Why did Yugos have standard rear defrost? The sexy Marsha Brady girl with the bellbottoms in the Subaru commercials is unforgettable. With Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Affleck, Peter Dobson, Will Ferrell, William Fichtner, Raymond O'Connor, Marcus Thomas and . Im guessing the sport badging is why the decimal point is so far to the right? Bette Midler chops off son's hand. Could you imagine if another country decided to do that? From the Subaru 360, to the SV1, to the Yugo, up to Chery, he followed the time-honored scammers credo of taking as much money as he could through charm and charisma, and when the going got tough and his shell-game started coming unraveled, he bailed with his loot and moved on to his next scam. They are also heavily used rather than background or minor action vehicles. Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell are both known as "Final Girls" or "Scream Queens", playing recurring heroines in their respective horror franchise films: Curtis in the "Halloween" franchise and Campbell in the "Scream" franchise--which is loosely based on the "Halloween" mythos. the building is used several times a month for exclusive private hip-hop dance parties. The 71-76 GM full-sizers were better than average on this count. I heard a version on Car Talk of a deer that a priest hit and it had 150K on the clock when he hit it in his Yugo. 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. In a totalitarian state, such as was Yugoslavia, there is no political embarrassment because criticism is a criminal offense. It's got an absolute star studded cast including Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Casey Affleck, William Fitchner, Neve Campbell, Jaime Lee Curtis, with a cameo, and even . 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. They had other third-world markets in mind. Dan beat me to it. . It is the cheapest person that spends the most. *shakes tiny fist*. This article, like many here, evoked some fond memories. Based on the slightly larger Fiat 125, it was everything bad about a lada, but somehow worse. Drowning Mona is basically a comic murder-mystery. My point is more that while suited for its home market, the Yugo was a cynical attempt by its promoter to make a quick buck by appealing to the most fickle, least loyal of all purchasers-the price shopper.It is only coincidental that the car was built in Yugoslavia. Holy mackerel, Goe, what a story and experience! To be said, Jasons book is 90% about Bricklin. About two years ago there was a Wall Street Journal article about a guy who drag races a Yugo. couple of months ago when I was in Athens. I was worried that shed make it. As the pride of Serbo-Croatia hit the streets of America, reports of slipshod assembly began flooding back to the companys Upper Saddle River , New Jersey headquarters. I saw one parked on Colorado Blvd. Very entertaining. No argument with the political details of your well made point. readyGEO = true; Like you can buy a car without a transmition. There was a short in the headlights, and the switch for the engine cooling fan was broken both of which were easily fixed. 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! Dealers there are order-takers. This doomed script and conventional direction venture for Nick Gomez (" New Jersey Drive "/" Laws of Gravity "), results in a comedy that got by with a few mean-spirited jokes. It took time, development, persuading of management that there WAS a problem (not an easy task in the Japanese culture) but bit by bit, the problems were resolved. No regrets and better than any $1500 alternatives at the time. There was a movie in 2000 entitled Drowning Mona where most of the people in a . But for all that, and with weight today an even greater issueour Asian friends seem to have licked the corrosion problem. Bricklin was kicked out in the first (of two) bankruptcies, true. They dumped em, too, as soon as they could afford something, anything, better. 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. They were incredibly simple mechanically. 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), . Assuming the gentleman was telling the truth, this has to be some kind In the 70s when I lived in Boston, I worked with a guy whose 5-year-old Pinto had big holes in the doors. Audis have been headaches to owners at various times. } Of course a $800 car isnt worth shyte to the insurance company, so they gave me a token $1000 for my time and trouble (another story). I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it., Theres got to be a comeback there! In fact, as it became evident that the Yugo was heading toward failure, Bricklin tried to modify and import the Proton from Malaysia to take advantage of low wage rates and favorable exchange valuations that would have made that car an asian version of the Yugo. There were surely other goofs that were institutionalized. Those brave revolutionaries almost single handedly redefine their market segment and leave an indelible mark on the industry itself. The class all came out to look at it in the parking lot, Yugo was an exercise in marketing magic, and an exercise in embarrassment. Any idea where the Fiat 128 stopped and the 127 started in the Yugo? European manufactures give guarantee for lets say 50k-250k km (~30k-150k mi) and 5-10 years, whatever come first (in practice mileage is more important), but previous owner could use some product with shorter life thats why this saving of couple* Euros isnt worth a risk. Regarding the rust: It was a myriad of factors. document.getElementById("unic-ccpa").style.display = 'inline'; So, they set about seeing what was what with a road-trip around Romania in three cars they would be testing. The movie was directed by Nick Gomez, who, in "Laws of Gravity" and "New Jersey Drive," brought a John Cassavetes touch to working-class crime and confusion. 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. After Mona Dearly (Bette Milder) dies in the movie's opening moments when her Yugo plows through a guardrail and into the Hudson River far below, Wyatt begins investigating her death. Yeah, theres no question on really poor build quality. During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. 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! As noted, Bricklin first noticed the subcompact Yugo on the streets of London and within a couple of months, he had set up his first meet and greet with the management at Zastava . 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. During WWII, they built a few Jeeps. Amidst mutual finger pointing, the deal collapsed in July 2008 as the erstwhile partners took turns suing one another in federal court. Drowning Mona is a 2000 American 'comedy' film starring Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Affleck, Melissa McCarthy, Brian Doyle-Murray, and box-office superstar Will Ferrell. The characters this time could be lightened up and dumbed-down versions of the confused drunks in "Laws of Gravity," their social lives centered on bars, their center of gravity the bartender. Casey Affleck wore a blonde wig for this film. Someone around my area with a perverse sense of humor drove a Yugo stretch limo for a few years, those being about 20 years ago. It was as if the Yugo was being promoted as crap, but SUPERIOR crap. And was thus more expensive. My guess is that many of his critics could not have done as much. Rated PG-13 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. As a rule, Chrysler got worse as the 70s progressed where Ford and particularly GM got better. It seems a good use of them. Had Bricklin been a true industrialist instead of a con-man, the winning idea might have been to buy out the Yugo tooling (Zastava was setting up for the Florida at the time, they might have been open to this) and moved the whole plant to a place where workmen were conscientious and quality control accepted. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons., And lastly, I recall seeing a comedian on TV talking about Yugos. Other folks I know routinely neglect maintenance on some very well regarded cars and wonder why they have such bad luck! To say that the 360 was unsuited to American driving norms is to wildly overpraise the car. The problems experienced with Yugos, were unknown to new-car buyers in that era; were entirely avoidable with better assembly and simple correction of design and process mistakes; and were connected to durability related to poor design or engineering. Drowning Mona, Movie, 2000 Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight Display options: Also known as: Todos la queran muerta (Spain) Mais qui a tu Mona ? I had the car 18 months or so, when in traffic one day a DUI driver rammed his Ford Fiesta (of all things) into the back of my Yugo and pushed me into a Nissan Maxima. Reading in Consumer Reports that the tester injured his toe when the front seat came crashing down on it. 2. Actually, Perry did a much better job of it than I could have. 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