The Yugo is coming back

[1972coronet]

2 minutes ago, PowerPlant said:

let’s not forget this gem either [ from Die Hard : with a Vengeance ] 

That one was on me mind, too. In all its rusty glory ! I can only imagine how pressing that must've been for the film producers (et alia) to score a then seven-years-old Yugo from the salted roads of the nor'east ! Haha ! 

[Bugatti Fan]

Matija,  Thanks for the update about what happened to the Zastava factory that made the Yugos.

It made interesting reading and I will be curious to see what this new car with the Yugo name will look like. I guess it might be an electric or perhaps a hybrid car.

[PowerPlant]

27 minutes ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Matija,  Thanks for the update about what happened to the Zastava factory that made the Yugos.

It made interesting reading and I will be curious to see what this new car with the Yugo name will look like. I guess it might be an electric or perhaps a hybrid car.

Although the inventor of alternating current, Nikola Tesla, was a Serbo-Croat, I have serious doubts that Yugo, even if there ever is another one, will be electric or anything close to ecological and advanced in that sense 😛

Edited February 23 by PowerPlant

[rattle can man]

Didn't people upgrade by swapping in a Fiat X 1/9 drivetrain?

[PowerPlant]

8 minutes ago, rattle can man said:

Didn't people upgrade by swapping in a Fiat X 1/9 drivetrain?

As all Zastava vehicles, including the Yugo, are based on Fiat platforms, various different original Fiat and Lancia engine/drivetrain setups are commonly used to upgrade these cars. While the cars from previous videos I posted are highly modified track machines making 200+ horsepower, here is a very nice road legal example upgraded with various Lancia and Fiat components… 

 

[thatz4u]

didn't like the Yugo from the get go...

[PowerPlant]

4 minutes ago, thatz4u said:

didn't like the Yugo from the get go...

There is nothing to like about it. You either love it, madly and irrationally, or stay well away 🤣

[espo]

Yugo. My Yugo story goes like this. I was working at a Chevrolet dealership when Yugo was looking for dealers to take them on as a second line for sales. The evening that they two Yugo guys came to the dealership and were putting their sales pitch to the dealer was sort of a cool and damp evening. The Yugo guys and the dealer and one of the other sales managers went for a drive to see what the thing was like. They returned in about 5 minutes since they couldn't get the defroster to clear the windshield on the inside and the dealer said, "he could run faster than that thing would go". 

[1972coronet]

The local Cadillac / Peugeot dealership ( RIP ) was giving them away with any purchase of a new Cad or Peugeot , c.1988-1990. 

I'd be keen on having one - but modified ( I seem to recall a turbo version in c.1988... must-a been a real threat on the streets ! ). Natch, I'd hafta register my vision out-of-state, as Cali would throw a fit if I attempted to get my version examined for the Draconian emissions testing.
Think : Renault R5 setup.

[SSNJim]

On 2/22/2025 at 1:42 PM, SSNJim said:

There was a radio station in San Diego in the 80s that ran a contest, and first prize was a six-pack of Yugos.

Here's a story the LA Times ran on it: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-25-ca-16356-story.html

XTRA was a radio station that played progressive, alternative and punk rock, and pretty much anything they wanted to. I believe it was licensed in Mexico, but the targeted audience was the US. Great station - it helped develop my tastes in music.

[LennyB]

2 hours ago, SSNJim said:

Here's a story the LA Times ran on it: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-25-ca-16356-story.html

XTRA was a radio station that played progressive, alternative and punk rock, and pretty much anything they wanted to. I believe it was licensed in Mexico, but the targeted audience was the US. Great station - it helped develop my tastes in music.

I suppose with six of them the odds are good that one will be running when you need it.

[Falcon Ranchero]

"You can bring back any car from the old days, what do you choose?" 

"The Yugo"

[von Zipper]

[Ace-Garageguy]

36 minutes ago, von Zipper said:

Ahhh...so the rumors of flying Yugos are true. 

[von Zipper]

1 hour ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Ahhh...so the rumors of flying Yugos are true. 

That~ was a true story

[Chuck Most]

There was a Yugo sitting on an abandoned farmstead a few miles from my aunt's place, always wondered what the story was. Then one day it was gone, until I saw it moving under it's own power about a year after it vanished. I guess the trick is to let it hibernate.

[Brian Austin]

I saw a Yugo at a car show last year.

[LennyB]

3 hours ago, Brian Austin said:

I saw a Yugo at a car show last year.

It’s still there, never made it home. 

[Brian Austin]

14 hours ago, LennyB said:

It’s still there, never made it home. 

I've seen plenty of classic American cars broken down on the side of the road.  🙂

 

[Bugatti Fan]

The Yugos pictured so far on here appear to be of the original body shape.  I think that they started to produce their latest model that looked a bit like a Fiat Uno just before the civil war broke out in Yugoslavia.

[bobss396]

When I was living in Nassau County in 1983, one neighbor had 3 or 4 he was tinkering with.

I'd like to get 2 of them and make one "good" car out of them.

[PowerPlant]

6 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

The Yugos pictured so far on here appear to be of the original body shape.  I think that they started to produce their latest model that looked a bit like a Fiat Uno just before the civil war broke out in Yugoslavia.

The Yugo as such never changed its platform, drivetrain or body shape significantly throughout its production run. There were slight styling changes made to appearance in terms of plastic add ons sometime around 2000., but the car never changed much. The car based on the Fiat Tipo, which you are probably thinking of, was indeed introduced as the Yugo/Zastava Florida in the late 80’s, just before the initial breakup of Yugoslavia. But that is an entirely different car, just as bad, but not nearly the same. The one and only, original Yugo never changed. 
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo_Florida

Edited March 1 by PowerPlant

[Ace-Garageguy]

For all the Yugo bashing that goes on, it's really not that bad a car for the most part. Kinda like the Corvair and Pinto and Fiats in the US, it's become popular to rag on them without much first-hand knowledge to back it up.

The Fiat the Yugo is derived from is actually a very good little car, but being small and having a much more highly stressed engine than the big loafing American engines people here were used to, they required more regular but relatively minor maintenance than they usually got...and the lack of knowledgeable people to work on them led to their supposed unreliability.

Fiat 128 and Yugo cam belts, for instance, required replacement at around 25,000 mile intervals IIRC, but unlike something like a PT cruiser or a Neon, which last around 100,000 miles but are a nightmare to change, the Fiat / Yugo cam belts can be done in a matter of minutes...because they were designed to be easily serviced.

The only basic flaw with the Yugo I can recall is that a batch of crankshafts were made of the wrong material, and failed very early. Other than that, they were just a cheap car made inexpensively, and anyone expecting Rolls-like quality simply isn't living in reality.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

Like Bill has said, it is generally lack of proper regular servicing that lets many cheap cars down. Bought on the cheap and ran on the cheap unfortunately.

I had one of the original tiny little Fiat 500's back in the 70's.    Dead easy to maintain and dead cheap to run. Only drawback was the poor old thing succumbed to rust like a vampire doused in holy water!     Lovely little cult car now though, and restored versions fetching high prices, especially the Abarth equipped ones.

Don't know about the States but in the UK there is an acronym for FIAT.  'Fix it again tomorrow'. A bit unfair I think.

[ChrisBcritter]

In the States it's "Fix It Again Tony".