side of the iron curtain. It was owned by a gentleman named Dave Benton who claimed to be the former engineering manager for Yugo North America. And the A/C system on the Yugo was an add on! To be sure, the car was primitive, even by 1980s standards. Now Rash has to decide who killed Mona Dearly. I initially got a job selling cars, and had access to one for a while. Reading in Consumer Reports that the tester injured his toe when the front seat came crashing down on it. NO. It had nervousness built into it, it made people nervous and it was nervous. An older Yugo, since the car hasn't been manufactured since its country went out of business. Two cars are in the driveway of a glorious but faded Victorian mansion: The Bertone and a Yugo. Seem like this article is just a mishmash of old articles written by people who never owned a Yugo, dont know anything about yugos, or who designed its engine. I know of no explanation for the garbage experience my dad had with his Audi, which broke down regularly. With a State-owned automobile plant, management is there for political reasons which may have nothing to do with competence. I had been driving a Datsun 200 SX and the 5 speed was like silk. The Yugo was a far superior car compared against a Chevette, or first generation Hyundai. Screenwriter Peter Steinfeld says the film was originally going to be set in a mythical north. 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