The Yugo is coming back

[LennyB]

So who wants to get in line for a new Yugo?

https://www.hagerty.com/media/news/yugo-brand-revived/?utm_source=SFMC&utm_medium=email&utm_content=MED_UN_NA_EML_UN_UN_WeekendRoadTrip&hashed_email=068a006b3adc66994aaf2a32c60292256eee4a9c7798a1c0c1c0eec48e08553c&dtm_em=068a006b3adc66994aaf2a32c60292256eee4a9c7798a1c0c1c0eec48e08553c

[Ace-Garageguy]

Here's hoping the new one has a crankshaft made out of the right steel.

The original car was very much a Fiat 127/128 under the skin, but something was lost in translation.

EDIT: I didn't know this, but I just read the original car remained in production until 2008!  (still to be verified)

Edited February 22 by Ace-Garageguy

[LennyB]

Maybe they can use AI like Google Translate to get it right.

[Mark]

I don't know about Europe, but over here there are probably fewer people waiting for this, than were waiting for Alfa Romeo to make a comeback here.

[slusher]

I remember they advertised it at a real low price but they was breaking down everywhere. I saw one at a friends lot and the engine was very simple and small. I would like to see one of the old one running..

[Little Timmy]

I can't remember where, but at some point a car dealership was stuck with a bunch of Yugos that just wouldn't sell.

So they stuffed them into the beds of new pick-ups and gave them away when you bought the pick-up.

 

 with its" spunky" 3 cylinders ...

Or, was it squirrels.....

 

[LennyB]

 

1 hour ago, Little Timmy said:

I can't remember where, but at some point a car dealership was stuck with a bunch of Yugos that just wouldn't sell.

So they stuffed them into the beds of new pick-ups and gave them away when you bought the pick-up.

 

 with its" spunky" 3 cylinders ...

Or, was it squirrels.....

 

Then drove the pickup straight to the dump to get rid of the load.

[SSNJim]

There was a radio station in San Diego in the 80s that ran a contest, and first prize was a six-pack of Yugos.

I had just bought an 86 Honda Gold Wing Interstate, and I was talking with a neighbor who just bought a Yugo. He told me how much he paid (I think it was around $5800) and then he asked me what I paid ($6200). He was shocked that the motorcycle was more than his car. I used to get a lot of "your 4 cylinder 1200 cc engine is bigger than the one in my car" too from Suzuki Swift owners.

[stavanzer]

Three stories about Yogo"

1. A friend had one. It must have been a "Wednesday Car" because it ran well, was a reliable commuter car, and he owned for ten years, until it was totaled. He loved the car, but was very aware that his was the exception to the rule.

2. A Reviewer in one of the Main Auto Mags of the time, said that the Yugo Shifted with all the smoothness of a Baseball Bat in a Barrel full of Coconuts.

3. Probably not real, but I heard a story that a Dealer near Seattle, was stuck with 10 or 12 cars when Yugo collapsed. They filled the gas tanks, Bondo'ed the filler doors shut, painted them cheaply, and then advertised them as "Disposable Cars" and sold them off cheap.

[Tim W. SoCal]

Back in the late 80s we sent quite a few Yugos to the crusher because the $5800 car had a $1200 alternator that tended to fail soon after the car's warranty expired and the owners refused (wisely) to authorize the repair and asked us to dispose of the car. We also sent a bunch o0f Renault Alliances to the crusher because the transmission control module would fail and the new replacement cost more than the value of the car.

[Ace-Garageguy]

53 minutes ago, Tim W. SoCal said:

Back in the late 80s we sent quite a few Yugos to the crusher because the $5800 car had a $1200 alternator that tended to fail soon after the car's warranty expired and the owners refused (wisely) to authorize the repair and asked us to dispose of the car...

Ummmmmm...that's kinda sad.

The 1500cc 5-speed Fiat "Bertone" X1/9s with AC had a rather poor Magneti Marelli alternator that was inadequate to operate the AC, the engine fan, the HVAC fan, the lights, and the wipers simultaneously. To make matters worse, in wet weather (when you'd need all those things running), its belt would slip badly because the poorly designed alternator bracket that was part of the dealer-installed AC system didn't provide enough "wrap" around the alternator pulley. The ALT light would be on constantly, and the lights would slowly dim as the battery ran out of juice.

My shop was in downtown Atlanta and I lived about 50 miles away on Lake Lanier. I got tired of not knowing if I'd make it with the alternator light on all the way whenever the belt was the least bit damp.

I fixed my own car by modifying the bracket to accept a big Mopar alternator that was more than up to the task and cost a fraction of what the Marelli unit went for. I also reworked the belt tensioner to get enough wrap on the alternator pulley so that slippage was a thing of the past.

Modifying the wiring to integrate the Mopar alternator was simple, and the problem was solved forever.

[PowerPlant]

16 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Here's hoping the new one has a crankshaft made out of the right steel.

The original car was very much a Fiat 127/128 under the skin, but something was lost in translation.

EDIT: I didn't know this, but I just read the original car remained in production until 2008!  (still to be verified)

The Yugo was, in fact, in production on its original platform until 2008, with slightly facelifted design features and some limited electronics updates, but essentially remained the same mechanical and engineering turd it had always been. My family owned several back in the early 90’s and they were truly horrible cars from the get-go, comically underpowered and wonky, very uncomfortable and notoriously unreliable, especially in wintertime. It was the “people’s car” throughout the former Yugoslavia, however, and therefore immensely popular, mostly due to low cost and ready availability. They are a rare sight on the roads here in Croatia today, but plenty are still running in Serbia, Bosnia and other non EU former Yugoslav countries. As for its supposed revival, despite fancy drawings that have recently been published, considering the state of the politics and economy in Serbia nowadays, as well as the fact that the Zastava motor vehicle factory, which manufactured the Yugo, has been defunct since filing for bankruptcy in 2017, thus finally ceasing production of Zastava badged cars based on the Fiat Punto, I believe this is unlikely to come to fruition any time soon. 

Edited February 23 by PowerPlant

[ChrisBcritter]

My boss has two of them. Heaven knows why.

This was when he bought them; they're out of the weather now in one of his warehouses.

I also wrote a musical number about Yugo for my car club's '80s-themed awards show, to the tune of "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". A couple excerpts that are relatively SFW:

Well wake up – I bought a Yugo
It’s a better value than a Peugeot
Hit the gas – and drive our Yugo
And get her screamin’ when you shift to high
On the streets – that shiny Yugo
Will be impressin’ everyone in WeHo
They’ll say Wow – Is that a Yugo
Let’s go cruisin’ tonight
For $3995 (yeah, yeah)
 

* * * 

Wait a minute, now what’s that sound

Both front wheels are out of round

Gearshift lever snapped off in my hand

Door won’t stay closed – tie it with a rubber band

 

(shut it off)

 

Hop on out and push the Yugo

Rear defogger warms your hands like cocoa

Help me shove our poor sick Yugo

Trade-in value won’t be very high

Called Triple-A, to get our Yugo

They just said to stick it up my (CENSORED)

Let’s forget about the Yugo

Let’s go walking tonight

Edited February 23 by ChrisBcritter

[Bugatti Fan]

Maybe Matija Vasic can throw some light on this.

From what I understand, the Yugo factory was bombed during the unrest in the former Yugoslavia (before the country was split up into different smaller nations) very shortly after its latest car model went into production. That effectively was the end of Yugo car production as far as I know.

The revival of the Yugo name with the announcement of a new car is interesting. Was the original factory rebuilt or production moved (moving) to somewhere else? What market will they be pursuing? The bottom end like the old cars were aimed at, or going upwards at mid priced cars like the Ford Focus for example.

My next door neighbour's son had one of the old style Yugo cars as his first set of wheels. Got rid of it asap claiming it was a pile of cheap garbage!

Edited February 23 by Bugatti Fan

[PowerPlant]

2 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Maybe Matija Vasic can throw some light on this.

From what I understand, the Yugo factory was bombed during the unrest in the former Yugoslavia (before the country was split up into different smaller nations) very shortly after its latest car model went into production. That effectively was the end of Yugo car production as far as I know.

The revival of the Yugo name with the announcement of a new car is interesting. Was the original factory rebuilt or production moved (moving) to somewhere else? What market will they be pursuing? The bottom end like the old cars were aimed at, or going upwards at mid priced cars like the Ford Focus for example.

My next door neighbour's son had one of the old style Yugo cars as his first set of wheels. Got rid of it asap claiming it was a pile of cheap garbage!

The Zastava factory in Kragujevac, Serbia, was bombed and damaged, but not completely destroyed, in US led NATO campaign in 1999., nine years after the initial collapse of what used to be Yugoslavia, as a response to Serbian invasion of Kosovo, a volatile and separatist autonomous Albanian province within Serbia proper (which, along with Montenegro, kept the name Yugoslavia up until around 2003., despite the fact that the country, as it was constituted by Josip Broz Tito in the aftermath of WW2, broke up more than ten years prior). Regardless of this setback, with sporadic hiatuses however, the plant continued manufacturing Yugo cars, as mentioned in my previous post, up until 2008. After that, production of their final motor car, Zastava 10, based on the Fiat Punto platform, continued practically until bankruptcy in 2017. As far as I know, the factory has since been completely defunct, with several attempts to revive it without much success. Debating why it is unlikely it will again commence production of cars in the foreseeable future may be sliding into political waters, so I will refrain. Of course, the now defunct Zastava motor vehicle factory is not to be confused with its namesake that still continues production of military equipment and firearms within the same complex where the cars used to be made. Hope that helps some. 

Edited February 23 by PowerPlant

[Mark]

10 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Ummmmmm...that's kinda sad.

The 1500cc 5-speed Fiat "Bertone" X1/9s with AC had a rather poor Magneti Marelli alternator that was inadequate to operate the AC, the engine fan, the HVAC fan, the lights, and the wipers simultaneously. To make matters worse, in wet weather (when you'd need all those things running), its belt would slip badly because the poorly designed alternator bracket that was part of the dealer-installed AC system didn't provide enough "wrap" around the alternator pulley. The ALT light would be on constantly, and the lights would slowly dim as the battery ran out of juice.

My shop was in downtown Atlanta and I lived about 50 miles away on Lake Lanier. I got tired of not knowing if I'd make it with the alternator light on all the way whenever the belt was the least bit damp.

 

A guy I worked with bought an X1/9 new in '79.  He initially wanted a Mazda RX-7, but that was a hot item at the time, and the Fiat dealer talked him into the X1/9.  I rode to work in it every other week for much of two summers (and in the winter every so often), and even got to drive it once.  Fun car.  I tested a Pontiac Fiero when those hit the market, and it wasn't nearly as lively.  I believe his X1/9 was a carburetor car, if it had FI he probably would have had problems with that.

Everyone bags on Fiats being unreliable.  That one never, never left him stranded.  But, there were never, NEVER two weeks straight where everything worked on that car.  More than likely it needed electrical attention: A/C went out often, and the gauges (which, I remember, swept from right to left) were intermittent on occasion.  It got worse after the car hit a deer on the way to work.  After that, the headlights had to be raised manually.  After a while, he just left them up.  The dealer that sold the car folded, he found the other area dealer.  Even for incidental repairs, that guy couldn't count to numbers less than $100.

That car fought that poor guy right to the end.  He sold it in the mid/late Eighties for $1,200.  He handed the title over before trying to cash the (rubber) check.  

[Tim W. SoCal]

11 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I fixed my own car by modifying the bracket to accept a big Mopar alternator that was more than up to the task and cost a fraction of what the Marelli unit went for. I also reworked the belt tensioner to get enough wrap on the alternator pulley so that slippage was a thing of the past.

Modifying the wiring to integrate the Mopar alternator was simple, and the problem was solved forever.

  You raise a REAL interesting point, Bill, and it makes me wish I thought in the 80s like I think now... Back then a (good) reman GM 10SI alternator was about 60 bucks. My memory is kinda foggy, but I think my shop's labor rate was about $36.00 per hour at the time. (I also currently have NO recollection of what the Yugo looked like under the hood) To modify the Yugo to accept a GM alternator, I'm thinking the first go-at-it would take possibly 12-16 hours labor time. After the first one, the labor time would decrease considerably. So, for less than $500.00, we could have created a permanent solution to the Yugo charging system debacle, and, considering the popularity of the Yugo in my neck of SoCal at the time, if I advertised this alternative to scrapping your Yugo, I could have made enough from the number of these repairs to afford the blown BBChevy Ski-Boat I always dreamed of...

[LennyB]

I just checked that BBChevy Ski-Boat that’s advertised on Craigslist is missing an alternator🤔

[Tim W. SoCal]

1 hour ago, Mark said:

A guy I worked with bought an X1/9 new in '79. 

 A customer of our shop bought his daughter a beautiful gold '79 Fiat X1/9 when she went away to college in the mid-80s. When she would come home for Christmas break, and then again at the end of her summer break, he would call and make an appointment to bring it in for service. They were lucky as X1/9s go, she got a good one... Other than the common electrical problems, all it ever needed was routine maintenance. Anyway, before she was headed home for Christmas or almost ready to head back to school at the end of summer, her Dad would call and make an appointment, stating "She's comin' home and we'd like to bring her Fiat in so you can Fix It Again, Tim", and the day before her appointment she would call and remind us "I'm bringing my X1/9 in so you can Fix It Again Tomorrow!" They were GREAT customers...

Edited February 23 by Tim W. SoCal
Typo

[Mark]

Someone could have come up with a wiring harness to plug a cheaper alternator into a Yugo.  No telling if they would have sold enough of them to make it worth the effort, though.  If someone did think of it, they obviously never followed through on the idea.

[PowerPlant]

Underwhelming and lackluster as they were from the factory, however, Yugos can be fun once stripped down and transplanted with more potent Fiat or Lancia engines and drivetrains, which are practically plug and play… Or, as with the green one, a 900 cc Kawasaki Ninja engine. Hence, the Yugosaki 🤣 All three cars in the videos have enjoyed quite some success at major hill climb events in Croatia over the years, but they are, of course, a far cry from cars the factory put out originally. 

 

Edited February 23 by PowerPlant

[1972coronet]

" After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, a Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology. "

- Dan Ackroyd as Joe Friday in Dragnet ! (1987)

[stavanzer]

20 minutes ago, PowerPlant said:

Underwhelming and lackluster as they were from the factory, however, Yugos can be fun once stripped down and transplanted with more potent Fiat or Lancia engines and drivetrains, which are practically plug and play… Or, as with the green one, a 900 cc Kawasaki Ninja engine. Hence, the Yugosaki 🤣 All three cars in the videos have enjoyed quite some success at major hill climb events in Croatia over the years, but they are, of course, a far cry from cars the factory put out originally. 

 

What beautiful Countryside!

[PowerPlant]

12 minutes ago, stavanzer said:

What beautiful Countryside!

The first video was mostly shot around Buzet, a famous hill climb event on the northernmost Croatian peninsula of Istria, and the second one is in the western Zagorje region, also quite a popular rallying location in Croatia. 

[PowerPlant]

22 minutes ago, 1972coronet said:

" After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, a Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology. "

- Dan Ackroyd as Joe Friday in Dragnet ! (1987)

Classic!

But let’s not forget this gem either. Funny thing is, the GV model was marketed only in the USA, and apparently it stood for “great value” 🤣

With that gold bar in the back seat perhaps 😛