Hey Eric, found you a car to replace that wrecked one.

[Silentpoet]

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/like-new-yugo-on-craigslist-was-parked-in-a-garage-for-31-years

[Eric]

Back in 1990/1991, I worked for the largest Yugo dealership in the world, by sales volume. It was a Plymouth/Jeep/Eagle/Yugo dealership in Coeur ‘d Alene, ID. We had people come from all over the Pacific Northwest and Canada to buy them. We sold so many, we were still able to sell them for the same $3,900 they sold for in 1988.

I managed the detail department for the dealership and got to do the make-ready work on the Yugos. Those things came in to us routinely with problems new cars shouldn’t have: Broken door handles & other broken trim, electrical problems, broken gauges & other dash issues, you name it. The paint they used was so bad that about half of them required some level of compounding & buffing out, to remove stains to the paint that they incurred in transport. Hell, the things’ paint jobs would sit on the lot and oxidize before our eyes, in a matter of a couple of weeks. 

The only thing about them that wasn’t total junk was the engine and transmission. The whole care was basically a Fiat knock-off. The engine and transmission was made under license from Fiat and it was a power package that was tried and true, over decades of production. Everything would fall apart around them, but the engines ran pretty good.

On the other hand, it was a $3,900 new car with a 12-month, 12,000-mile warranty that covered everything, but gas. Everything, including oil changes and even tires. As long as you lived near a Yugo dealership and didn’t mind getting to know their staff on a first name basis, that wasn’t a horrible deal, for a budget/starter car. In addition to the 12-month warranty, they had a 36-month, 36,000-mile Powertrain warranty.

That article failed to mention that Yugo went out of business because the factory was in the path of the war that ravaged that region and destroyed the factory, in the early days of the conflict. I imagine that if it hadn’t been for the war, they probably would have continued to make cars and their vehicles might actually have improved. Stranger things have happened. 

BTW, the Yugo is the only new car I ever drove that had an unpleasant new car smell. God knows what sort of materials they used on the interior to **** up something so fundamental as that.

[NPTim]

Or this.

[gwalchmai]

My next door neighbor bought a Yugo in 1987. It leaked gasoline into the passenger compartment, among many other idiosyncrasies.

[tous]

I suggest that the Yugo was a marketing ploy by General Motors so they could claim, See?  There are worse cars than a Chevette.

[aomagrat]

The Cadillac dealer in my home town gave away a free Yugo with the purchase of a new Cadillac.