While there are as many different types of car geeks and hoarders/collectors out there as there are iridescent colors in a puddle of motor oil, but I think you can generally lump them into one of two camps: those that hold on to cars forever, even beyond reason, and those that cycle through cars on some sort of arcane cycle. I’m usually the first, and as a result, my property is littered with cars, running, and, far too often, otherwise.
One of these cars in the latter category was my 1991 Yugo GVplus. I’m very fond of this car, and I’ve absolutely enjoyed my time with it, but I need to be realistic – I have too many project cars that need attention and far, far too little time to devote to them. And that aorta business set me back a bit, too, I suppose. And maybe I have my eye on getting something else and I need to make room.
Point is, these cars deserve better custodians than I have been, so sometimes it makes sense to re-home them to people who can take care of them.
And that’s what happened this weekend. The Yugo is off to a new chapter in its exciting life, and, even better, this is a good reminder of some of the more unexpected benefits of Autopian Membership.
See that happy man and his delighted daughter, delirious about the prospect of Yugo ownership ? That’s Brandon, and he’s the new custodian of the Yugo. How did Brandon get so lucky? Did he save an entire nations’ children in a past life? Maybe, I haven’t checked. What I do know is that he was an Autopian Member who was reeling from the pain of losing a car auction, and our publisher, Matt, took pity upon him, and sought to make the pain go away, via a Yugo:
Sure, that Autozam Carol was pretty cool, but our man here would have been out four grand had he actually won, and who knows what issues that car is hiding? With the Yugo, all the issues are proudly on display.
Now, you may be wondering why the hell Matt is just volunteering to give away cars he doesn’t own, and that’s a valid question. It’s not really something one should be in the habit of doing. But, in this case, it was okay, because I had originally wanted to give the Yugo away in some sort of raffle for members, but something about California’s sweepstakes laws made that illegal.
Illegal? To give away a Yugo? What kind of backwards-ass madness is this?
Anyway, it’s apparently just fine to give away a car if it’s just done at random, without a formal announcement or anything like that, so that’s what happened: one day, in the Autopian Discord (which is another huge member perk, by the way) Matt felt bad for a member who lost a car auction and gifted them a Yugo. My Yugo.
Of course, we can’t guarantee that becoming a member will mean you’ll get a car, of course. But I can say that, at least once, it’s happened.
The history of this particular Yugo is quite storied; I suspect that after being sold as someone’s cheap daily driver, it spent some time as a practice car in some auto shop class. There’s some evidence of strange things being done to it.
Then, well-known car-rescuer and YouTuber Tavarish acquired the car, and he gave it, as a joke, to Mike Ballaban at Jalopnik. Mike was a great custodian of the Yugo, keeping it as his only car in New York City. It was during this time he loaned it to me so I could make this video defending the Yugo and all of its unfairly-maligned siblings:
This may be when I fell for the little Yugoslav, too, I think. It had so much plucky charm! I think Mike could sense my fondness for it, so when he had a kid and got an ultimatum that the Yugo must go, for the child’s sake, he reached out to me.
He gave me the car, and I drove it down from New York to North Carolina, with surprisingly little drama. Since then, the Yugo and I have had a lot of good times!
I took my kid around in the Yugo a lot, which, ironically, was the main reason the Yugo was banished from its previous home, the fear of a child having to encounter it. But we had fun! At 67 hp, it was one of my more powerful cars, and proved to be a lot of fun to throw around! It was far more entertaining than any little bottom-tier crapbox from a now-nonexistent country should have any right to be.
I took it to multiple local car shows and events, including the local Triangle Rad shows, where it rocked an Atari:
(Also note the 3D-printed badge on the nose that I customized to be a little torch)
…and I even took it to some shows that allowed it to co-mingle with peers of equal stature:
I took it on a few road trips, including one where I got to perform my single finest act of road-side desperation-repair:
On the way home from the zoo, the Yugo decided that trouble-free operation felt too weird so the shift linkage vanished. I bodged up a fix with 2 hose clamps and a rock and we made it home. pic.twitter.com/25PWyfq4fn
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) November 27, 2021
Yes, I fixed the shift linkage with two hose clamps and a rock. And I think that’s still what’s allowing the car to shift now. I did suggest that perhaps Brandon should order a new Zastava NOS factory-correct repair kit, consisting of two new hose clamps and a factory-approved rock:
Close: pic.twitter.com/X4JVJ28Tse
— Peter (@Peter_M_V) November 29, 2021
I had good times with the Yugo, but it had been sitting for far, far too long, and needed more attention than I could give. So, I was happy to see it go to Brandon. Of course, getting it out of the driveway and onto the tow dolly proved a colossal ass-pain, with the expected fiascos that doing anything with me around seems to produce.
First, I got my pollen-covered truck stuck in a ditch by my house:
Thankfully, Brandon’s friend with a nice, newer F-150 towed me out, though in that process we broke one of my tow straps. No matter! I had another, which we used to yank the Yugo out of its gravel nest!
Well, we tried, but that strap broke, too, so we had to resort to using some much shorter chains:
These worked, but the willfully non-straight driveway meant that the short chains ended up causing a situation where a chunk of the Yugo’s quite brittle plastic bumper got lopped off:
The F-150 was fine, so that was good, at least. After a lot of moving and use of a protractor to calculate angles, we did manage to get the Yugo out of the driveway, and onto the tow dolly, but to pull that off, we had to use my truck as a combination anchor and tow vehicle, because the Yugo’s brakes weren’t, um, up to the challenge gravity and an incline provided.
This meant this strange tug-of-war-looking situation like you see here:
Eventually, it did all work! The Yugo was on the dolly and ready to begin its new life!
Well, sort of. Being a Yugo, it can’t let anything happen that easily, as one of the rear tires merged with the infinite 25 miles from Brandon’s home:
This is really not the Yugo’s fault, of course. Just old tires that desperately needed replacing. After a quick swap of the shredded rubber for a marginally better one from the front, the Yugo completed the last leg of the trip.
It’s now safely in Brandon’s garage, and hopefully will be back out on the road again in no time, its 67 Eastern Bloc horses once again running happy and free, bringing perverse joy to all those who encounter it.
Good luck, Brandon! Keep us updated! Enjoy your next chapter of life, Yugo!
Oh man… that tire. I don’t think I have seen a worse case of dry rot. Hell… I’ve been to old playgrounds with tires that looked better than that!
Sadly that was the second best tire when we started. The two that were on the front were both worse than the one we lost. Luckily we didn’t have to go far after changing it
Today marked the day that The Autopian membership levels were updated.
Cloth members will be randomly awarded non-running vehicles with no more than 3 serviceable tires. Awards will happen monthly. You must collect your vehicle in person. You have two weeks to arrange and start the retrieval process. You have been warned.
Vinyl members will be mandated to help with the retrieval and delivery of a Cloth member’s “vehicle” if they are located within 70 miles of the “vehicle” being awarded.
Velour members will have to provide food, lodging, and wrenching support to said cloth and vinyl members while on their journey home.
RCL members will receive a T-shirt that reads. “I joined The Autopian and thankfully and I got was this T-shirt.
Foreign legion members may be required to visit junkyards to procure and ship parts for award vehicles with limited U.S. domestic parts availability.
They should figure out how to give shitboxes away to members with the best records for picking the winners in shitbox showdown.
This is weirdly accurate of exactly how this played how haha
YES! I love this little car so much. I’ve even driven it! It’s light, it’s manual, and it’s more fun than you’d expect.
Run free, little Yugo! May it live on to many more years of happy hooning.
Haha the most famous crappiest car ever!
Christ. What a shit heap.
That’s a mirror, not a window. Adrian.
Technically Yugoslavia was non-aligned, being neither a member of the informal Eastern Bloc following the culmination of the Tito-Stalin split in 1948, nor of the later, more formal, Warsaw Pact.
On this subject, however, we stand united within the dictatorship of the proletariat. I finally got around to replacing the tires on my Velorex 435 this weekend. I didn’t see a date code on the old ones but they were marked “Made in Czechoslovakia” which makes them at least 33 years old. I’m guessing older.
Yugo GV… the only brand-new (at the time) vehicle I have ever test driven in my 42 years of driving that I could see the pavement under me when shifting gears.
Still love them.
The Yugo racked up surprisingly few tickets when it was in NYC.
https://howsmydrivingny.nyc/eukw9hz7
The Autopian taxi racked up a ton, as expected.
I used one of those tow dollies to get an ’03 Focus back home, which was in similar condition regarding the lack of brakes and old, dried tires. Blowing a tire was my primary concern…I’d at least made sure they were aired up, and sprinkled some tots ‘n pears around before I left. Plus I had my cordless impact.
It was being towed with a ’95 F150 that was also new to me…I’d put about 10 miles on it, just enough to find the broken hazard flasher and combo switch, otherwise it has been sitting for the past several years with very little drive time. Luckily it was a relatively flat 120 mile drive home.
I used a similar tow dolly way back in 1998 to tow my Chevy Corsica behind a 26 ft UHaul truck. One of the dual truck tires blew shooting itself into my towed car. Once we pulled over I then realized that one of the tow dolly’s tires was mere minutes from ALSO blowing.
Stuck on the side of the road for 5 hours before UHaul’s service provider made it to us replaced both tires BY HAND. The guy mounted two truck tires to the rim BY HAND. What a beast.
Wow. I have thankfully never had any issues with a rented moving truck. I remember using the same setup to get my Jetta TDI home after the clutch took a shit on my long trip home from diving in Florida. The clutch went out about 50 miles outside of Paducah around midnight. It took 2 hours to get a tow truck out there. I had them tow it to a hotel in Paducah and rented a Penske van with a tow dolly the next morning to get her back to STL which was the cheapest method interestingly enough. What a trip!
That sounds like an exciting trip…did you need a change of pants after the tire blew?
I was happy to see that the UHaul tow dolly I rented looked fairly new and was well maintained…good tires and wiring, nice LED lights, and everything worked as it should.
I have trouble changing some of my bicycle tires, how the hell did the guy manage that?!
I heard the bang and saw the tread fly off into my car from the driver side mirror and yelled “Holy shit!” which woke my best friend up and he was completely freaked out, justifiably so.
I eased off the throttle and slowly pulled off the side of the Florida turnpike right in a conveniently located shielded angled guardrail.
My buddy and I kept busy by digging into the stuff packed in the back. We played catch (football and baseball) and then were hitting golf balls into the Everglades. The we found a box that belonged to my girlfriend’s neighbor, who I offered to move about half their house down, the box was full of nudie magazines! The most hilarious part of that story was that there was an Ohio Swingers magazine! LOL
When we unloaded all of their stuff at their new house, we left that box there, because it wasn’t mine or my girlfriend’s. I got a call a few days later from the wife telling me that I must have left one of my boxes there and I told her that nope, everything was accounted for. That must have been a fun conversation!
I love this. As a Pontiac Sunbird enthusiast, I welcome Yugo enthusiasts into the “You like *that*?” club.
I love giving away cars. Maybe I’m gonna give a few more away, lemme just check what Mercedes has in her storage unit…
If she still has the bus…
I would love to see someone pulling that bus up onto a uhaul dolly and towing it with their old pickup
We all know what truck would attempt such a feat
A Ford F-ing Ranger!
How many mystery vehicles David forgot about are in the Galpin parking lot?
I’m pretty sure there’s at least 1 in Michigan, 1 in Germany, and possibly 1 in Australia (that one weirdly manages to simultaneously be upside-down and shiny-side-up). I’m unclear who owns what.
I forgot all about his hoarding on other continents.
Just like the sailor who has a girl in every port, David is on his way to having a car on nearly every continent.
She won’t even notice!
You know, I was about to raise my hand and say I’m a member who lives near Mercedes, but to be honest any car she’s done with … I don’t want it.
They do tend to be quite spent when I’m done with them. But hey, they usually run!
True! You’ve had some stuff that would be great OppoCross foder!
Ooh, I’ll take a VW – I’m even in Illinois!
Judging by the smile on the face of Brandon’s daughter, this was definitely a Yugo girl moment.
Haha she was super excited to get up at 5, drive 3 hours, then she helped us steer it a couple times so she’s now extremely proud to brag that she “drove” a Yugo since most people haven’t ever heard of them
That’s great! Father of the year here! I can’t wait to drag my kids along for stuff like this! Haha. The funny thing is this will be far more memorable for her than a trip to Disney or some other curated event. She’ll be talking about this long after you’re gone.
Haha yeah the grandparents are in town and she spent all day yesterday recounting the exploit
That’s awesome!
Hmm,, I had to take some allergy meds after seeing all of those pollen pics! 😉
Glad to see that the Yugo has a new home.
I can verify that any car in the area that hasn’t been washed in the last, oh eight minutes or so looks about like that. I had to clean pollen off my 200SX this weekend….and it’s in a garage.
Wow!
((achoo!) 😉
Good on you Torch.
It may be time for the Autopeon staff to do some “house cleaning.”
Between Torch, DT, Mercedes, and SWG there are a ton of shit boxes yearning for their freedom, which is a contagious sort of thing once the word gets out…
Maybe do an Oprah thing here to cull the herd a bit.
“You get a shit box, and you get a shit box, and you too.
Everybody gets a shit box!”
“Why is everyone running away? We’re giving out shitboxes here!!”
Autopeon huh?
It’s Monday amigo.
And I don’t care.
Good luck with your new turd.
I mean it works, giving people shitboxes could make them feel like peons. I legitimately thought it was possible it was intentionally funny
The Autopeon sounds like some grand arena where Yugos and Paos and Smarts do battle in the world’s cutest demolition derby.
Jim Lahey should be giving out the Shit Boxes.
I don’t know about giving mine away, but there are 2 choice cuts from The SWG Signature Collection that will be leaving my Evil Wrenching Lair as soon as repairs are completed later this month.
Less is more and wrenching time is fleeting; it’s a new day.
Now Otto will have to find something else as a First Car.
I had a Yugo as my first car. It’s funny for a few minutes until you realize that you’re stuck with it.
Mine had a 4-speed manual and I believe the phrase “like running a wooden spoon through a bag of pretzels” was created to describe the experience of driving that thing.
You’re supposed to LOVE your first car. I mean, I loved that I didn’t have to ride the bus anymore, but that thing was not very lovable. It was funny, it was silly, but it wasn’t a very good car. Even by 1993 standards when I had it. It broke a lot, it is very slow, it wasn’t comfortable and literally everyone I knew had a better car.
Otto is missing nothing.
My first car was a Polo with 47HP when it left the factory. A Yugo would have been a big step up in power for 17 y/o me.
Did you try putting in a new rock?
I think I remember something about Otto inquiring after a New Beetle, with an affinity for Frutiger Aero styling.
This is correct!
I went and I looked up the article after posting the comment, and now I have the urge to track down a Frutiger Aero theme for my phone. Gimme da shiny bubbles!
This is what Brandon gets for being behind on his membership dues.
I was wondering what I’d done to deserve this
First prize: a Yugo!
Second prize: two Yugos
🙂
I need to take a few steps towards doubling its value, but I haven’t put any gas in it yet.
Once you put 4 new tires on it, it will be worth $500!
No … no it won’t 🙂
😀
Haha, came here for this. Was not disappointed.
This is a perfect feel-good story to begin my Monday. Thanks!
Came down to say the same
The “KARR” front plate (KITT’s evil twin from Knight Rider, Gen Z’ers!) is PERFECT.There’s a perverse pleasure that comes from parking a small, relatively cheap car at a Cars and Coffee next to a bunch of six-figure dream machines and knowing that yours is more rare. I get this with my NA Miata, which has almost disappeared from local roads these days.As far as consolation prizes go, a Yugo is definitely one.
I regularly see an NA that looks to be in ridiculously good shape but the owner decided to join the silly “stance” craze and ruined it comprehensively. No telling what other horrors he has imposed on that poor little roadster aside from the silly wheels, stupid stretched tires and ill-conceived suspension but every time I see it I want to rescue it.
I wish people would stop slamming their cars. It looks like caseoh had a field day and it ruins the cars handling.
Yup, the stance crowd are a big chunk of the reason good NAs are thin on the ground these days.
Leave the Miatas alone people! If you want a car to ruin there are plenty of 350/370Z’s or Infiniti G35/37’s around on the cheap and no one really cares what you do with those.
Haha my other car is an NA, an imported Eunos version but still same thing
I get where you’re coming from. I have a picture of my 200SX parked next to a Ferrari 458 at Cars and Coffee, with three dudes huddled around the open hood of the S12 and the Ferrari being completely ignored, being one of three that were there.
You must live somewhere rusty for NA’s to be that rare. Around here we still see them quite regularly. We have a Popup Zone at our ’80s/’90s car shows, and it’s usually about 1/4 NA’s.
I’m in SW Florida, actually. The few NAs you see down here are generally in excellent shape, and rust issues are not prevalent here at all. They were incredibly common on the roads for a long time but they’ve since disappeared. My theory is that a lot of NAs got bought and moved up North when they started getting scarce up there, and the rougher examples got scooped up by the Stance Bros. The few left down here tend to be third cars and/or garage queens.
Came to make fun of Jason for looking like a crazed overenthusiastic cars salesman. Stayed for the Yugo.
His wife was even more excited it was going away than any of the rest of us!
Pretty sure Sally knew what she was getting into those many years ago.
Just make sure to change the timing belt early and often, as those U.S.-spec Yugos had timing belts with unusually short change intervals (either 30k or 40k miles) which all too often bit oblivious owners in the heiney, partly accounting for the present paucity of running Yugos around here.
Yeah it’s 30k which is crazy. And it’s apparently an interference engine too
Yeah, mighty unfortunate, especially since those cars are actually just fine for what they were, as per Jason’s excellent defenses of the Yugo here and on the Old Site. Given to understand that many if indeed not most of those cars in Europe had pushrod engines, sans timing belts, so that’s partly why one still sees Yugos on the road over there.
If that engine ever bites the dust it’d be interesting to look into importing one of those pushrod engines.
If the engine blows I’ll be looking for a Fiat X1/9 one to drop in. More power, easier to find parts, and just generally a better engine all around
Yeah, and it’d be in keeping with the Yugo’s roots, what with being based on a Fiat (the 128) and all. Updates would be of interest for some of us here…
There was a Fiat specislist shop around here for many years and they always had a mixture of Yugos and Fiats (mostly X1/9s, in fact) outside. Always meant to stop by there to inquire about whether they had any Yugos for sale but, alas, apparently the proprietor retired and closed shop before I could get out there. Just as well, as I do have project cars, plural, already, lol.
Jason’s (your) Yugo is a Plus like mine, with the 1.3 FI engine, and as far as I know those are non-interference. Still good advice though.
Congratulations and welcome to the Yugo world. Be sure to join the Facebook page, it’s tremendously helpful.
A quick search online suggests the 1.3 is indeed interference, unfortunately. Yeah, regardless, as you said, still good advice, changing timing belts on the reg (not for nothing David Tracy had that hot take on timing belts, ha.)
I might be thinking of one of my other cars then LOL. I did change mine as soon as I got the car.
DT: “Any car with a timing belt is not reliable”
*Glances at Yugo*
DT: “I mean, it’s already not reliable so it’s a wash”
Brandon: “I can at least push it around” (previous comment)
Torch: “Yeah, yeah…I know it needs a wash”
Unfair! I’m sure at least some of David’s cars can still be pushed.
I’m already on there, I think. I might be hitting you up for advice/help as I blunder blindly through this adventure
While you’re at it, put in a performance cam and a better carb with your new belt, and rev it to the moon!
Does that exist??
Yes! Midwest Bayless has several different cams for the Lampredi-designed SOHC engine in the 128, X1/9 & Yugo.
Congrats on the new Yugo, Brandon! Please keep us updated as the rescue progresses. Wicked stoked for you, bud!
Will do. Haven’t even been able to wash it yet but that and getting a tire are top on the list first so I can at least push it around
Yeah… I’d put those tires at the top of my to do list too. Hopefully you don’t run into trouble finding tires small enough for it.
I mean tires don’t matter when it won’t start, but I can’t even push it in and out of the garage to work on it with the one blown. I only looked for a couple minutes but I didn’t see anything right away. Apparently Fiat 500 wheels bolt up so I might raid a junkyard for some with better tire options
A 165/70R13 should be approximately the same diameter as the original 145R13, but much easier to get. According to the Tremec driveline calculator app, the difference in height between the two is about 0.05 inches
[Jason, in Moe Howard voice]: Why, aorta!
Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk.
Oh, wise guy!
While the Yugo appears to be covered in the grime that accumulates while sitting in a field for 15 years, it is actually the result of being outside for about 12 hours during NC pollen season.
Sounds about right. My car sat undriven for 2 weeks in AL, and now I’m down to using a toothbrush and Simple Green to get the caked-on bits of pollen from inside door jambs and other spots that don’t get a nice washing from the rain. It’s intense.
Daily driven cars tend to be a little better since the wind (and rain) will break most of the pollen free. But the flipside is the weather is really nice, so with cracked windows you’ll be cleaning yellow dust from the interior for the next 8 months just in time for the cycle to start again.
I really hate that. I got caught out by this in my house. It wasn’t even my first year in the Piedmont where it’s the worst (it’s not remotely like this in the mountains). I had to fire up the compressor and blow out everything in the house towards a window with a fan exhausting what I could. Rinse and repeat for cars, and that’s why we’re all driving around with our tops and windows up in the otherwise nicest weather of the year.
My neighborhood here in VA is pretty similar and I had several neighbors bust out leaf blowers to clean the pollen off their cars
I took a cordless leaf blower with me to RADwood Charlotte last weekend for this exact purpose.
I have referred to that as the Carolina Patina, but I’m sure it’s present in many southern states. Looks like it even has the slug tracks. I once saw a lowered Accord on 85 that I swear had that look on purpose… like an import rat rod.
re: the dramatic reenactment of Requiem for a Dream between the truck and the Yugo:
I dipped the rear tire not in but near the ditch, and the Yugo went up on a landscaping rock just so in just the right time and place, and the Yugo hopped directly onto the ball of the hitch.
What a great adventure, I’m so glad I was along for it.
Appreciate your help! It was a crazy day for sure
This is a stark reminder:
Any time someone offers you a free car, Yugo get it. No questions.
*inserts drum sting gif*
Serbing up the jokes on a nice little platter, as usual.
That pun was so bad that it Herzegovina.
You can’t talk about your govina on here! Kids could be reading!
It’s a medical term! I’ve never had a catheter be placed, but I heard it herze-yo-veena.
“Of course, we can’t guarantee that becoming a member will mean you’ll get a car, of course. But I can say that, at least once, it’s happened.”
I don’t know how to do those fancy inline quotes so you’ll just have to bear with me.
It has actually happened twice. Congrats Brandon! Those Hella fog lights are worth it all by themselves!
Haha all 3 of them? Yeah this thing is far more sketchy than I imagined with the 20 year old tires, no functional brakes, and significant weight reduction from David’s old nemesis iron oxide. This was not one of my smartest ideas ever but we’ll see how it goes!
The worst ideas create the best stories.
Yugo…but you don’t stop…
believing, hold on to that feeling…we’re all rooting for yu…go follow your dreams…reach for the sky…don’t Yugo chasing waterfalls…we all can’t wait to see Yugo get the Yugo to go…you.
(That’s all I got, ha ha)
Seriously, CONGRATULATIONS!
This is awesome and as already mentioned this was such a wonderful and much needed bright spot on a very dreary Monday for me…the comments are total GOLD too. These are the kind of stories that are great to read since it’s something to look forward to seeing what happens next (My all time favorite Autopian saga so far was PROJECT CACTUS!!!)
https://www.theautopian.com/project-cactus-was-a-literal-shell-in-a-field-two-years-ago-now-its-an-excellent-daily-drivable-ute/
Haha thanks for checking it out, I will be sure to try to share updates as I have them. So far I haven’t even gotten it washed yet, it might take me a couple weeks to dive into it but I’ll get there.