The ‘worst car in the world’ was so bad that one critic said ‘none were ever reported stolen because no owner wanted it back’.
It’s an almost certain inclusion in any list of the ‘Worst Car in the World’. And in the year 2000, when US radio network NPR looked back at the last thousand years of automotive (no, really), its Car Talk show called it the ‘Worst Car of the Millennium’.
Other critics, such as the august publication Consumer Reports suggested it “barely qualified as a car” while respected US car magazine, Car & Driver, called it “The Disposable Car by Bic”.
Road testers at the time were equally critical, calling the car “hopeless”, “unacceptable”, and “trash”, while Paul Dean, writing in the Los Angeles Times in 1996, suggested: “Junkyards won’t take them. Dogs never chased them. No Yugo was ever reported stolen because no owner wanted it back.”
Ouch!
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But does the Yugo (or Zastava Yugo to give it its proper name) deserve its reputation as a lemon? Well, yes and, well, yes.
The Yugo’s history dates back to 1980 when the sub-compact three-door hatchback began production in Kragujevac in the former Yugoslavia.
Based on a shortened version of the Fiat 128, the Yugo didn’t challenge the norms of the day. Front-wheel drive, transverse-mounted four-cylinder, four-speed manual (or three-speed auto) in a compact three-door hatchback.
Designed primarily of the Eastern European market, i.e. those nations firmly behind the iron Curtain, the Yugo would have remained an Eastern Bloc curio had it not been for the efforts of American, Malcolm Bricklin (he of the Bricklin SV1 fame) who, ever the entrepreneur, saw a gap in the US market for a cheap car that would appeal to buyers who would otherwise have bought second-hand. And the Yugo fit the bill, perfectly.
Its arrival into American dealerships in 1984 caused a sensation, not least of all for its $US3990 ($AUD$6100) price tag, this at a time when a three-door Ford Escort cost over $US6000 ($AUD9200) while the Chevrolet Chevette hatchback asked for around $US5500 ($AUD8400).
Little wonder then that buyers flocked to Yugo showrooms, in what the Associated Press dubbed ‘Yugo-mania’. Dealers sold out of stock within days while orders kept flooding in, buyers lured not just by the price, but also Yugo’s 10-year/100,000-mile warranty which hinted at reliability.
Yugo’s advertising of the day evoked the spirit of the Volkswagen Beetle and Ford Model T, two transformative cars that helped shaped personal transportation in the 20th century.
And for a while, things looked rosy for the communist carmaker. Lured by the price, American buyers flocked to the little compact, with a peak of 48,612 sales in 1987. But as word of appalling build quality and unreliability spread, sales soon tanked.
Worse still, the ongoing war in the Balkans saw the United Nations place sanctions and embargoes on Yugoslavia, forcing Zastava to halt its export program, not just to the US, but every market. By 1992, its last year on sale in the US, just 1412 Yugos found new homes. In all, Americans bought 141,651 Yugos between 195 and 1992, not a bad result for a car that earned itself a bad reputation and many firsts in the US market.
It was the first Eastern Bloc car sold in the US and its 138km/h top speed made it the slowest of any new car on sale in the US in 1985. According to JD Power, the little Yugo was first on the list for most recalls, lowest resale value, highest emissions and worst safety record. JD Power ranked it 33rd out of 33 in its customer satisfaction survey at the time.
The US Insurance Institute put the Yugo through its paces in its standard 5mph (8km/h) crash test, a test designed to measure a car’s low-impact crash worthiness. It found the Yugo sustained $US2197 ($AUD3375) worth of damage, or around 55 per cent of the car’s $US3990 price when new. Shopping centre bingles have never been so brutal.
And yet, despite its many failings, the Yugo has entered automotive folklore and gained something of a cult following, featuring in a host of TV shows and movies with arguably its most famous cameo in Die Hard With a Vengeance, starring Bruce Willis.
Willis shared another cameo with the Yugo on screen, the little hatchback appearing in an episode of his hit 1980s TV series Moonlighting.
Metallica gave the Yugo a starring role in its 2008 music video for The Day That Never Comes while the 2011 animated movie, Cars 2, depicts a gang of ‘Hugos’ as the bad guys, members of a criminal gang called the Lemons.
Underscoring its cult status today, a decent Yugo will cost buyers significantly more than when new, with prices regularly creeping over $US7000 ($AUD10,750) while a “highly original” example commanded $US9500, or around $14,500 of our Aussie dollars.
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