I saw a blue Yugo for sale along Route 3 here in Pa. on Wednesday. First one in years. Guess someone took it out of mothballs to capitalize on the run of economically proficient used cars. I had a friend in the Navy around 1987 who purchased one to run back and forth from San Diego to just south of Los Angeles. I rode in it once. That was enough.
Well, with an old EPA of 28/31, I'm not surprised someone pulled it out of mothball. These days people will take anything that has four wheels and is anything close to running condition and putting it on the road. It's certainly far and away better than the Fsp 's we have on the market these days.
I suspose the american version of the Yugo was the Chevette. They seemed to barley get down the road and belched black smoke that would gag you. (could it be they were hypemiling and we just did not realize it)
Anyone know what sort of horsepower the Yugo generated? It was a three cylinder, wasn't it? I recall the headliner was paper-thin. And those original EPA estimates seem awfully low considering the size of the car, don't they? brian
It was the worlds first disposable car. Poor Quality = low FE. Also- Saw a Chevette on Northbound Rt. 12 Today!
Yugos were Fiats built in Yugoslavia. Their build quality was even worse than the Fiats of the time, which is hard to believe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo My favorite is the GV, which I always referred to as the "Gee, Why?"
joke; guy goes into an auto parts store and says 'hey, will you give me a gas cap for a yugo?" parts guy says 'hmm, sounds like a fair trade to me.'
According to the EPA site they were either a 1.1 or 1.3L 4cyl (depending on year), with MPG estimates 23/28 for the latter (new estimates). Watch the hilarious video $4K!!
I actually bought on of these from a college student that though he had destroyed the engine on it. I paid a whopping $100 for one with the 1.1 liter engine and had about 35k miles on it. The only thing wrong with it was the timing belt needed replacing. So after finding a suitable rubber band, we used it in a family owned courier business and got another 30k miles out of it. I don't have the numbers anymore but I am pretty sure we were hypermiling the heck out of that little fiat engine to the tune of about 50 mpg. Back then we lived in Florida so there were no extreme driving situations for the poor little Yugo,..... like a hill! The only thing we ever had to replace after getting it back on the road was a water pump and believe it or not it was easier to pull the engine to replace it because of the location of the darn thing, but of course with an engine that small pulling the engine was not a great feat. My only fear while using that car was, heaven help you if you ever get into an accident! It made a great little courier vehicle for $100 and eventually I gave it away to a mechanic who's nephew drove it for about a year while he was building his truck. For all I know it may still be out there somewhere.
For all the crap about Yugos, I've heard that they were decent cars. The problem came from the "disposable car" mentality because it was so cheap - as a result people forgot to do ordinary maintenance such as oil changes and as such, the cars fell apart like any car would. Didn't the majority of the public also make fun of Geo Metro's until very recently when gas prices hit the roof?
Reality about Yugos is that they were the most successful market entry or any import up to that time. The same people who created the anti-Yugo campaign were the ones that sold us on SUV's Yugos were fine & simple machines - just basic transportation
basic transportation. a concept went out the window when the marketing people convinced the sheeple that what we drive reflects who we are, and if you want to be important, you need big and fast. sad.
I never had the privilege of driving one. What I remember is that they competed head-to-head with the Hyundai Excel in the no frills econobox market and the Excel won because people thought it was a better built. Most people didn't expect that 1970's Italian engineering coupled with Soviet block craftsmanship would produce a quality vehicle. Its a shame automakers stopped marketing that vehicle segment to the US in the 90's.
Oh, more Yugo jokes is it, well take this and I can attest, having owned one, these are all true. You forgot about the Yugo moped called an "I Go" and station wagon called the "Y'all Go". How do you double the value of a Yugo? Fill the gas tank. (In 1993) What do you call a Yugo with dual exhausts? A wheelbarrow. How do you make a Yugo go faster uphill? Throw out the passenger. What do you call a Yugo at the top of a hill? A miracle. How do you make a Yugo go faster downhill? Turn off the engine. How can you get a Yugo to do 60 miles an hour? Push it over a cliff. How can you get a Yugo to do 120 miles per hour? Push it out an airplane. Why are all Yugo owners going to heaven? Because they have already been to hell.
