It may be hard to fathom, but during its 6-year dalliance here Yugo sold over one hundred and forty thousand cars in the U.S.. For today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe contest we have eight Yugos - one for each side of an octagon. But will their package price prove a similarly shaped stop sign?
Okay, let's get the Yugo jokes out of the way - Why do Yugos have rear window defrosters? To keep your hands warm while pushing. How do you double a Yugo's value? Fill the tank. What's found on the last two pages of the Yugo owner's manual? The bus schedule. And finally, what's the sport version of the Yugo? The one where the driver wears Nike shoes.
I'll give you a minute to compose yourselves.
Okay, when I was a kid there was this guy a town over who had a long driveway leading back to his garage, and every inch of that concrete swath was filled with Corvairs. Turtle-tops, Greenbriers, Lakewoods, you name it he seemingly had it. This was back in the day when the little Chevy was nothing more than a used car that no one wanted. Hell, I think most of his were orphans that had been left on his doorstep under the cloak of darkness. Eventually the neighbors complained about the unmoving cavalcade of Corvairs and he was forced to have them all towed away or something. The next time we passed Casa d' Chevrolet we all noted it had been completely denuded of them.
Perhaps due to the combination of their historical significance and natural attrition, Corvairs today are worth a few bucks, especially the more rare and unique editions. Perhaps had his neighbors been a little more accommodating of the drop in their property values due to the Corvair burial ground next door, he could have profited from that ascension. Similarly, perhaps the seller of this unique (claimed to be one of only 72) Yugo Cabrio and seven additional parts cars is attempting a similar move.
Known elsewhere as the Zastava Koral, the Yugo sold in America was the brain child of Malcolm Bricklin, a man who for decades has left a series of automotive corpses strewn along the nation's metaphorical roadsides - and many real ones. The Yugo was intended to sell for less than any other new car, and at an initial price of $3,999, its only competition was the used car market. That proved to be pretty tough competition, and the tiny Eastern Block evolution of Fiat's 127 developed a reputation for having been predominantly constructed from coarse single ply toilet paper and the apathetic flop sweat of Zastava's laborers.
But before UN sanctions on Yugoslavia and a NATO bombing of a key factory cut short the company's dream of a long-term presence in the U.S. Market, they themselves cut the heads off of a few Yugos. The Cabrio features an electro-hydraulic top mechanism and the convertible when retracted is hidden fully under a tonneau giving the car an awkward mini pickup appearance. Mechanically, the 1990 cars benefitted from a 1300-cc OHC engine which featured throttle body injection in replacement of the older engine's EPA-vexing carb.
This one is said to have done but 18,000 miles and the reason given is that it has been stationary for the past ten years. All that time was apparently spent in a garage so the red paint seems pretty good under its protective layer of dust (Dude, would it have killed you to take a swifter or something and wiped down the car before taking the pictures?) and all the unobtainium trim seems to still be intact. The top too seems un-breached but having spent ten years in one position it could crumble like a sunburned vampire if you try and lower it.
And that's the one major piece of hardware that you wouldn't be able to source from any of the seven additional Yugos included in this deal. By the way, what would you call a group of Yugos? A depression? A depression of Yugos? Yes, that's probably correct. Those others seem to be in various stages of decrepitude, some appearing to be actually returning to the earth from whence they came, meaning that you'd need to probably bring both a trailer and a backhoe to collect your Yugo booty.
Doing so will require $12,500 or so says the ad. That works out to a little over $1,500 per car, which actually doesn't seem too bad - that is if Yugos give you major wood. Let's just say they don't because let's face it - they don't - but consider this yawning chasm of Yugoness for someone for whom they do. In that case, is this $12,500 price a pittance to pay for a plethora of Yugi? Or, is that too much because, well, you know, they're Yugos?
H/T to Beardee for the hookup!
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