Bricklin often says that the first model year or so of production the cars were well assembled and then once Zastava saw the money they let things slip. Im guessing the sport badging is why the decimal point is so far to the right? I blame the cost-cutters, whove put us in this positionspin the dice wrong, youre buying a new engine. as long as you didnt try to get away with normal American car owner maintenance. A girl I hung out with in college had a Yugo. What a story! Like you can buy a car without a transmition. Perhaps they were sabotaged so the poor workers wouldnt have to slave to make them for america? there used to be a sign on the front that said visionary vehicles but that came down at least two years ago. Good account. if (window['UnicI'].geo === 'EU') { As to Bricklin, Ive always liked of liked the SV-1 and wish Id picked one up when they were really cheap, with the AMC 360 they could be made to really move! For Some Thematic Elements, Language and Brief Sexuality, Berlinale 2023 Highlights, Part Two: Reality, Manodrome, The Adults, Inside, Golda, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson Feted at SBIFF 2023, Revisiting Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Tragically Common: Jamie Dack, Lily McInerny and Jonathan Tucker on Palm Trees and Power Lines. They had other third-world markets in mind. Well, when someone drowns Mona (Bette Midler), it's almost a cause for celebration in the quiet, upstate New York town of Verplanck, whose one claim to fame - except Mona Dearly - is that it's a hotbed of Yugos. However, these engines have been known to go 200K with little bearing wear if maintained appropriately. UK Yugo dealers were often small garages in small towns, who really tried to do the prep work to get the cars out well. About a year or so into owning the blue one, the clutch cable snapped (in traffic, of course). Lack of an automatic would hamper the car during all but the final year in the states. document.getElementById("unic-ccpa").style.display = 'inline'; This is how Hyundai and Kia got their start and Zastava began doing it earlier. (Fiat DID design the chassis, after all.). Bette Midler chops off son's hand. (function waitGEO() { Soon we would have a whole line of Adams Family cars on the road! This car didnt want to go into reverse at a standstill. Could not resist seeing what a piece of crap would look like with no tin on the top. Yugos are cars. This was before the deal with Chery. That said, the most maintenance I did on the car(s) were oil changes and other mundane regular maintenance. In 1975, Subaru began offering AWD. I remember seeing new Yugos at the (I think 1990) Chicago Auto Show. The engine in mine was the old fiat 903 engine that dated back to the Fiat 600 of the 50s. Most can be rectified by the shareholders or the Boards of Directors, the shareholders representatives. Just finished Drowning Mona and came here for background. i live down the block. They were incredibly simple mechanically. The result is that the UK Yugo was a far superior car to the US one, with its dealership network out to make a quick buck. The problem here was, first, poor management, as I noted; second, a workplace culture and a national culture that was absolute authoritarianism. https://chrisoncars.com/yugo-victim-or-victimizer/: (Time Magazine said it best: The Yugo has the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint), I found quite a few articles from later years, quoting the same sentence over and over again (https://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/the-story-of-the-yugo-the-worst-car-in-the-world, https://www.ocregister.com/2017/01/03/the-best-worst-cars-ever/ , https://blastmagazine.com/2014/05/13/truth-10-cars-never-hit-road/), And there you have it: everybody knows for fact that Yugo was actually assembled at gunpoint. The collapse of Communism removed any perceived legitimacy left in the public who thought their future under capitalism would reflect a standard of living like W Germanys. I think as I said above in an earlier comment that I suspect a lot of these cars got treated badly due to owners assuming that because it was priced so low, its gotta be a POS and treated them as such so no wonder they didnt last and Ive had suspicions that they werent all bad as people tended to assume even if they were a bit crude in the refinement category. } There was a cheap-o daily rental car company that had a fleet of them, and they were in the process of changing out the Yugos for Hyundai Precis. One of a kind, Im sure, There is an article from 2012, quoting the Time magazine They were not standing still, by any means. 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). My guess is that many of his critics could not have done as much. The place where I used to work was given a Yugo 45. Substandard seatbelt anchors, collapsing seats, hard starting, no starting, the list was endless. Danny Devito and Bette Midler starred together in "Ruthless People". I saw one parked on Colorado Blvd. 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. The Bricklin SV-1 was remembered for several interesting features: lurid (safety) colors , no cigarette lighter (Bricklin was a rabid non-smoker) , and most importantly, the ability to vacuum piles of money from the gullible government of New Brunswick, Canada. So, with connections, he was brought to Japan for a series of lectures; and if America wasnt interested, Japan was very much so. Only the Italians could design a car to be so much fun to drive so slowly. The base GV had a 1.1L, SOHC motor that originated in the Fiat 128 and the GVX had the 1.3L\, SOHC, motor, also from the Fiat 128 and I think it had the 5spd manual in it but the base GV got the 4spd manual. I pampered and took extremely good care of it and maintained it very well, it just couldnt hold up to being pampered either. When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. No tinted glass or glove compartment. (first posted 10/10/2011) Every once in a while, a visionary, iconoclastic automotive pioneer bursts on the scene and, bucking the long odds and naysaying conventional wisdom, delivers a disruptive new line of cars. I've owned so many other cars so why not? Yugo Cars in Drowning Mona 4,507 views May 7, 2014 19 Dislike Share Save The NZ Yugo 1.65K subscribers Oh such a crack up movie and it involves my favorite thing YUGOS! Yugo gave everybody in town one to have. The thing that I remember most was the shifter and the transmission. In the 70s when I lived in Boston, I worked with a guy whose 5-year-old Pinto had big holes in the doors. Frequently, that new model sets the status quo on its ear and forever changes the way we think about (and react to) our transportation needs. This is all fictional of course. It wasnt my intention to advocate poor workmanship on the Yugo, it was all too obvious but i wanted to show that there were also other circumstances involved. They did not have such a bad reputation,at least not as bad as the rear engined Skodas One of the magazines rolled one on test, and they had a top speed of around 65mph. I would venture to guess that there are fewer than 500 running condition Yugos still on the road in the U.S. (most of which need a little TLC) Anybody that ever owned one of these little mobile gulags will tell you that there was nothing loveable, cute or endearing about them. Some Japanese automakers seem to have been surprisingly resistant to the latter; that was a major complaint of Yutaka Katayama at Nissan. I cant recall reading anything positive about the vehicle, anywhere. Here is the text that opens Drowning Mona before we see the first shot: But that's a whole other story.") (A former test site for the Yugo car company, we're told. As for the FloridaBricklin was itching to bring it in. I sold the car to a coworker of my BILs, who drove the car another three years before he totaled it. This was not a design fault, but like the Corvair, the company seriously underestimated the ability of the American motorist to neglect even basic maintenence. if (window['UnicI'] && window['UnicI'].geo && window['UnicI'].geo !== '-' ) { As far as ethnicity goes, Im Russian by birth, Belarus to be exact, and have that somewhat stocky build to prove it! Whats bad. If possible, the FSO 125p was even worse. The Yugo? It turns out to be murder and Chief Wyatt Rash (DeVito) must investigate. Danny DeVito (Chief Wyatt Rash) and Tracey Walter (Clarence) appeared in Matilda (1996). After the wars, Zastava redesigned their cars with help from Fiat and Citroen, and gained new technologies to have them compete with other European cars. Much bigger players failed on this field, like Peugeot and Renault, while on the domestic market and in the whole EU they are doing just fine. As played in flashbacks by Midler, Mona is a ferocious harridan who may have hacked off her own son's hand just because he was trying to snatch her beer. It couldnt be trusted just sitting in the parking lot. A few things come to mind regarding the Yugo / Zastava Koral (and larger Yugo / Zastava Skala), mainly that it is a pity it never received similar developments such as 5-door hatchback, 2/4-door saloon and 3/5-door estate bodystyles as found on other Fiat 127-based variants like the SEAT 127 / SEAT Frua and Fiat 147 / Fiat Oggi / Fiat Panorama, along with larger 1372-1596cc+ versions of the Fiat SOHC engine. How do explanations of Zastavas lack of quality control compare to, say, one which could be made to illustrate the reasons of Audis numerous failures? I was unaware of the Bricklin connection at the time, and in fact learned about it here on CC, but I remember seeing some Bricklins as a kid, thinking that they were cool looking cars, and wondering why there werent more of them. It just flat refused. IIRC, when hers finally died, she said that she tried to find another but couldnt. I wonder if he actually carried that threat out, and if his daughter ever forgave him if he did. Well, as they say, two out of three aint bad. I think it's worth keeping them separate because it's a in-joke of the film that almost everyone has a Yugo. But what about quality disasters in a different scenario? var readyGEO; Because he SAYS he has a new belt on there, doesnt mean its so. LIkewise, Yugo UK supported its dealers well. Appologies for not-nice-said, but there is no other way to do it. The Tipo 145 was developed in the early 1970s (IIRC), and it showed. It WAS a simple-to-work-on car; and in that regard I appreciated it. Like all good European cars used to do, it came with its own tool kit and (owner) service manual. This may seem shocking, but Yugos really dont rust badly. 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. Two cars are in the driveway of a glorious but faded Victorian mansion: The Bertone and a Yugo. Learn how your comment data is processed. English tongues tended to read it JUG-oh not a saleable name. I dont know if I was lucky (twice) or if my mechanical aptitude allowed me to save the cars I owned. People who took care of some basic maintenance and corrosion protection could see 10 to 15 years of service without too much trouble. Now Rash has to decide who killed Mona Dearly. Childrens toys are more dependable. That's not what I'm about." (https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2009/jan/14/cover/#) As it turns out, the same rental car place was STILL selling surplus Yugos, and I bought a blue one this time. To keep your hands warm while you pushed. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. 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. To this day I have never felt a more imprecise,balky shifter. I started to work in 1985 as a young engineer in the factory producing electrical equipment for the industry, and was very aware about problems we faced at the time. It seems a good use of them. (France) Chi ha ucciso la signora Dearly? 1) Wise observation that Yugoslavia needed hard currency (without which it could not import needed consumer or industrial goods) during those years. Casey Affleck has gone on record saying that both this film and Soul Survivors (2001) were his two least favorite films that he has worked on. The gravity powered it! (not the 1st time Ive done this,haha). The car itself rattled and shook upon starting. Going up hill was a struggle, it tended to roll back in reverse because it didnt have any power to go forward. So we come to the end of the Yugo saga in America. The cars in the movie were provided by Apple Motors in Denver, Colorado. Parts were cheap due to the exchange rate, so there was not the pressure on dealers to deny problems and warranty claims, like Ford and Vauxhall put on their dealers. a special for the movie,an extended version,or just my failing memory? Drowning Mona Trailer - Yugo Cars 7,448 views May 7, 2014 The NZ Yugo 1.66K subscribers 26 Dislike Share In Drowning Mona everyone drives Yugo Cars and one day Mona borrows her sons. Second occurred during 1994-95, having changed employment by then, while driving the 50+ miles each morning, Id notice Yugos of different colors pass me on the four lane driven by the same fellow. It is the cheapest person that spends the most. . Americans are a funny lot.I am not sure what $4000 in 2016 money equates to but you can these days get plenty on the used car lot if you look carefully for roughly the same money as anything in the light car class or it can be can be a car you dreamed about when it was new but couldnt afford at the time.We Australians never saw the Yugo but $12,000 before you factor in things like automatics and on roads plus good condition gets you better than most of these cars from foreign lands and brands which dont exist anymore.I suppose the modern day equivalent of this would be something like a Suzuki Celerio or a Mitsubishi Mirage in my part of the world new,used equivalent buying gets you a three year old Corolla or Pulsar or one size smaller a well kept Yaris or Mazda 2. Her brake lines had been cut. } But then my wife (of all people) found a Yugo for $800. I guess the major issue in my favor was the relatively inexpensive parts when I did need them, and the fact that Georgia is semi-arid, so no rust issues. Dan beat me to it. All in all, Monas jaunt into the river could have been described as a pretty fortuitous accident for everyones lives she touched, or in Monas case, bludgeoned. or all of the Ladas.As has been mentioned already this kind of cheap car ownership The other Eastern European lemon sold in Australia at the same time as the Niki was the Lada Samara. Bricklin used franchise fees to run the company (a major accounting no-no) while the car was being modified for safety and emissions certification in the U.S. and dealerships were sold, territories assigned. The country was communist, but with good relations with the US and a cosmetically overhauled version of socialism, the idea was the Yugoslavia would compete in Western markets and as a result, the country took on a lot of debt throughout the 70s to update its capacity for making consumer goods, among other projects. if (!readyGEO) { So, they set about seeing what was what with a road-trip around Romania in three cars they would be testing. The Renault Alliance and 18i were still being sold in 1984-85 when the Yugo debuted. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. As the movie opens, a local woman named Mona Dearly (Bette Midler) speeds down a country road and directly into the Hudson River when her brakes fail. Motor Trend reported that their hand picked press ringer broke down during testing. I remember the lights were tied to the ignition switch so if you left the light switch on, theyd go off when you shut down the car, and back on when you started it back up, and that meant headlights and all, ala SAAB. The possibility upsets Ellen, who explains in some of the movie's best dialogue: "I can't marry a murderer. The car is the Yugo. He was a statistician in the War Department who became interested in using statistical controls to produce higher-quality manufactured goods. An automatic wouldnt fit in the Yugo engine bay, so the only thing shiftless about the Yugo would be the Zastava workers that routinely drank on the job. New York (where "years ago," according to an opening caption, "the Yugo Car Company chose to test market its new breed of vehicle.") Directed by Nick Gomez (Laws of Gravity), . At only 20,000 miles it was worn out, fading, under powered, rusting, it wanted to die and be buried, it certainly didnt want to be a car! During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. A Mitsubishi in all but name, Proton wisely didnt fiddle around with it much meaning you got a reliable Pseudo-Japanese car for your money, not a cobbled together lash up like the yugo was. Its avoidable with regular replacement, true. The Little SuBARu Wow!, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLPp-NFInXw. Based on the slightly larger Fiat 125, it was everything bad about a lada, but somehow worse. One of the sight gags is that everyone in town drives a Yugo, thereby using personalized license plates as a necessity more than anything else.) You know, we have a joke here in ex-Yugoslavia about Yugo: Two Yugo episodes: The first while working on a construction crew in the 1987-88 period, at a project west of Rochester, NY one morning a Yugo rolls onto the lot, out pops a nervous, typical pocket-protector young engineering type, tells us he is out of gas, could anyone give him a ride to his job.at Kodak! The other being Yugo / Zastava missing out on producing a smaller model based on the Autobianchi A112 as a replacement for the Zastava 750, initially carrying over the existing Fiat 100 Series engines prior to using the Fiat FIRE engines. The displacement limit for kei cars was increased to 550cc some years ago. @ahight: I think there is no need to put the location square in every screenshot, only the ones with more than a single car visible. You are my inhalation, I own few blogs and infrequently run out from brand :). 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