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03-03-2003, 07:42 AM | #16 | |
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What I do not understand is why they were ever sold in the US, that is a car for the ultra tight city streets of Europe. If an American car crashed into one, it would be like hitting a mailbox. The surly Janitor at my high shool drove me home once in his red one, it is really plastiky and rattly inside, and the engine screamed at 30 mph!.
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03-03-2003, 11:48 AM | #17 | ||
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LOL :thumbup:
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03-03-2003, 01:43 PM | #18 | |
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I was talking to a close friend of my uncle and he had a brand new Yugo back in the days. He said once he hit 10k miles it started to rattle... Oh yeah, If there were a passanger in the car while going up a hill, they'd have to get up and walk or the car wouldnt make it.
Now if that isnt pathetic tell me what is.. :hehehe:
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03-04-2003, 02:52 AM | #19 | ||
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03-05-2003, 02:43 PM | #20 | ||
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LOL? why does everybody say that, what does it mean? |
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03-05-2003, 02:50 PM | #21 | ||
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03-05-2003, 02:59 PM | #22 | |
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Ah! ok thanks, I would have never deciphered that.
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03-06-2003, 09:57 AM | #23 | |
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It cracks me up...
People think the Yugo was a horrible car - they keep forgetting that it cost $4000 when the average car sold in the U.S. cost $11,000 - you get what you pay for! For $4000 it was not a bad car - certainly not any worse than the 1986 Hyundai that cost exactly $1000 more! - but you don't hear about how bad those were very often.
I know somebody who had one for 180,000 miles - then it was rolled and totalled on the highway. They earned a reputation for being unreliable because owners neglected to have the timing belt replaced at 30,000 miles - when it snapped the engine was ruined. So no - the Yugo wasn't unreliable - just poorly maintained by most. One thing though - it is CHEAP! - and I mean that as in poor fit and finish cheap - but then again no worse than the more expensive 1986 hyundai.
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03-06-2003, 11:30 AM | #24 | |
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2strokebloke, you hit the nail on the head! I agree with you 100%.
Mostly everyone here is a car fanatic, so they admire hp, looks, quality. When they see a car like a Yugo that has none of those traits, they squirm is disgust. The big point they are missing though is that The Yugo was not designed for the US market, or any world market that has a rampant population of V8 machines. It is designed to be cheap transportation for Europeans. If I lived in Europe and wanted a small practical car that was easy to park, extremely affordable, that was a fuel sipper I would get a Yugo. Just wait for gas prices to rise again, we are going to see a tsunami of Yugos coming to the states. |
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03-06-2003, 12:23 PM | #25 | ||
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I'm a car nut, I love all cars, with the exception of the Trabant, even the Yugo. I have had experience with the RWD Hyundai Pony, and they were excellent cars, except their Mitsubishi made engine leaked oil
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03-06-2003, 07:06 PM | #26 | ||
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03-06-2003, 09:24 PM | #27 | |
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Actually, you DO hear about how early Excels were poor quality cars. But the Hyundai Excel was a (marginally) higher quality car than the Yugo. There were a few Yugos that flipped their odometers (over 100,000), but there were a higher percentage of Hyundais that did it. One of the things pointing to the higher quality of the Excel (besides the JD Power surveys) was the fact that Yugo sales peaked (in the US) at around 50-60k in their first year; Hyundai sales peaked in their third year at over a quarter of a million Excels.
Hyundai learned from their mistakes by improving their build quality and their products. Zastava (the maker of the Yugo) didn't improve very much...and the NATO bombing of their plant didn't help either. It'll be interesting if they've improved much in the past dozen years when the cars return to the US later this year. |
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03-06-2003, 11:12 PM | #28 | ||
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I still think it's funny that you guys have to put up with them coming back If they come here I am seriously shifting back to NZ
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03-07-2003, 10:29 AM | #29 | |
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In the US, there are a number of entrepreneurs who believe they can make a fortune importing cars and unloading them on the American public. It was done in the 1940s and 1950s...and worked. We got VW, MG, Triumph, BMW, etc...that way.
In the 1960s, Malcolm Bricklin and his associates did a similar thing; they imported the Subaru 360. When the 360 went sour on the American market, they turned up the heat on Fuji Heavy Industries (the maker of Subaru cars) and they got the Subaru "Star"...known in the US as the FF-1. It sold well enough to keep the brand going. Subaru now actually builds vehicles in North America and is doing quite well. Bricklin sold his stake in Subaru of American and went on to build his own car (1974-76 Bricklin), but it failed. In the 1980s, he acquired the rights to import the Fiat 2000 Spider (Pininfarina Azzura) and Fiat X1/9 (Bertone X1/9) when Fiat withdrew from the market. His new company also gained the rights to import cars from Zastava of Yugoslavia and Proton of Malaysia. The Yugo was introduced in the US in August 1985, the Proton was never imported. Yugo America folded in 1991. Now, he's back. He wants to import the Zastava cars again, this time calling them ZMW (Zastava Motor Works). I don't expect the cars to sell nearly as well as they did in the 1980s. Bricklin's not alone in this desire. There have been people in the past 5-10 years who have announced that they were going to import cars and trucks from all over the world and sell them in the US. We've been told that we would be able to buy the ARO from Romania, the UAZ from Russia, and the JPX from Brazil, among others. I've even heard talk of the Russian Volga coming and the Russian Oka has been announced to be available in the US this year. While people complain that the Nissan Skyline GT-R, TVR, and McLaren F1 aren't/weren't offered in the US, the American market is one of the most competitive and is THE market for any major manufacturer to be in (of the world's largest makers, we don't have Peugeot-Citroen and Renault, unless you count Nissan). I'll let you international guys know what happens to ZMW (and Oka, if you care). |
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03-07-2003, 10:38 AM | #30 | |
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Bricklin
First off Bricklin only imported the 360 because Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru) terminated production of their "rabbit" motorscooters. Since he no longer could sell them he made an agreement to import Subaru cars.
True the 360 wasn't recieved well (though it should have been) but the FF-1 was first imported during the 360s biggest year of sales (1969). Yugo sales peaked during their second year in the U.S., and were about the same for their first and third year. Bricklin actually left Yugo America in 1987, and in 1989 Yugo America went bankrupt. Zastava was then in control of importing until 1991. I know of plenty Yugos that have reached and exceeded 100,000 miles. The most common problem with them, would be that the owners would neglect to have the timing belt replaced every 30,000 miles. So you can go into junkyards and find plenty of Yugos with only about 35,000 or so miles on the clock - all of them died when the timing belt (which should have been replaced) broke ruining the engine.
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Support America's dependence on foreign oil - drive an SUV! "At Ford, job number one is quality. Job number two is making your car explode." - Norm McDonald. If you find my signature offensive - feel free to get a sense of humor. Last edited by 2strokebloke; 03-07-2003 at 03:55 PM. |
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