Serbia bids farewell to Yugo

[BridgeTheGap]

Associated Press - BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) -

Why does a Yugo have a defroster on the rear window?

To keep your hands warm while you push it.

That's just one of the "Yugo jokes" about the cheap and much-maligned subcompact that won notoriety for being one of the worst cars ever exported to the United States.

Now, the last Yugo, once the pride of communist Yugoslavia's automobile industry, will roll off its Serbian production line Thursday in the central town of Kragujevac.

It will be missed here but probably not in America.

Soon after it hit the U.S. markets in 1986, selling for the bargain-basement price of just $3,990, the boxy Yugo was derided by American car magazines "as barely qualifying as a car" and "an assembled bag of nuts and bolts."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8054467

Yugo jokes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8054470

http://freeweb.deltha.hu/zastava.in.hu/jokes.htm

[bitchkitty]

1. I had a Yugo.

It did go, but there were various little things wrong. The door handles snapped off in my hand, as did the window levers. The wiper blades were out of sync and would get tangled in each other.

It didn't last long - I don't even remember what happened to it. I think my mother gave it to my brother, who killed it in no time flat. Poor Yu "don't" Go.

[shotten99]

2. How do you double the price of a Yugo?

Fill it full of gas.

Surprisingly, here in Croatia, there are tons on them on the street still and seem to be in good repair.
I was shocked to see it.
No Trabants, unfortunately.

[bitchkitty]

10. It actually did go, just without frills of any kind...

I never wrecked it though - that could have been dangerous. It was very lightweight and flimsy - noticeably so.

[TlalocW]

3. What's the difference between a Yugo and a Jehovah Witness?

You can close the door on a Jehovah Witness.

TlalocW

[YOY]

4. Yet Lada is still going strong...

Damn things are the model T of the former Soviet Block...cheap and easy to fix...no frills.

[BridgeTheGap]

5. I worked in a bank call center once and one of our jobs was to give book values on vehicles

One day a woman called in asking for the book value on her several year old Yugo. It actually had a negative book value - in other words - no value! The woman just laughed when I told her.

[8 track mind]

6. ah the Yugo

I read in Hot Rod magazine recently where a man had souped up his Yugo and was turning high 14's in the quarter mile. He spent bucket loads of cash to get it to that point.

My Yugo Story:

As a senior in high school i had to resurect one of these damn things for a friend.

A very cute and single friend.

The carbuerator was nothing more than a controlled leak and the engine was flooded beyond the point of no return. She had cranked on the poor thing until the battery was flat wasted. The spark plugs were wasted but surprisingly the spares i had for my 1966 mustang were an exact fit! New plugs, and a jump off the Mustang and it lit up belching a cloud of blue smoke into the sky. Needless to say she was more than pleased and i was the hero of the day.

When she asked if she owed me anything for getting the car going, i said "oh don't worry about it."

Why, oh fucking why, in the hell did i not sieze the opportunity and ask her for a date.....


Mom always said i was clueless......

[RubyDuby in GA]

7. My dad had one. It was a stick and he was trying to teach me how to drive a stick.

I was to take it down our street by myself and back up the hill to our house. I couldn't get it to work and ended up pushing it home. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to ever push a Yugo.

But I will say this - he never had any problems with it and still says it was a pretty good car.

[yellowcanine]

8. Heh. Someone once asked Click and Clack about whether to buy a new Yugo

or a several year old Toyota for the same price. They said, "get the Toyota, new junk is still junk."

[JBear]

9. And don't forget...

the immortal Bette Midler film "Drowning Mona."

Everyone in Verplanck, NY, owns a Yugo and Mona (Bette Midler) drives hers into the Hudson River and drowns. The sheriff (Danny DeVito) suspects foul play and his suspicions are confirmed by an inspection of the car. The biggest problem confronting the sheriff is that virtually everyone in town hated the rotten Mona. The idea is clever, but somewhere along the way the execution failed.

:popcorn: