The Yugo - Is it really the worst car ever made?

There are many cars that have become polarizing figures throughout the Automotive community, however nothing quite compares to the infamous Yugo. While driving the Yugo around town side by side with our friends Ford GT40, we had almost as many people ask us about the Yugo as they did the GT40! The amount of attention the Yugo received, even when placed next to such a historically significant and beautifully designed car as the Ford GT40 was astonishing! Many people believe that he Yugo was created by Malcolm Bricklin, however that is not the case. Malcolm was the man to bring the Yugo to the masses here in the United States, however the Yugo Factory was around long before Malcolm came knocking. Initially the Factory was called Crvena Zastava, or Red Flag, and the company started business as an arms manufacturer making machine guns for the Royal Yugoslavian Army. When Zastava made the switch from arms manufacturer to the Automotive world, they based their car off the Fiat 128 and produced it as an affordable driver to market to the masses. When Malcolm began selling the Yugo into the United States, he took the idea from Zastava to brand it as the cheapest car available on the market. In the beginning the Yugo was a hit with over 36,000 cars sold in the first year. However comedians began to make fun of the poor little Yugo, and buyers interest waned in an effort to not become the punchline of a comedians joke. There were also some quality control issues in the beginning, with a common complaint of trim pieces falling off the car. Malcolm took steps to improve the quality of the cars, so by 1988 many of the complaints buyers had with the Yugo had been rectified, however by that time the damage had already been done and sales plummeted. Today it is a rare sight in America to see a Yugo on the road. Many people would say that is because they all broke down, however that is not the case. In Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia) there are still tens of thousands of Yugo’s on the road as peoples daily drivers. Here in the US people did not complete the proper maintenance required of any vehicle to keep it running, so in many cases it was because of neglect that these cars disappeared off the streets. Our car featured in this video survived because it was parked in an owners collection in 1995 at only 67K miles, and has sat preserved ever since. With nothing more than the normal service work you would do to any car sitting for the last 27 years this Yugo was back on the streets and running like a top! Follow us on social media!