Diversity was their strength!!!!!!!!!!! I could be wrong there; but a surprising number of parts, including the airbox and cables, the steering column, the drivetrain, are all direct or modified parts from the 128. To say that the 360 was unsuited to American driving norms is to wildly overpraise the car. 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. (As you said JustPassinThru). The battery required water to be poured into it. 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.. Nasty Mona Dearly (Midler) drives her car into the Hudson River and drowns. The Tipo 145 was developed in the early 1970s (IIRC), and it showed. (France) Chi ha ucciso la signora Dearly? i live down the block. After 330,000km with two Yugos, I must be destined to eternal vacation on BOra-Bora . Jason Vuic details this in his book The Yugo of how management refused plans for premiums for top-grade work or extra effort; of how primitive and shoddy were the paint booths, of how design goofs went uncorrected for years. 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. Most can be rectified by the shareholders or the Boards of Directors, the shareholders representatives. Your email address will not be published. The man is Malcom Bricklin. Technically if its going downhill it wasnt moving on its own power. To see mine riding on a tow truck was so humiliating. One day I put the key in and nothing happened, it was dead and wouldnt turn on. 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. TRUCKEE, Calif. Only other thing it needed to be roadworthy was front tires. I was enrolled in a community class marketing course and the teacher brought up the Yugo, and was joking about it. But then my wife (of all people) found a Yugo for $800. Many wars (holocausts, massacres) are blamed on religion, I can understand why some people no longer believe. I was amazed when I rode in one, expecting a bouncy distaster but encountering a surprisingly supple feel of the suspension. Finallywith a new clutch 400 miles oldit tossed the alternator belt. And management, often put there through politics, has little interest in learning of customer dissatisfaction. As to Bricklin, Ive always liked of liked the SV-1 and wish Id picked one up when they were really cheap, with the AMC 360 they could be made to really move! I also have to say that state ownership does not always lead to poor business. It would take about eight years from apparent problem to engineered fix to failure of the fix and another engineered solution. YUGO caps and shirts and other fun car show displays. I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it. (Fiat DID design the chassis, after all.). There was a movie in 2000 entitled Drowning Mona where most of the people in a . But recycled steel, for whatever reason, is overly prone to corrosion. The one thing that the Yugo shared with its Fiat ancestry, was the fact that these things were biodegradable in the midwest. Required fields are marked *. Before we wrap, lets sort them out. Bracket racing, of course. I havent seen one on the road in at least 15 years. Those methods have contributed to rust resistance that we have come to expect from modern cars. But for all that, and with weight today an even greater issueour Asian friends seem to have licked the corrosion problem. When the Yugo GV was finally offered for sale in September 1985, (as an 86 model) , initial orders looked promising. The other Eastern European lemon sold in Australia at the same time as the Niki was the Lada Samara. It was only later, when the bean-counters bid out the belts on a cost basis, that they developed a much shorter lifespan. 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. 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. Drowning Mona, Movie, 2000 Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight Display options: Also known as: Todos la queran muerta (Spain) Mais qui a tu Mona ? It was owned by a gentleman named Dave Benton who claimed to be the former engineering manager for Yugo North America. The two-door chassis is, I understand, a 127. Just started slipping, on a highway as flat as a calm oceanand over the next five hours I had to shift into lower and lower gears just to minimize slippage. These are the kinds of people who don't like to be thrown out of bars because it's a loss of valuable drinking time. Drowning Mona Trailer - Yugo Cars 7,448 views May 7, 2014 The NZ Yugo 1.66K subscribers 26 Dislike Share In Drowning Mona everyone drives Yugo Cars and one day Mona borrows her sons. 1987 brought about several other trims, the GVL, GVS, GVC,which were very similar other than the door panels and seat upholstery. Yes it was 3990 excluding transmition and tax and delivery charges. Everyone in Verplanck, N.Y., drives a Yugo. Substandard seatbelt anchors, collapsing seats, hard starting, no starting, the list was endless. In regard to that old devil corrosion, an honest question: were there any cars of the seventies that DIDNT rust like mad? Or maybe not. Actually, Yugos timing belt is ~10$, and pretty easy to change. } Which, actually, was a very good little car . Drowning Mona - An explanation informs viewers that the setting (Verplanck, New York) was a test market for Yugos. They found problems in the assembly processone described was how the wiring harness to the rear liftgate and wiper, didnt fit the stamped holes allowed it. I know of a 1979 Datsun pickup that completly rusted out in 6 years. I cant imagine that anybody that test drove one like mine actually laid down real money for one. i found this article about the space: I heard a version on Car Talk of a deer that a priest hit and it had 150K on the clock when he hit it in his Yugo. parts are easy, I have a new driver side indoor handle ordered that will be here Tuesday. Also, familiarity is important in servicing a car.Lots of American mechanics wouldnt bother to learn the finer points of working on Yugos because there were so few of them and parts were slow to arrive when needed. But after a slow start because of supply problems, the car began selling in volume during year two. So it worked pretty well in the domestic market, but USA is another story. The Italian Government and the Unions forced Fiat to cooperate. And often wins. Much bigger players failed on this field, like Peugeot and Renault, while on the domestic market and in the whole EU they are doing just fine. The effort collapsed along with Yugo sales in America. I cant think of another car that disappeared off the roads faster. The salesman was vaguely aware that they were built somewhere in Europe,but he was cagey about just where. There are many causes for poor management. They initially started out as an arms manufacturer. An accident has happened - the Yugo of one Mona Dearly has careened off the highway and plunged into the Hudson. Its well nigh impossible to understand the Yugo episode without understanding the guiding hand behind what is generally considered to be the worst car ever offered for sale in the U.S. Malcom Bricklin had been knocking around the car industry for over a quarter century when he spotted a Yugo 45 on a London street in 1984. 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. Bricklin was kicked out in the first (of two) bankruptcies, true. after about 30 years of having the car rust off of the frame. Theyre really a mishmash of the two; with their own unique body. } There was something wrong with every single facet of this car. I dont buy junk to begin with, maintain them, and only have minimal issues with them. 2. Someone wanted her dead. This doomed script and conventional direction venture for Nick Gomez (" New Jersey Drive "/" Laws of Gravity "), results in a comedy that got by with a few mean-spirited jokes. Well, as they say, two out of three aint bad. They even found dirt and rust that had been painted on in the inside of some cars nearing completion. But back to the subject, shortage of all kind of raw material was the main reason for poor quality, not drunken workers. 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. *cough cough*, Malcolm is now wanting to import Chinese cars. I actually grew to like winding the snot out of that motor. 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), . Learn how your comment data is processed. (At the same dealership on the window sticker above,actually). 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. 1. Another movie moment: Nick drives a Yugo in the film _Nick & Norahs Infinite Playlist_. I have only seen one Yugo in my life. But, I decided that going back into the printing business made more sense to me, so I left the car lot and headed back to what I call work. Tracey Walter appeared in the original Tim Burton Batman, Danny DeVito appeared as The Penguin in Batman Returns and William Fichtner appeared in The Dark Knight. I mean, cmon, its an Eastern Bloc car. DROWNING MONA 1/2 Tasteless but sporadically uproarious black comedy. The car she is driving is a Yugo, and the pic's locale is Verplanck, New York (north of New York City), that actually was a test market for the ill-fated economy car in the late 1970's. . Although it shares some similarities with the Fiat 127, it is actually based on the much more advanced Autobianchi. These cars came with an optional AM/FM cassette deck that was very basic, only 5W total if I recall right, or was that 5W per channel? Not a bit ! Except that the belt managed to get into the TIMING BELT caseand pop THAT off. But then thats not what most folks are exactly looking for. 1) Wise observation that Yugoslavia needed hard currency (without which it could not import needed consumer or industrial goods) during those years. 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? Reviewed in . As a result, in mid-1986, Yugo America began selling cars at a starting price of $3,990 (equivalent to $9,863.56 in 2021) for the entry-level GV ("Good Value") hatchback equipped with the 1,100 cc overhead-cam five-main-bearing engine and four-speed manual transmission. One reason is that lots of people own and drive them and parts are a breeze. The blue one had seen much more use than the red one, but it was still a good runner. It seems a good use of them. This was before the deal with Chery. An automatic wouldnt fit in the Yugo engine bay, so the only thing shiftless about the Yugo would be the Zastava workers that routinely drank on the job. Source for information on Drowning Mona: VideoHound's Golden Movie . The gravity powered it! Nevermind that their cars are horribly unreliable, people still buy them. We had these in the U.K, I dont remember them being particularly bad, the main criticism was that it was seen as too expensive for what was clearly an Eastern European rehash of a cast off western design. Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight, Display options: Display as images Display as list It is a measure of the local intelligence that when the car and driver are dragged to shore some hours later, the doctor checks her pulse. console.log(window['UnicI'].geo); Even here in the Land That Rust Forgot, I rarely see anything from the 70s. While poor Yugo certainly was not the best car made, but it was hardly the worst either. We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. Appologies for not-nice-said, but there is no other way to do it. It had a three way folding back seat back that could make multiple level shelves out of itself, you could haul a lot of stuff in that car. as long as you didnt try to get away with normal American car owner maintenance. 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. The sexy Marsha Brady girl with the bellbottoms in the Subaru commercials is unforgettable. He was scarred sh*tless and begging me to not make him drive it. They would swap in the drivetrain from the Fiat X1/9 and put on the wider wheels tires from the X1/9 also. The thing that I remember most was the shifter and the transmission. During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. 459 tweaks (and 18 months) later, the Yugo was almost ready for launch. The last Yugo I saw was 12 years ago, parked by a gas station in Truckee oh, and a restored Yugo was for sale on Craigslist a bit ago but I figured that would be a bad idea on the Subaru front: I heard a rumor, years ago, that Fuji bought all the American 360s and had them crushed any truth to that? It took time, development, persuading of management that there WAS a problem (not an easy task in the Japanese culture) but bit by bit, the problems were resolved. Two Yugo episodes: The first while working on a construction crew in the 1987-88 period, at a project west of Rochester, NY one morning a Yugo rolls onto the lot, out pops a nervous, typical pocket-protector young engineering type, tells us he is out of gas, could anyone give him a ride to his job.at Kodak! 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). The base GV had a 1.1L, SOHC motor that originated in the Fiat 128 and the GVX had the 1.3L\, SOHC, motor, also from the Fiat 128 and I think it had the 5spd manual in it but the base GV got the 4spd manual. Frequently, that new model sets the status quo on its ear and forever changes the way we think about (and react to) our transportation needs. The film also stars Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Affleck, William Fichtner, Marcus Thomas, and Peter Dobson. Bricklin wisely took the first offer and netted about $20 million for his trouble. At that time, Bricklin was probably best known for the eponymous car that he launched amidst much fanfare in 1974. How did Danny DeVito die in Drowning Mona? Americans are a funny lot.I am not sure what $4000 in 2016 money equates to but you can these days get plenty on the used car lot if you look carefully for roughly the same money as anything in the light car class or it can be can be a car you dreamed about when it was new but couldnt afford at the time.We Australians never saw the Yugo but $12,000 before you factor in things like automatics and on roads plus good condition gets you better than most of these cars from foreign lands and brands which dont exist anymore.I suppose the modern day equivalent of this would be something like a Suzuki Celerio or a Mitsubishi Mirage in my part of the world new,used equivalent buying gets you a three year old Corolla or Pulsar or one size smaller a well kept Yaris or Mazda 2. The movie was directed by Nick Gomez, who, in "Laws of Gravity" and "New Jersey Drive," brought a John Cassavetes touch to working-class crime and confusion. 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. I owned one. There was a guy that was racing a Yugo in SCCA competition, but thats been a long time ago. 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. France, to use your example, had a protected market with tariffs on American cars (disguised as a horsepower tax). Bette Midler chops off son's hand. I really believe that the cars were treated as disposable, and in that way expectations were met. With the pullout of Fiat, Renault and the British makes just a few years before,. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. 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. 500 Yugo cabrio were imported to the States. Especially on economy cars- Yugos often sold to High School girls, who would just turn up the stereo when their failure to add oil led to rod knocking. At least a Suzuki Samurai has a separate frame. As I understand it, Zastiva had the Yugo designed that way as its plan was, from the beginning, to export the car. Not sure they sold very many. Possibly most accurate and realistic analysis I have heard yet regarding what happened in ex-Yugoslavia. Could you imagine if another country decided to do that?