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11-20-2008, 01:15 PM
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Please - A Moment of Silence For Yugo
For Yugo, a Place of Eternal Rust, er, Rest
By Richard S. Chang How do you make a Yugo go fast? Push it off a cliff. What do you call the passengers in a Yugo? Shock absorbers. Why do Yugos have heated rear windows? To keep your hands warm while you push it. The list goes on and on. But the factory that built the cheap car, which became the butt of countless jokes, has come to a screeching, clanking, rattling halt. (Yes, just like the cars.) Yugo has become the first automaker to fall in the face of the global financial crisis. The Yugo factory in Kragujevac, Serbia, will be transformed to make cars for its new owners, Fiat. Introduced in 1980, Yugos had not changed all that much. “At its factory in central Serbia, it is almost as if you are transported back to the former Yugoslavia,” reports the BBC. “The cars, which were named after Yugoslavia, are put together by hand, as the factory couldn’t afford an automated system.” The Yugo brand was introduced in the United States in 1985 by Malcolm Bricklin, the entrepreneur who had brought the first Subarus into the country, according to John Matras of the Auto Review Examiner. “Selling for $3,990, the Yugo GV (for “great value”) was significantly the cheapest new car for sale in the country,” Mr. Matras wrote. “Sales were initially strong as car buyers were attracted to the low price, but the cars could charitably be described as being unsuited for American driving.” For instance, Consumer Reports called the car a “barely assembled bag of nuts and bolts.” Sales of Yugo in the United States ended in 1992. The company managed to chug along in Serbia under the auspices of Zastava Automobili, which is owned by the Serbian government, until 9 a.m. on Nov. 11, when the last Yugo rolled off the assembly line — or what workers there like to call a drag race. http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/for-yugo-a-place-of-eternal-rust-er-rest/ 
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