A revised constitution in the mid 70s turned the country into a loose confederation and as Croatia/Slovenia were more developed due to being part of Austria Hungary, there was only so much that approx thirty years of prosperity after WWII could reverse. Since my father was born in Vukovar and some of our family still lives in Croatia it was of great interest to me. One of the sight gags is that everyone in town drives a Yugo, thereby using personalized license plates as a necessity more than anything else.) My little red Yugo was dead. There were surely other goofs that were institutionalized. And the gas cap would not come off. Here in Greece they are still around and not that rare. A Rolls-Royce Ghost, a Mercades S-class, and a Bently Mulsane. Thanks for your first hand account ! Based on the slightly larger Fiat 125, it was everything bad about a lada, but somehow worse. We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. Drowning Mona (2000) Trivia Showing all 16 items The first thing to appear onscreen is a little blurb about the Yugo car company using the town of Verplanck as a test area for their new model years ago. http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/wannabe-warhol?page=0, I have two things to share concerning Yugos, Bette Midler drove one in the movie Drowning Mona. Ford Econoline This Is Not A Taxi. My favorite memory was the NYC art exhibit where every sculpture was created from the remains of an old Yugo. Which together would have theoretically allowed the Yugo to be more successful. Almost everyone in town is a suspect. (Fiat DID design the chassis, after all.). -Because they have already been through hell. Im guessing the sport badging is why the decimal point is so far to the right? But then my wife (of all people) found a Yugo for $800. It is the cheapest person that spends the most. I bought it in January because I figured it would be fun to see just how bad it could be. His routine went something likeThe Yugo, what self respecting country would name a car that sorry after itself? The salesman was vaguely aware that they were built somewhere in Europe,but he was cagey about just where. Found it! Why are there so many Yugo in this movie? Nevermind that their cars are horribly unreliable, people still buy them. What do you call a Yugo with twin exhausts? The ignition constantly gave out and so did the clutch. Agree with this last. Possibly most accurate and realistic analysis I have heard yet regarding what happened in ex-Yugoslavia. The Bricklin SV-1 was remembered for several interesting features: lurid (safety) colors , no cigarette lighter (Bricklin was a rabid non-smoker) , and most importantly, the ability to vacuum piles of money from the gullible government of New Brunswick, Canada. Fuji was pretty well aware that the car wasnt suitable for America circa 1969. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia was the finishing blow, but wasnt the reason it wasnt brought over. document.getElementById("unic-gdpr").style.display = 'inline'; A quiet little in-joke indeed, but I mention it so the filmmakers will know their work was not in vain. http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_113306-Plymouth-Horizon-C2-1984.html everything behind them. Barnum, Theres a sucker born every minute con-artist. It's a movie that has an attitude problem it couldn't resolve as easily as it did the mystery to Mona's death. YUGO caps and shirts and other fun car show displays. Anyway, the employee joked that it even had the rear window warmer to keep your hands warm when pushing it. 500 Yugo cabrio were imported to the States. I was listening one Saturday to Car Talk and one of the callers that day to the show was a Catholic priest who drove a Yugo and commented on all the flak he received for his choice of automotive transportation. It helps to understand that everyone in Verplanck is dim to one degree or another, except for the Rash family. Drowning Mona 2000 (PG-13)Strident comedy about the low-IQ denizens of small town Verplanck, New York, where everybody still drives a Yugo (the town was a test market). Visit Dealer Website. One time the keys were out and the car was still on and would not turn off. The 4 door one was a dodge omni, think it was a glh. The next Yugo we were to get in the US, the Sana/Florida, showed even more independent development of a Fiat design by the Yugoslavs. Otoko wa tsurai yo: Torajiro wagamichi wo yuku, Otoko wa tsurai yo: Naniwa no koi no Torajir, http://www.highwayone.com/Classifieds/Yugo/GreenYugoCab.html, I'd like to own a yugo some day. "She's dead," he confirms to Chief Rash (Danny DeVito), who nods grimly and begins a murder investigation. Well, as they say, two out of three aint bad. 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), . In the 70s when I lived in Boston, I worked with a guy whose 5-year-old Pinto had big holes in the doors. (first posted 10/10/2011) Every once in a while, a visionary, iconoclastic automotive pioneer bursts on the scene and, bucking the long odds and naysaying conventional wisdom, delivers a disruptive new line of cars. They even found dirt and rust that had been painted on in the inside of some cars nearing completion. A "Fetzer valve" is a fictional part of an engine, introduced in the movie Fletch (1985). Lack of an automatic would hamper the car during all but the final year in the states. She is a bit of a contrarian anyhow, and has a mechanic-relative. The seats were quite comfy too- firm enough but still soft- and with a cotton upholstery that was miles away from the nylon stuff put in other cars of the era. 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. . if (!readyGEO) { The biggest thing Ive heard was the timing belts were supposedly good for 30K miles and many owners were caught off guard, mostly due to not reading and/or heeding the maintenance intervals and boom, they croaked as they were not non interference motors like most OHC motors arent. Or maybe Bobby (Casey Affleck), Jeff's landscaping partner, killed her to save the embarrassment of having her create a scene at his wedding to Ellen (Neve Campbell), Chief Rash's daughter. A magazine road test came up with the amusing summary: American Brands: AMC, Jeep and All Others, Tractors, Lawn Mowers, Off-Road Equipment, Automotive History The Jokes On U.S.- The Short, Wild Ride Of The Yugo In America, TOAL:1974(?) Also, this post made me curious: how did Subaru make the transition from dangerous sardine can to granola FWD/AWD family compact in the US? Wait, how am I still driving 24,000 reliable miles a year on a 28 year old yugo, if this article is accurate? There was a dealer in Denver Colorado, called Apple Motors, who used to sell warmed up Yugos. Bette Midler chops off son's hand. There are lots of related legacies connected with Americas brief, mad affair with the Yugo. I guess this is so the company could find out how the car is before releasing it to the general public. Whats bad. It was so bad we couldnt even get it to start, so we took a few parts off it and then the scrap yard came and took it away. Here is the text that opens Drowning Mona before we see the first shot: Much embarrassment was caused to Toyota when it was found domestic panels had been mistakenly exported to NZ for local assembly we keep cars forever and these rusted out under a year on local limestone based and cowshit covered roads. Various ancillaries like alternators were replaced with real FIAT parts. This was before the deal with Chery. The Birdcage - Features a yellow Yugo Cabrio in Miami. 1987 brought about several other trims, the GVL, GVS, GVC,which were very similar other than the door panels and seat upholstery. Screenwriter Peter Steinfeld says the film was originally going to be set in a mythical north. Having seen pics of the 127, I can relay that the Yugo body is a complete reskin no lines or panels are the same or interchangeable. Yup, Im gonna go for a ride in my Ford Fester., I mentioned Drowning Mona below, before I read this. The man is Malcom Bricklin. That brochures more collectible than its car. Its not like Fiat designs were anything special, quite the contrary in many instances. Many wars (holocausts, massacres) are blamed on religion, I can understand why some people no longer believe. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. The Yugo was based on a mash up of models 127 and 128 built under license by a wildly unproductive workforce in an obsolete factory with assembly quality that made real mid 70s Fiats look hand built. Since mine had been in a rental fleet, it was actually pretty well taken care of, it had an OK aftermarket radio and A/C. Bricklins old nemesis Consumer Reports weighed in on the cars many shortcomings in its February 1986 issue and refused to recommend it at any price. (* 5-20 for older cars, up to 200 if they have to change water-pump and rollers, new models are more expensive, but 500 maybe for new BMW). 3. of record for a Yugo. 500 left in running condition? UK Yugo dealers were often small garages in small towns, who really tried to do the prep work to get the cars out well. I wonder why they used the Yugos, To show the towns Quirkyness? Since the film is set in modern, post y2k times, it may be the last one in running condition in the U.S. No, I dont know if they used an actual Yugo or just a skinned over FIAT prop, & if they did utilize a Yugo, how many production assistants were tasked with keeping it working ;-D. Also used for laughs in the Ackroyd/Hanks Dragnet movie. The place where I used to work was given a Yugo 45. Actually, from my experience with Yugo monocoque, four doors would have crushing effect on rigidity:). They took in much more foreign revenue and as the economy began to fail more and more fundamentally, the leaders of those republics decided theyd be better off independent of Yugo. Bricklin wisely took the first offer and netted about $20 million for his trouble. All Rights Reserved. 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. Had a Datsun King Cab twenty-odd years agoand I went parts-shopping in boneyards. To see mine riding on a tow truck was so humiliating. The Yugo became the default entry level car for people that knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. https://chrisoncars.com/yugo-victim-or-victimizer/: (Time Magazine said it best: The Yugo has the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint), I found quite a few articles from later years, quoting the same sentence over and over again (https://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/the-story-of-the-yugo-the-worst-car-in-the-world, https://www.ocregister.com/2017/01/03/the-best-worst-cars-ever/ , https://blastmagazine.com/2014/05/13/truth-10-cars-never-hit-road/), And there you have it: everybody knows for fact that Yugo was actually assembled at gunpoint. The blue one had seen much more use than the red one, but it was still a good runner. Neve Campbell was also working on Party of Five (1994) and Scream 3 (2000) while shooting this film. The U.S. stuff was bad enough in that era, but the European cars were (by and large) even worse and the Japaneese were worse by orders of magnatude. Both were sold for more than I paid. Its not too late! LIkewise, Yugo UK supported its dealers well. How quickly they developed larger cars was a product of how well capitalized each company was and how much their senior management (some of which was deeply conservative, even by Detroit standards) was willing to make the investment in export-specific products. Holy mackerel, Goe, what a story and experience! 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. No parts fell off of it, the car generally was in good condition (other than some stains on the seats that I didnt care to speculate about). in Pasadena a couple of years ago. I was worried that shed make it. The sexy Marsha Brady girl with the bellbottoms in the Subaru commercials is unforgettable. The car itself staggered on until early 1992, with steadily declining sales and a dealer network that was slowly (and then quickly) going bankrupt. 2004-2023 IMCDb.org Managed by Controgest SPRL When the nastiest resident (Bette Midler) of a white-trash Westchester suburb is killed in a suspicious accident, everyone Jeff might have wanted to kill her. They were not standing still, by any means. But theres a difference between an easily-repaired car, and one that needs frequent repairs. The Mopar fuselage cars were not too bad, but the 71 on up B bodies were not so good. I was only ten, but knew they were junk. You had to know FIATS and and what Yugo klooged up to meet EPA regs and how to unklooge it. I have NEVER burned out a clutchexcept on a Yugo. Or inherrent underdog status? I dont buy junk to begin with, maintain them, and only have minimal issues with them. Audis have been headaches to owners at various times. Another example of the high cost of low priced objects. Had Bricklin given the tooling to the Koreans, and had it built to their standards under contracthed have had what he wanted. He claimed the belt was good for 200,000-plus miles, often outlasting the pulleys. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In fact, if anything, Americas foreign policy in the 80s encouraged Yugoslavia to manufacture and export finished goods to pay its debts. It had nervousness built into it, it made people nervous and it was nervous. Diversity was their strength!!!!!!!!!!! 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