You had to know FIATS and and what Yugo klooged up to meet EPA regs and how to unklooge it. Why did Yugos have standard rear defrost? Nude beaches usually are deprived of sexual context. Since the film is set in modern, post y2k times, it may be the last one in running condition in the U.S. No, I dont know if they used an actual Yugo or just a skinned over FIAT prop, & if they did utilize a Yugo, how many production assistants were tasked with keeping it working ;-D. Also used for laughs in the Ackroyd/Hanks Dragnet movie. After Mona Dearly (Bette Milder) dies in the movie's opening moments when her Yugo plows through a guardrail and into the Hudson River far below, Wyatt begins investigating her death. Retrospective - 2000's "Drowning Mona". Dont forget, we had the Czech Skoda Estelle, the Russian Lada and the Polish FSO 125p all competing at the bottom of the market. 2004-2023 IMCDb.org Managed by Controgest SPRL But I was unprepared for the panoply of problems that came abouteverything from a latent short or current leak, that would kill the car and prevent starting without warning (to restart, the only way was to pull the battery terminal to let whatever relay was behind it, reset) to binding heater-control cables. I frankly dont know how anything this poor could ever be made. See production, box office & company info, Siskel & Ebert: Drowning Mona/My Dog Skip/What Planet Are You From?/The Next Best Thing/Miss Julie. When they all disappeared, I surmised it was because he had been caught by the police for driving unregistered vehiclesmore likely they all just died from their terminal junkiness. I really dont think that anyone has a competitive advantage in rust resistance any more. I could be wrong there; but a surprising number of parts, including the airbox and cables, the steering column, the drivetrain, are all direct or modified parts from the 128. The philosophy behind Drowning Mona is not good clean fun, or even intelligent nasty fun. He got two large import operations going and he launched the SV-1. The 360 fit in with the type of Japanese car that was (or would become) the Kei car class, which continues to this day within tightly-defined parameters. Ford was really hit and miss the Granada was horrible, but the Lincoln Town Cars and Mark Vs were pretty good against the tinworm. I saw one on the F4 so they did sell one.Those were a Polish Fiat 500 updated Just rubbish. Honestly, I think Zastava should be commended for the amount of engineering they were able to do independently, modifying and developing Fiat cars. Rated PG-13 I have only seen one Yugo in my life. Id love to hear what they thought a year later. I was unaware of the Bricklin connection at the time, and in fact learned about it here on CC, but I remember seeing some Bricklins as a kid, thinking that they were cool looking cars, and wondering why there werent more of them. Serendipity! I bought it in January because I figured it would be fun to see just how bad it could be. W. Edwards Deming was key in Japans metamorphosis from a backwards exporter of trinkets and junk to a source for amazingly-high-quality automobiles and electronics. Its like almost any car; get to know its issues, and if you have the mechanical inclinations to deal with them, theyre pretty simple cars otherwise. They took in much more foreign revenue and as the economy began to fail more and more fundamentally, the leaders of those republics decided theyd be better off independent of Yugo. Gearboxes on the other hand well, its a Fiat after all, and it teaches you how to double clutch. I remember the lights were tied to the ignition switch so if you left the light switch on, theyd go off when you shut down the car, and back on when you started it back up, and that meant headlights and all, ala SAAB. Lack of an automatic would hamper the car during all but the final year in the states. Not too long before I sold it, it had started to develop noisy CV joints, but by then the car was 8 years old and 100,000 miles. To say that the 360 was unsuited to American driving norms is to wildly overpraise the car. It wasnt four door Yugo, that was Chevy Citation, if I remember correctly. The engine in mine was the old fiat 903 engine that dated back to the Fiat 600 of the 50s. (France) Chi ha ucciso la signora Dearly? I saw it on the Helena streets quite a lot, but it was the only one in the city. Rona Mace (Jamie Lee Curtis) is an anagram for "a romance". She noted that while it wasnt much good past 65MPH (no overdrive), it never got less than 30MPG, and it handled beautifully. A few things come to mind regarding the Yugo / Zastava Koral (and larger Yugo / Zastava Skala), mainly that it is a pity it never received similar developments such as 5-door hatchback, 2/4-door saloon and 3/5-door estate bodystyles as found on other Fiat 127-based variants like the SEAT 127 / SEAT Frua and Fiat 147 / Fiat Oggi / Fiat Panorama, along with larger 1372-1596cc+ versions of the Fiat SOHC engine. They were not standing still, by any means. Sales ended in the U.S. that year when a recall was ordered by the feds over emissions issues related to faulty carburetors. The interior was fading right from day one. First, salt as a melting agent on roads was relatively new. Ive always had a soft spot for these little cars from Yugoslavia. Which, actually, was a very good little car . He was absolutely correct. During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. That salty New England slush had its way with everything. 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. What he saw was an operation that turned out a car designed (and abandoned) by Fiat years before. She picked them up for virtually nothing and was content with bare-bones transportation. Zastava only collapsed in 2008, and its decline was NOT due to mismanagement, but the trade embargo on Serbia, which starved them of devlopment funds. Other folks I know routinely neglect maintenance on some very well regarded cars and wonder why they have such bad luck! The last Yugo I saw was 12 years ago, parked by a gas station in Truckee oh, and a restored Yugo was for sale on Craigslist a bit ago but I figured that would be a bad idea on the Subaru front: I heard a rumor, years ago, that Fuji bought all the American 360s and had them crushed any truth to that? The process, alone, of a car manufacturer as a unit of government, is suspect. How many remains ??? VW, in its first days, had all the same problems as Zastavabut with a product that was continually improved, they overcame it inside of five years. Not a bit ! The one thing that the Yugo shared with its Fiat ancestry, was the fact that these things were biodegradable in the midwest. . Like all good European cars used to do, it came with its own tool kit and (owner) service manual. If Italy had built it, would it be known as the It??? He was rather sad that after 170,000 miles it had everything behind them. Youd have to go from fourth to first gear to come down. Malcolm Bricklin was one of those guys who is the quintessential P.T. The ignition constantly gave out and so did the clutch. (not that I cared that much about it I was in my mid-twenties and during summer season beaches were full of naked girls.) Drowning Mona, Movie, 2000 Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight Display options: Also known as: Todos la queran muerta (Spain) Mais qui a tu Mona ? And that, sadly, is the point and the problem. One time the shifter came off in my hand. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Also, I think that first step after buying any used car in general should be changing of belt. Also in Drowning Mona's favor, at the heart of the movie, is a genuinely positive character, Verplanck Police Chief Wyatt Rash (Danny DeVito).He's possibly the only principled citizen in town. I had the car 18 months or so, when in traffic one day a DUI driver rammed his Ford Fiesta (of all things) into the back of my Yugo and pushed me into a Nissan Maxima. Disc #1 -- Drowning Mona Play Feature Chapters Setup 5.1 Surround Stereo English SDH Subtitles: On Subtitles: Off Extras - Trailers Drowning Mona Eye Of The Beholder . What is the purpose of door release handles if they break right away (they appeared to be bendable plastic molded around a paper clip), and how did they ever get installed in the first place if they didnt work to begin with? Yup, Im gonna go for a ride in my Ford Fester., I mentioned Drowning Mona below, before I read this. Enterior wall panels were thin cardboard with painted on carpet flecks. 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. Worse, it was not just fenders and rocker panels that looked bad but did not affect the way the car drove. It eventually developed a bad piston ring(s), and the blow by was enough to clog the carburetor so that it would stop running. It is difficult to overstate how rustprone 1970s Japaneese cars were. At least until the inevitable head gasket problems caused by an Iron head and alloy block. Its so interesting to think of how things couldve been different if the country survived Communisms collapse in one peace. When the nastiest resident (Bette Midler) of a white-trash Westchester suburb is killed in a suspicious accident, everyone But the Japanese companies focused; and today its almost unheard of to find a Toyota or Honda ruined from corrosion. As a rule, Chrysler got worse as the 70s progressed where Ford and particularly GM got better. Those brave revolutionaries almost single handedly redefine their market segment and leave an indelible mark on the industry itself. Jason Torchinsky of Jalopnik had an interesting take on it lately; A girl I knew in high school had one of these, it got rustier seemingly by the day, and this was in 1991-2 so it wasnt by any means an old car. This was almost $1100 lower than the cheapest Chevy Sprint and lower than even the Hyundai Excel. Make and modelMake and yearYearCategoryImportance/RoleDate added (new ones first)EpisodeAppearance (ep.+time, if avail. At first glance, the car looked up to date- Front wheel drive, rack and pinion steering, decent mileage. I had very good support for the Yugo as Atlanta is the home of Bayless, which is a big Fiat parts house. I would like to add that once money was in short supply, it was easy to lay a blame on the other side, to stir old misunderstandings and conflicts, send kids to London or USA and start profiting from the war. Mine was still only about a year old, so I was in denial about its performance. 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. The last ones left in my hometown got a stay of execution when the city received a good number of Bosnian refugees in the 90s; many of them bought Yugos and got mobile for next to nothing since they knew how to keep them running. Witness the fact that everyone's car of choice is a Yugo; each Verplanck citizen drives one ever since the company conducted a cheap sales test of the vehicle there some 10 years ago. . The only car known to have been blown off of the Mackinac Bridge. Another factor was that Subaru managed to kick Bricklin out on the street and take over distribution and marketing before he ran it into the ground. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features Press Copyright Contact us Creators . Just started slipping, on a highway as flat as a calm oceanand over the next five hours I had to shift into lower and lower gears just to minimize slippage. These cars came with an optional AM/FM cassette deck that was very basic, only 5W total if I recall right, or was that 5W per channel? alignments. The effort collapsed along with Yugo sales in America. The Kei cars, like European microcars in the 1950s and early 60s, made car ownership possible for the masses. She wrote something like, How cute, Ill be Lelo in her Yugo.. Further, it was the only small car of the era that could be genuinely fun to drive. Thank you for the interesting history. Now, I live in the UK and have had three ladas, all of which were much better cars than many people give them credit for. I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it. Why did so many Fiat designs get recycled and built behind the Iron Curtain? Warranty claims were dreadful. One of the sight gags is that everyone in town drives a Yugo, thereby using personalized license plates as a necessity more than anything else.) Vehicle used a lot by a main character or for a long time, Vehicle used by a character or in a car chase, Minor action vehicle or used in only a short scene. Its well nigh impossible to understand the Yugo episode without understanding the guiding hand behind what is generally considered to be the worst car ever offered for sale in the U.S. Malcom Bricklin had been knocking around the car industry for over a quarter century when he spotted a Yugo 45 on a London street in 1984. I mean, cmon, its an Eastern Bloc car. And as any living myth, this one spreads into other areas as well: Reading in Consumer Reports that the tester injured his toe when the front seat came crashing down on it. I took all of the fun stuff off of the red one (Italian Cromodora wheels and the AM/FM Cassette) and put it on the blue one. I may know the only satisfied Yugo owner in the U.S. At only 20,000 miles it was worn out, fading, under powered, rusting, it wanted to die and be buried, it certainly didnt want to be a car! People's spotty memories and clumsy lies complicate the investigation, and the . I know this is hardly the point of your blog entry, but as someone with a passionate interest in the region, Im compelled to mention that Yugoslavia broke apart mainly due to its heavy debt burden. *shakes tiny fist*. They probably would have found a customer base in the U.S. Yes, even a Saturn will rust in Detroit, but in less harsh climes, Yugos tend to last well. But what about quality disasters in a different scenario? Quality (or a lack of same) would ensure that the car could not survive in a competitive marketplace. 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. who collected Yugos for pennies on the dollar and used the collection as a parts supply to keep ONE of them running. @ahight: I think there is no need to put the location square in every screenshot, only the ones with more than a single car visible. So, with connections, he was brought to Japan for a series of lectures; and if America wasnt interested, Japan was very much so. A magazine road test came up with the amusing summary: First of all, thanks to Perry Shoar for a very well written explanation of the events of the 70s and 80s that led to the meltdown of Yugoslavia. AMC, in its last years, went so far as to have Ziebart license its procedure for use in the factory. It would take about eight years from apparent problem to engineered fix to failure of the fix and another engineered solution. Wheel barrow. The poor gal, if I remember, was named Lelo. After the 1973 oil shock and protracted period of economic stagnation globally, Western markets had less incentive to buy anything from Yugoslavia. It has been a while since I have seen a Yugo on the road, but a local car wash has one with signs mounted on it. . I think that its important to remember that Subaru (Fuji Heavy Industries) itself didnt try to push the 360 into the American market-It was Bricklin looking for a lottery win and the little 360 was his ticket. Both were good strong running vehicles and the only thing I remember having trouble with was remedied by tightening up the battery to starter connection on one of the cars. One day I put the key in and nothing happened, it was dead and wouldnt turn on. I remember checking them out back in I think 1986 at a local dealer and loved that bright blue they were offering at the time, called Adriatic Blue. Its not too late! It was 10 years old in Japan at the time. Based on the slightly larger Fiat 125, it was everything bad about a lada, but somehow worse. Trouble for him was, the rest of America wasnt interested in postwar America. Also, this post made me curious: how did Subaru make the transition from dangerous sardine can to granola FWD/AWD family compact in the US? During WWII, they built a few Jeeps. The Yugo became the default entry level car for people that knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. Only other thing it needed to be roadworthy was front tires. The brakes appear to have been tampered with, making it murder. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. Wait, how am I still driving 24,000 reliable miles a year on a 28 year old yugo, if this article is accurate? Zastava Zastava made Yugos even after they stopped selling in America. The Yugo, new clutch, new exhaust, patched wiring and all, went into the trash. Now they are all scared by digital cameras and this are just some memories from the other side of the iron curtain. (function waitGEO() { They would swap in the drivetrain from the Fiat X1/9 and put on the wider wheels tires from the X1/9 also. The story involves a local police chief from New York state who is charged with . Kind of reminds me of a first generation Rabbit/Golf, which Ive always considered the gold-standard for the best styled small car. We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. Contact us (As you said JustPassinThru). ), it was quite good. 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? Ive got a couple of rusted out British cars one of which I repaired The rust was caused by poor window sealing on both water rusted it way out however the spares one was driven full of rust which spread it all through the unpainted box sections. Possibly most accurate and realistic analysis I have heard yet regarding what happened in ex-Yugoslavia. In 1969, Subaru started producing a larger, much more traditional (well, mostly) car, the 1000. and lso two Horizon ? 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