Honestly, I think Zastava should be commended for the amount of engineering they were able to do independently, modifying and developing Fiat cars. Jeff might have wanted to kill her. Early oil changes, followed maintenance schedule. Dubrovnik is kind of old fashion place with somewhat stricter rules about dressing on the beaches and elsewhere. Not having that one bit Clarkson divised a solution, buying a third-hand Yugo and for the rest of the episode refering to it as a Bently. Like all good European cars used to do, it came with its own tool kit and (owner) service manual. Wheel barrow. Substandard seatbelt anchors, collapsing seats, hard starting, no starting, the list was endless. You had to know FIATS and and what Yugo klooged up to meet EPA regs and how to unklooge it. It has interesting characters and situations and I found myself really enjoying the film--only to have it all fizzle at the end. Whats terrifying is that a convertible version of this thing the flimsiest vehicle imaginable was sold in the U.S. No flimsier than the Toyota Paseo or Geo Metro convertible. I dont buy junk to begin with, maintain them, and only have minimal issues with them. With the pullout of Fiat, Renault and the British makes just a few years before, there was a general sense that room existed in the market for any european nameplate that could build a reasonably priced car that returned good fuel economy and high build quality. Only with the threat of armed intervention by Nato and the UN is an uneasy peace maintained. The Florida was reviewed very positively in the UK against western cars, and sadly only failed here because of the rise of Fascism in Yugoslavia, and its aftermath. 459 tweaks (and 18 months) later, the Yugo was almost ready for launch. Here in Greece they are still around and not that rare. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Contact us For Some Thematic Elements, Language and Brief Sexuality, Berlinale 2023 Highlights, Part Two: Reality, Manodrome, The Adults, Inside, Golda, Angela Bassett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Fraser, Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson Feted at SBIFF 2023, Revisiting Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Tragically Common: Jamie Dack, Lily McInerny and Jonathan Tucker on Palm Trees and Power Lines. In Spain it was called "Todos la queran muerta" (everyone wanted her dead), Too good of a movie not to be on this site in HD. Tye Mobile Homes in Tye, Texas using the incentive of Buy a mobile home at Tye Mobile Homes, get a new Yugo for $1. No joke. Now that its privatized, products have risen in quality to what the buyer expects for his money. By the 90s Japan had it totally nailed. (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. At only 20,000 miles it was worn out, fading, under powered, rusting, it wanted to die and be buried, it certainly didnt want to be a car! You mentioned this before; itd make a great article. With just 25 horsepower (at a cacophonous 5500 RPM), the elfin 360 was the type of cynical exercise that would define Bricklins career in the car business. Mona, played by Midler, drowns when the brakes in her Yugo fail and she catapults through a guardrail into the lake below. 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 70's Fiats look hand built. This has been true of: Renault in its government-ownership days; And, now, Government Motors, which is thumbing its nose at old GM customers who have warranty claims. . You know, we have a joke here in ex-Yugoslavia about Yugo: Drowning Mona is a 2000 American crime comedy film starring Danny DeVito as Wyatt Rash, a local police chief from Verplanck, New York, who investigates the mysterious death of Mona Dearly ( Bette Midler ), a spiteful, hard-drinking, loud-mouthed, abusive woman, hated by all who knew her, who drove her son's car off a cliff and drowned in a river. 1) Wise observation that Yugoslavia needed hard currency (without which it could not import needed consumer or industrial goods) during those years. And the opening of China and competition from S Korea in a way ate Yugos lunch in the global market. Actually, from my experience with Yugo monocoque, four doors would have crushing effect on rigidity:). There were surely other goofs that were institutionalized. As it turns out, the same rental car place was STILL selling surplus Yugos, and I bought a blue one this time. However, the 67 cu inch motor had plenty of power if you kept it revved, and I never really had a problem keeping up with traffic. But who? A magazine road test came up with the amusing summary: The local news interveiwed some and they were going for $4000 Id end up with used junk, but now I got a new import!. ), See all comments about this movie and its vehicles. Although it shares some similarities with the Fiat 127, it is actually based on the much more advanced Autobianchi. After Mona Dearly (Bette Milder) dies in the movie's opening moments when her Yugo plows through a guardrail and into the Hudson River far below, Wyatt begins investigating her death. (function waitGEO() { I have only seen one Yugo in my life. The philosophy behind Drowning Mona is not good clean fun, or even intelligent nasty fun. The car is the Yugo. I also bought a new Yugo in 1989, and had to replace brake master cylinder immediately because brakes would fail after about 10 km on the road. Bricklin often says that the first model year or so of production the cars were well assembled and then once Zastava saw the money they let things slip. Also, I think that first step after buying any used car in general should be changing of belt. Mona Dearly: Yeah? As I understand it, Zastiva had the Yugo designed that way as its plan was, from the beginning, to export the car. I mean, cmon, its an Eastern Bloc car. As the movie opens, a local woman named Mona Dearly (Bette Midler) speeds down a country road and directly into the Hudson River when her brakes fail. Another movie moment: Nick drives a Yugo in the film _Nick & Norahs Infinite Playlist_. My best friend had for a brief time, a rusted 1980 Civic DX hatchback that ultimately blew out its 2 upper gears in the 5spd manual tranny that did it in even though his mechanic could not get the bolts out to replace the clutch due to rust. Here is the text that opens Drowning Mona before we see the first shot: The 4 door one was a dodge omni, think it was a glh. Complete with opera lamps and padded roof. ), it was quite good. Always. But even in those circumstances, the car was not that bad as public opinion in USA about it. Nasty Mona Dearly (Midler) drives her car into the Hudson River and drowns. Even in Western Europe, cars arent marketed as they are here. Yugoslavia was in the state of bankruptcy at that time, import of all goods and raw materials was practically halted. They were not standing still, by any means. I havent seen one on the road in at least 15 years. Once the carb was replaced with a Weber instead of the Zastava kinda sorta copy with 3 miles of vacuum hose it ran and started a lot better. there used to be a sign on the front that said visionary vehicles but that came down at least two years ago. There was a short in the headlights, and the switch for the engine cooling fan was broken both of which were easily fixed. The Yugo was a far superior car compared against a Chevette, or first generation Hyundai. Bricklin used franchise fees to run the company (a major accounting no-no) while the car was being modified for safety and emissions certification in the U.S. and dealerships were sold, territories assigned. He got two large import operations going and he launched the SV-1. 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. Your experience was exactly what my suspicions were about these cars. State-owned auto companies or assembly plants, tend to have little to no feedback from end-user to management. With a State-owned automobile plant, management is there for political reasons which may have nothing to do with competence. Found it! People that assumed any import is better than any American car, jumped on these. Nevermind that their cars are horribly unreliable, people still buy them. There where lots of Yugo's used in the movie, but this was my favorite scene. All Rights Reserved. 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. 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), . Competing econoboxes included the Chevy Chevette,. Only the Italians could design a car to be so much fun to drive so slowly. depends 100% on very cheap parts and lots of mechanics around that know the car inside out. During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. document.getElementById("unic-gdpr").style.display = 'inline'; i found this article about the space: Though set in Verplanck, "Drowning Mona" was shot entirely within an hour's commute of Los Angeles. Sales quickly slowed when word of the myriad problems began to circulate in the media. Dealers there are order-takers. But Bricklin assured his erstwhile investors that the car could be made ready for the U.S. market with some minor tweaks. You are probably also aware of the Honda Z or N360 which was existed around the same time. As far as ethnicity goes, Im Russian by birth, Belarus to be exact, and have that somewhat stocky build to prove it! At least a Suzuki Samurai has a separate frame. When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. So, they set about seeing what was what with a road-trip around Romania in three cars they would be testing. I remember listening to Car Talk some 5-6 years ago and a caller came on and said that his Yugo (an 87 I think) died at 150,000 miles, not due to mechanical failure, but due to a Deer. . } The accident I referenced in my earlier post has adversely affected my overall health (lumbar damage), and Im nowhere near as ready to slide under a car as I used to be. She had a habit of parking illegally, and, faced with a ticket and impound bill that exceeded her estimate of the value of the car, donated it to the towing company. The Renault Alliance and 18i were still being sold in 1984-85 when the Yugo debuted. Even here in the Land That Rust Forgot, I rarely see anything from the 70s. But then my wife (of all people) found a Yugo for $800. Thanks for telling it. According to IMDBThe first thing to appear on screen is a little blurb about the Yugo car company using the town of Verplanck as a test area for their new model years ago. YUGO caps and shirts and other fun car show displays. Only other thing it needed to be roadworthy was front tires. We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. I cant recall reading anything positive about the vehicle, anywhere. As I said earlier, this car obviously didnt meet the expectations of the majority of the American masses, but I know you werent the only one who found the Yugo a simple and easy-to-work-on car. The displacement limit for kei cars was increased to 550cc some years ago. I know of a 1979 Datsun pickup that completly rusted out in 6 years. At that time, Bricklin was probably best known for the eponymous car that he launched amidst much fanfare in 1974. The first Mazda was also a kei-car, the R-360. Of course, being that these cars were manual transmissioned cars, Im sure they didnt rented out nearly as much as the Ford Escorts and Hyundais that had automatics. Just like the Russian Lada its simple and DIY friendly as long as you relise that and dont expect a Lexus. Japanese cars generally started out small, usually around 800cc in the mid 1950s and grew with the prosperity of the country and desire to chase export markets. Its hard to pinpoint a weak spot on a Yugo because every system in the car was so badly designed and assembled that the whole car was a no contact accident. My mother drove it to work at the high school one time. There are heaps of suspects ranging from her husband, her son, her son's friend, her son's friend's fiance and so on. They obviously do not run. Since Yugo America was basically just a collection of cheap office furniture and unanswered phones, creditors received essentially nothing for their interests in the company. I really believe that the cars were treated as disposable, and in that way expectations were met. Ironically, if he had stuck it out with Subaru for the long haul, he might have done a whole lot better for himself. It was mainly low used values (the proton badge had no snob appeal) and apathy that saw them scrapped rather than any major fault of the car. Bette Midler chops off son's hand. VW, in its first days, had all the same problems as Zastavabut with a product that was continually improved, they overcame it inside of five years. I have NEVER burned out a clutchexcept on a Yugo. The Yugo became the default entry level car for people that knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. He was a priest for several small parishes in the mountains of a N. Eastern state, I forget which and came around a bend to get from one parish to another when he hit the poor animal and it was enough to total that car out but he got that many miles out of it. 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. He drove them all fast and hard which no doubt shortened their operational life. At first glance, the car looked up to date- Front wheel drive, rack and pinion steering, decent mileage. No regrets and better than any $1500 alternatives at the time. @ahight: I think there is no need to put the location square in every screenshot, only the ones with more than a single car visible. 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. But with enough TLC (something the average American consumer wasnt high on), maybe they werent so bad (at least a few of them, anyway). You look quite fit Paul yet a Issetta got away and a Yugo you need better shoes. But the reason it hit the Japanese cars harderwas that while many American cars were still frame-on-platform, and had some beef in the underbellyand even the unibody models were over-engineered for rigiditythe Japanese models had pared weight and beef to a minimum. I remember checking them out back in I think 1986 at a local dealer and loved that bright blue they were offering at the time, called Adriatic Blue. In The Film, for some inexplicable reason, everyone who lives in the Catskill area towns seems to drive a YUGO. And the gas cap would not come off. I actually grew to like winding the snot out of that motor. And better than any $ 1500 alternatives at the time the clutch cable was dying, i think first... Not standing still, by any means for political reasons which may have nothing do. 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It turns out, the R-360 he launched the SV-1 or N360 which was existed around the rental. I cant recall reading anything positive about the vehicle, anywhere with some minor tweaks you better.

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