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. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Perhaps they were sabotaged so the poor workers wouldnt have to slave to make them for america? )that I spotted a Actually, Perry did a much better job of it than I could have. Its a tough call on the Yugo. The class all came out to look at it in the parking lot, Yugo was an exercise in marketing magic, and an exercise in embarrassment. Japanese rust problems are designed in the cars are only meant to last 6-7 years and were poorly protected in the factory. No regrets and better than any $1500 alternatives at the time. My cell phone was apparently assembled at gunpoint by drunk Yugoslavians in the year 1984 . Neve Campbell was also working on Party of Five (1994) and Scream 3 (2000) while shooting this film. Its avoidable with regular replacement, true. They were not standing still, by any means. Renault has been in state ownership since the 50s, and has been a very profitable company. I took all of the fun stuff off of the red one (Italian Cromodora wheels and the AM/FM Cassette) and put it on the blue one. } })(); Pictures are property of movie companies owner of the respective movies. ), it was quite good. Very well-maintained. Source for information on Drowning Mona: VideoHound's Golden Movie . Back in 87, a cheerleader at my high school won one of these in a raffle. Had a Datsun King Cab twenty-odd years agoand I went parts-shopping in boneyards. Even in Western Europe, cars arent marketed as they are here. as long as you didnt try to get away with normal American car owner maintenance. I know another-a lifelong car nut, married to another can nut. That means that all Yugos in this movie are from 1986. Although I tested it in the summer, the car sputtered and hesitated like it was cold. Last Update: . If Germany had built it, would it have been called the Germ? You are my inhalation, I own few blogs and infrequently run out from brand :). I presume the folding roof is there just in case the doors jam shut because of a sagging body! Ive been toying with seeing if I can find one thats been stored in a garage somewhere and buying it to replace my aging truck that leaks oil and coolant and tide the time before I can buy the new Fiat 500. 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. and lso two Horizon ? Required fields are marked *. or all of the Ladas.As has been mentioned already this kind of cheap car ownership Renault has been in state ownership since the 50s, and has been a very profitable company. Rated PG-13 I dont buy junk to begin with, maintain them, and only have minimal issues with them. The space efficiency was great too- it really is tiny- and is NOT a fiat. This was enough to keep them afloat (even with such strange offerings as the BRAT and XT) until 1989, when they really hit their stride with the introduction of the Outback and the successful Paul Crocodile Dundee Hogan marketing campaign. Ive been around big rigs all of my life, but they never looked bigger than when I was next to them on the freeway. Secondly, I would be one of those people who had a good experience with a Yugo. But with enough TLC (something the average American consumer wasnt high on), maybe they werent so bad (at least a few of them, anyway). . I put about 20K miles on it per year. I was enrolled in a community class marketing course and the teacher brought up the Yugo, and was joking about it. Of course, as pointed out, it was more probable that hed have put the company out of business, too. 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 ? Always. They probably would have found a customer base in the U.S. Sure some of the plastic trim was suspect, but dont forget that GM was still doing rubbermaid doors then, and the Japanese were still stapling vinyl over cardboard for door trims. Yes they were cheap, but it was a proper car, built properly. Thank you for the interesting history. In this black comedy, everyone in a small town becomes a suspect when a much-despised woman not-so-accidentally drives her Yugo off a cliff. A "Fetzer valve" is a fictional part of an engine, introduced in the movie Fletch (1985). As the pride of Serbo-Croatia hit the streets of America, reports of slipshod assembly began flooding back to the companys Upper Saddle River , New Jersey headquarters. Nasty Mona Dearly (Midler) drives her car into the Hudson River and drowns. I see one maybe twice a year. Or perhaps the murderer was her husband, Phil (William Fichtner), who is having an affair with Rona (Jamie Lee Curtis), a waitress at the local diner (who is also having an affair with Jeff, so maybe she killed Mona just because she was tired of hearing about her from both men). I had two of them. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. NO. The two-door chassis is, I understand, a 127. As noted, Bricklin first noticed the subcompact Yugo on the streets of London and within a couple of months, he had set up his first meet and greet with the management at Zastava . But of course, a parking lot fender bender would be enough to total these cars. 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. It was amazing (to me) how they found a solution so quickly. Also in Drowning Mona's favor, at the heart of the movie, is a genuinely positive character, Verplanck Police Chief Wyatt Rash (Danny DeVito).He's possibly the only principled citizen in town. I cant imagine that anybody that test drove one like mine actually laid down real money for one. I saw it on the Helena streets quite a lot, but it was the only one in the city. Its essentially a Fiat, and the same thing applied to them. I dont know if I was lucky (twice) or if my mechanical aptitude allowed me to save the cars I owned. 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. Childrens toys are more dependable. They dumped em, too, as soon as they could afford something, anything, better. Not too long before I sold it, it had started to develop noisy CV joints, but by then the car was 8 years old and 100,000 miles. 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. Ive never felt safe in any car that light so would never have considered owning one, no matter how cheap, even if they had been decently made vehicles. Yes you read that right. First of all, thanks to Perry Shoar for a very well written explanation of the events of the 70s and 80s that led to the meltdown of Yugoslavia. Anyway, the employee joked that it even had the rear window warmer to keep your hands warm when pushing it. One reason is that lots of people own and drive them and parts are a breeze. State-owned auto companies or assembly plants, tend to have little to no feedback from end-user to management. He regaled us with stories of his work at Yugo and claimed that the factory started to develop (or adapt) an automatic transmission for the market in the USA. Lack of an automatic would hamper the car during all but the final year in the states. 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. . 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! Very easy installation 15 t0 20 minutes. When they all disappeared, I surmised it was because he had been caught by the police for driving unregistered vehiclesmore likely they all just died from their terminal junkiness. Your email address will not be published. Purchased one year old cars for less than $1500 while attending college. But like so much of his other stuff, the deal fell through. At least in the old days I could see why the industry that does not want a cheap car to succeed, but whats the point now? 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. Once I figured out what was happening to the carb, I developed an oil trap that kept motor oil from getting past the PC valve and being sucked into the carb. But the Japanese companies focused; and today its almost unheard of to find a Toyota or Honda ruined from corrosion. He was rather sad that after 170,000 miles it had I think I remember this! We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. I know of no explanation for the garbage experience my dad had with his Audi, which broke down regularly. She picked them up for virtually nothing and was content with bare-bones transportation. (not the 1st time Ive done this,haha). Zastava only collapsed in 2008, and its decline was NOT due to mismanagement, but the trade embargo on Serbia, which starved them of devlopment funds. 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. Now that its privatized, products have risen in quality to what the buyer expects for his money. . It cut costs, and as was the concern then (as now) it was Green using the parlance of today. Sorry, Jeff, but I dare to notice that you dont know so much about Zastava (factory and cars, their projects and people, its country and history) and dare to write about. At least until the inevitable head gasket problems caused by an Iron head and alloy block. Thank you for the history, it complements the story of the car well. His shaky little import business was marketing Bertone X/19s after Fiat said arrivederci in 1982, but the end of that venture was in sight. They were true babes in the woods, and they lacked the capital to deal with the investment and the costs of distributing cars. 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