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Between 1986 and 1991, while former Yugoslavia still existed, it was also exported to the American market.
The car's design was very similar to the Fiat 127, a popular model of the early 1970s, and was the product of a long-standing working agreement between Zastava and Fiat, a major Italian car maker.
Zastava still sells cars in Europe under both the Zastava and Yugo brand names, but the production is less then 1000 a year ( as of 2004). The Yugo models have included Yugo 45, Yugo 55, Yugo 65, Yugo Koral, Yugo Tempo, Yugo Cabrio, etc. Zastava has produced over 750,000 Yugo cars since the introduction of the series in 1980. Their Florida line of cars also evolved from the Yugo design.
Introduced in the summer of 1986 at a price of $3,990, it was by far the lowest-priced new car available in the USA at the time, and it sold very well at first. However, it soon developed a notorious reputation for being unreliable, and sales declined rapidly. In 1991, Zastava withdrew the car from the U.S. market when severe restrictions were placed on trade with Yugoslavia because of the human-rights violations of its then-current government.
In the United States, Yugo developed a reputation as being very unreliable and dangerous, despite the fact it passed quality checks upon import.
Three models of Yugo were sold in the United States: the basic GV model, a hatchback version, and the Cabrio, a convertible. All shared a high-compression 67 horsepower (50 kW) engine designed by Fiat. The fact that this required the use of a high-grade motor oil designed for motorcycles to run properly is reported to have caused problems for Yugo owners due to their failure to do as required.
When the car first appeared in the American market, it sold so well that GM and HyundaiHyundai is a name shared by several business entities in South Korea. Other meanings Hyundai Group Hyundai Motor Company (maker of the Hyundai cars) Hyundai Heavy Industries . declared it as a major threat, and started marketing campaigns to make the public think that this car was a waste and could not compare with their exponentially higher priced colleagues. False and wildly unlikely stories such as "it was so fragile that a pencil could be used to puncture the hull" started to appear. ( disputed — see talk page)
Despite its reputation, is described by some of its owners as a reliable car. Some individual Yugos appear to work fine while others are dogged by problems. It is therefore possible that the Yugo's problems were caused by poor quality control, in addition to possible flaws in the original design, which is now also generally obsolete.
In a nutshell, the Yugo could be compared to many Eastern blocDuring the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc comprised the following Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Albania (until the early 1960s, see below), the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. The E products which were inexpensive to build. Also, Yugo's design dates back to 1980 and has not had major modifications since.
Although the butt of many jokes even today, the Yugo, like other cars of the CommunistThis article is about communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, and as a popular movement. For issues regarding the organization of the communist movement, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding one-par era such as the LadaThis page is about a car manufacturer. For Slavic goddess, see Lada and Lado. Lada is the trademark of the AutoVAZ (Volzhsky Automobilny Zavod) company. This Russian automobile manufacturer, originally set up in collaboration with Fiat, produces nearly on and East GermanFor the historical eastern German provinces, see Eastern Germany East Germany officially the German Democratic Republic GDR , German Deutsche Demokratische Republik DDR , was a Communist Party-led state that existed from 1949 to 1990 in the former Soviet TrabantTrabant was an automobile manufacturer from the former East Germany. Trabant cars have a bad reputation and are often regarded to be amongst the worst ever produced. They were, however, quite reliable, and Trabants were the most popular vehicles in use in, is a popular collectors' item.