Car called Yugo

“At least it had heated rear windows—so your hands would stay warm while you pushed.” – A quote from one of the many satisfied Yugo owners, taken from the web site cartalk.com, who officially voted Yugo the worst car of the millennium. How come there are so many of them running the streets of Belgrade? Because they’re cheap. But sometimes the maintenance of the car turns out to be much more expensive than the car itself.

The factory that produces the cars is located in Kragujevac, a town located some 150 km south of Belgrade. It’s production fell to about 1000 cars per year, which is good. The less Yugo on the streets – the better. There are around 750.000 of these beauties still representing a road hazard around the world. Most of them are in Serbia and, of course, in Belgrade. Mostly young people drive it, again, because it’s very cheap, and because its possible to make all sorts of alternations and customizations on it. None of them help.

The Yugo models include Yugo 45, Yugo 55, Yugo 65, Yugo Koral, Yugo Tempo, Yugo Cabrio, etc. They all look the same, and nobody knows what is the difference between various models. First model was designed in 1981 and the design remained the same until today- at least we can say its consistent, if nothing else. It is impossible to find out whether the design of the vehicle was ever considered modern and pretty, even in the beginning. Yugoslavia tried to export the car to the US, but unfortunately, the Americans saw through this attempt of Yugoslavia to weaken their morale, and stopped buying it some months after the sale began.

Wikipedia suggests that the Simpsons family car might be one of the Yugo Zastava models, but this is of course just a guess.

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