The problems experienced with Yugos, were unknown to new-car buyers in that era; were entirely avoidable with better assembly and simple correction of design and process mistakes; and were connected to durability related to poor design or engineering. Sales quickly slowed when word of the myriad problems began to circulate in the media. The real reason why Crvena Zastava went into this adventure was that they were desperate to get some foreign currency to keep assembly lines alive. 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. Except that the belt managed to get into the TIMING BELT caseand pop THAT off. I would venture to guess that there are fewer than 500 running condition Yugos still on the road in the U.S. (most of which need a little TLC) Anybody that ever owned one of these little mobile gulags will tell you that there was nothing loveable, cute or endearing about them. If youre familiar with the descent of that once-vaunted company into its current sorry state, appears as if they had too many of this type in management. Zastava Zastava made Yugos even after they stopped selling in America. Agree with this last. that stated this town was used as a consumer testing site for the cars. Ford uses a similar shade on their Mustangs of recent vintage and still love it even now. Too many people in this country have this mentality that if its cheap, treat it as such and yes, a fulfilled prophesy. IIRC, they licensed Fiat designs in the mid 50s and in 2008 they signed a Memorandum of Understanding to buy the auto assembly plant from Zastava. The philosophy behind Drowning Mona is not good clean fun, or even intelligent nasty fun. Contact us
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. Most can be rectified by the shareholders or the Boards of Directors, the shareholders representatives. The only car known to have been blown off of the Mackinac Bridge. Needless to say, it wouldve been better if Bently had just gone ahead and let them have the Mulsanne. (A former test site for the Yugo car company, we're told. So, they set about seeing what was what with a road-trip around Romania in three cars they would be testing. R/S AUTOLINE INC. (1.3 miles away) 1215 W IMPERIAL HWY, Suite 213, BREA, CA 92821. Thanks for your detailed experience. I think as I said above in an earlier comment that I suspect a lot of these cars got treated badly due to owners assuming that because it was priced so low, its gotta be a POS and treated them as such so no wonder they didnt last and Ive had suspicions that they werent all bad as people tended to assume even if they were a bit crude in the refinement category. I think that for a 1992 car (perhaps it should be a Serb-o? A 2000 American crime comedy film directed by Nick Gomez that has a police chief ( Danny DeVito) investigate the death of a woman named Mona ( Bette Midler ), an abusive and spiteful woman who was hated by everyone who knew her. In 1968, Bricklin thought that what America needed was an air cooled two cylinder car that could make zero to sixty in thirty seven agonizing seconds. She wrote something like, How cute, Ill be Lelo in her Yugo.. One reason is that lots of people own and drive them and parts are a breeze. So, with connections, he was brought to Japan for a series of lectures; and if America wasnt interested, Japan was very much so. It was a much more reliable and simple design than the 128 engine in States bound Yugos. The New Brunswick government pulled the plug in September of 1975 and the Bricklin was finished. . Could you imagine if another country decided to do that? 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. But after that i didnt have much trouble with it, ride wasnt too bad for such small car, power was adequate for normal driving (in fact, compared to my fathers beetle with 1200 cc and 34 HP, Yugo with 55 HP and such goodies like 5-speed gearbox and brake booster feels pretty quick). Two YUGO watches, new. The sexy Marsha Brady girl with the bellbottoms in the Subaru commercials is unforgettable. I sold the car to a coworker of my BILs, who drove the car another three years before he totaled it. I went to an auto place for a part, and was so embarassed to even say Yugo to the clerk, that my voice stuttered and I replied Yugee. Unpaid claims included some warranty work done by dealers on Yugos before sales collapsed. It had become commonplace in the 1950s; and manufacturers first tried ignoring the problem; then dealing with it with superficial fixes like Zincrometal body panels. That's not who I am. 3) The Yugo has a good reputation in the land of its birth. France, to use your example, had a protected market with tariffs on American cars (disguised as a horsepower tax). As for the first gen Civics and to a lesser extent, the second gen Civics, I would guess where we dont have rust to deal with, it was 30+ years and many accrued miles that ultimately were their demise, ie, 200K-300K+ and a head gasket finally blows are what killed them off eventually if not an accident or some other mechanical failure due to age/mileage. Of course a $800 car isnt worth shyte to the insurance company, so they gave me a token $1000 for my time and trouble (another story). Theres a fellow in the NorCal chapter of The Fiat Club first names Dan, I think who owns a pristine Yugo in a burnt orange color. I cant imagine that anybody that test drove one like mine actually laid down real money for one. there used to be a sign on the front that said visionary vehicles but that came down at least two years ago. 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. I presume the folding roof is there just in case the doors jam shut because of a sagging body! When I got there, my promised job had fallen through and my wife and child still needed a car, and I needed one for working. But they didnt have a CLUE. Id notice the original Civic CVCC, I had one, loved it and sold it much too soon. There are, to be fair, other theories about how Jeff (Marcus Thomas) lost his hand, although in every scenario he was reaching for a beer. parts are easy, I have a new driver side indoor handle ordered that will be here Tuesday. Almost everyone in town is a suspect. I had two of them. 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. couple of months ago when I was in Athens. Its avoidable with regular replacement, true. He sat in the front seat once and never again! 2) At the 2014 Route 66 Mother Road Festival in Springfield, Illinois there was a Yugo with a Chrysler 426 Hemi (with blower) in the rear of the car (Hemi under glass). Mona Dearly: Yeah? And if it WAS done, thats $500 WASTED. Show more Yugo America. Comments are property of their authors. Even here in the Land That Rust Forgot, I rarely see anything from the 70s. Jamie Lee Curtis' character looks like she has some colorful insights to share but isn't given the dialogue to do it--she's more a plot marker than a person. 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. Technically if its going downhill it wasnt moving on its own power. 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. document.getElementById("unic-gdpr").style.display = 'inline';
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. The best part was they all had the same license plates on them to just have a semblance of legality! I paid a lot of attention to new cars back then, and even then I dont know if I ever saw one. Ive heard that by 1989, Malcolm Bricklin was kicked out and Zastava took over importing the cars to the US and made a substantial series of changes/improvements and the cars then came with fuel injection, the GV, GVL, GVC, and GVS and the sportier GVX were combined into one car, the GV Plus fitted with better seats (the fold and slide seats from the GVX), the larger 1.3L 4, the 5spd in a more basic interior and exterior trim package, adding the AC etc and Bosh fuel injection and I hear from Chris Vitale who runs Fiat 500 USA blog who owned a 1991 Yugo with FI until a couple of years or so ago that by then, their warranty claims were very good, but the war took its toll as did the emissions debacle in 1992 brought the cars run in the US to an end. Malcom Bricklin The twice bankrupt Bricklin has resurfaced periodically over the years, always pushing the latest crack brained scheme to sell a car that would occupy the place that his Yugo once did- the bottom rung of the American market. But what about quality disasters in a different scenario? Our Mr. Bricklin also had an idea to start up another company fed by Zastava, this time to be called ZMW. @Jeff Nelson: I think youre a bit dismissive of Zastava, they have been around for quite some time. They were incredibly simple mechanically. Drowning Mona 2000 PG-13 1 h 36 m IMDb RATING 5.7 /10 15K YOUR RATING Rate Play trailer 2:23 1 Video 67 Photos Comedy Crime Mystery When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. 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. if (window['UnicI'].geo === 'EU') {
Ford Econoline This Is Not A Taxi. 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. The man is Malcom Bricklin. Assuming the gentleman was telling the truth, this has to be some kind Yugo-mania also swept through Hollywood for a time and was the star car in movies such as The Birdcage, Drowning Mona, Die Hard 3, The Crow, Inspector Gadget and 101 Dalmatians. How did Danny DeVito die in Drowning Mona? @Zackman: No the real experience was driving that thing in Atlanta rush hour traffic at 80+ MPH. Enterior wall panels were thin cardboard with painted on carpet flecks. They sold boatloads of them in Europe to price buyers, taxi companies, retired folk etc. It's got an absolute star studded cast including Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Casey Affleck, William Fitchner, Neve Campbell, Jaime Lee Curtis, with a cameo, and even . What a story! readyGEO = true;
This is the same scenario as Chrysler- My parents always said that if you get a Dodge in town itll be a lemon, but in the country, itll be a good car because the smaller country dealer relies on repeat business and does a better PDI, ensuring bolts arent missing, and both sides identify the car correctly. Copyright 2011 - 2023 Curbside Classics. console.log(window['UnicI'].geo);
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. Reading in Consumer Reports that the tester injured his toe when the front seat came crashing down on it. She is a bit of a contrarian anyhow, and has a mechanic-relative. ), See all comments about this movie and its vehicles. I saw one parked on Colorado Blvd. Finallywith a new clutch 400 miles oldit tossed the alternator belt. The Yugos bait was a stunningly low MSRP of just $3990. My problem was that I didn't care who killed Mona Dearly, or why, and didn't want to know anyone in town except for Chief Rash and his daughter. 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? 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. 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. All in all, Monas jaunt into the river could have been described as a pretty fortuitous accident for everyones lives she touched, or in Monas case, bludgeoned. State ownership is generally coupled to some sort of coersion, such as a penalty tax on other makes. They start, get you to your destination in the dry, and thats about all you can saytheres no enjoyment in operating it and build quality was a joke. The cars in the movie were provided by Apple Motors in Denver, Colorado. Its a tough call on the Yugo. It is difficult to overstate how rustprone 1970s Japaneese cars were. 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. How do explanations of Zastavas lack of quality control compare to, say, one which could be made to illustrate the reasons of Audis numerous failures? var readyGEO;
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. Even on foot. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. Actually, the GM B body starting in 1977 was very, very resistant to corrosion. With an estimated cost of $16,000 each to build against a selling price of around $5K, Bricklins SV-1 was a blast furnace that no amount of subsidy could fully quench.The maritime province had sunk over four and a half million taxpayer dollars into the scheme since its beginning, and slow sales (along with numerous engineering problems) cost no small number of politicians their jobs. "She's dead," he confirms to Chief Rash (Danny DeVito), who nods grimly and begins a murder investigation. What am I supposed to make outta that? Cool Cruise CAR SHOW Cruisin' Brea CAR SHOW Cruisin' La Verne CAR SHOW Brea Holiday CAR SHOW Project Home America Flying Deuces is a production, marketing, booking and advertising company. It wasnt four door Yugo, that was Chevy Citation, if I remember correctly. When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect.When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect.When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. A magazine road test came up with the amusing summary: Im pretty sure that she kept her clothes on. It began the use of the FWD, horizontal boxer engine which carries on in Subarus to this day (albeit in a modern form). The little cars--all Yugos--are almost identical; they only differ in color, and Rona's has a sunroof. Youd have to go from fourth to first gear to come down. But then my wife (of all people) found a Yugo for $800. One day I put the key in and nothing happened, it was dead and wouldnt turn on. Money was a problem; but not the root problem. 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. I pampered and took extremely good care of it and maintained it very well, it just couldnt hold up to being pampered either. Since my father was born in Vukovar and some of our family still lives in Croatia it was of great interest to me. That said, the most maintenance I did on the car(s) were oil changes and other mundane regular maintenance. My little red Yugo was dead. It turns out to be murder and Chief Wyatt Rash (DeVito) must investigate. The faded red one in the piece is for sale- $750. The car itself rattled and shook upon starting. I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it., Theres got to be a comeback there! Down shifting was scary, sometimes you just had to bypass second, sometimes it refused to even go into gear or it would get stuck in gear. Drowning Mona | 2000 | PG-13 | - 5.5.5. Visit Dealer Website. You are probably also aware of the Honda Z or N360 which was existed around the same time. Why are there so many Yugo in this movie? Substandard seatbelt anchors, collapsing seats, hard starting, no starting, the list was endless. Someone steeped in the maintenace required to keep something like a Trabant running would probably be right at home with a Yugo. 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 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. 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