Decades from now, what do you think a car museum would most likely feature? If there’s going to be a section for 1980s and 1990s cars in a museum in the late 21st century, will there be any basic cars there to commemorate basic transportation, from A to B? Or will sports cars and supercars exclusively take their place in the limelight?
Pay a visit to any car museum today, and it’s highly unlikely that the preserved cars are ever going to be the base versions. The reason for that is straightforward: car enthusiasm tends to skew towards the exceptional.
Mention a car, any car, and its most memorable version is the one that gets talked about.
“I’m gonna drive home in my Mustang.” “It’s a GT, right?”
“I have a Peugeot 205.” “Is it a 205 GTI?”
“What about the Fiat Uno?” “Oh, I’d love to have the Uno Turbo.”
“Hey, there’s a Renault Clio.” “Man, remember the Clio Williams?”
“I used to have a Fiat Panda.” “Was it a 4×4?”
You get the idea. Originally, there have always been tons and tons of perfectly normal, bread-and-butter cars, with the occasional special edition or hot version working as a halo car – but because everybody would like to have the nicest version, those are the ones that end up preserved.
To combat this, the British have the Festival of the Unexceptional. As we’ve shown on our pages, FOTU is a show dedicated to the mediocre, a celebration of the crapcan. Any surviving first-generation Ford Mondeo is now a car worth pointing out. Opel and Vauxhall sold huge amounts of Vectras in the 1990s, but most of them have been scrapped. If nobody cared for the perfectly regular automobiles, they would eventually all be gone, with only the Turbos and GTIs and 4x4s preserved in museums. That’s why a 25-mile Yugo is such a big deal.
There wasn’t even a really hot version of the Yugo. (Except the ones without A/C, ha ha. Ha.) That said, this particular car does have the most powerful engine available for a Yugo: it’s the 1.3-liter fuel-injected unit, which has all of 67 horsepower. Sure, that’s still not a lot, but the car weighs just 2000 lbs, which helps. We’ve featured the Yugo and its various versions extensively in previous years, but a short re-cap is always worth the while.
Yugo Where I Go
The Yugo was an extremely cheap three-door hatchback produced by Zastava, a Yugoslavian manufacturer that originally made guns then licence-built Fiats. At its core, the Yugo was absolutely comparable to a lot of other small Fiats of the time: transverse, four-cylinder Fiat engine; front-wheel drive; and a transverse rear leaf spring. It was based on the Fiat 128, which had more doors and was also produced as a Zastava (the 101, with a large tailgate), but it was also closely related to the 127, which you might remember as one of the “Assan” cars in Gung Ho.
The Yugo wasn’t a rebadged Fiat, however, as Fiat didn’t sell it under its own name in any country. The closest it ever got to that was the Innocenti Koral; Innocenti was another Italian small-car brand that had built British cars in the 1970s and 1980s in Italy, such as the Austin Allegro and the classic Mini. For a while, it also sold the Yugo, using the Koral model name with which the Yugo was known in its home country. I actually considered buying a Yugo for our Balkan trip in 2018, but ended up sourcing a Fiat Panda instead.
Malcolm Bricklin, who was also connected to early Subaru imports and the anti-De Lorean, the Bricklin SV-1, set up Yugo imports to the U.S. in the 1980s after an earlier company, YugoCars, couldn’t get the Yugoslavian cars certified for import. Bricklin’s company worked with the factory to get the cars compliant through numerous changes, and importantly, the car’s base engine was changed. Originally, the plan was to import Yugos with the 903cc (55 cu-in) OHV engine from the Fiat 127 and the Autobianchi A112, but Yugo America pushed for the overhead cam 1100cc engine, with ten more horsepower. It still wasn’t fast, but it was less slow.
I’ve only ever seen the above ad in connection with the Houston, We Have A Problem mockumentary about the fictitious Yugoslav space program, and I think it’s a parody. But it’s great to me, especially the tagline about dependability and safety having a totally new meaning.
Cheap Cars Vanish Easily
The cheapest available Yugo GV (Good Value) was advertised at $3,990, which is $12k today. As there isn’t anything available under $20k in the States these days, it seems particularly cheap, but in the late 1980s there were other easily affordable options. The Giugiaro-designed Hyundai Excel cost a grand more than the Yugo, and while it was still certainly bargain-basement, it offered more car. Chevettes and Horizons were available for under six grand, as was the cheapest Chevrolet Sprint, built by Suzuki.
Now, when have you last seen a nice example of any of those? An excellent Excel? A sprightly Sprint? A good condition Horizon that’s not a GLH? Because all of these cars were cheap, they weren’t necessarily kept up, and skipping maintenance made them worthless.
The Yugo, four-grand new or not, needed timing belt changes thanks to its SOHC engine. Had it been fitted with the original 903 engine, it would’ve been pushrod and free from timing belt maintenance.
Sure, it still would have needed oil changes no matter which engine it had, but by the time the belt needed to be done, the Yugos weren’t worth much, and an expense like that was easily skipped, until the belt ceased to be.
That’s why this Bring a Trailer Yugo is such a noteworthy thing. It does have the biggest engine, but it’s also practically new: it’s done 25 miles. Not 25,000 miles, 25. Whoever bought it new just stored it inside an enclosed trailer and barely used it other than to start it up once in a while. The seller says it was done to preserve it, which for a Yugo is a rare occurrence.
It’s not terribly hard to find a supercar that’s only done delivery miles. The Sultan of Brunei specialized in those, as he just played Gran Turismo with real cars and didn’t put serious miles on many of his vehicles. Lee Iacocca’s Ferrari still has 320 miles on the clock, and while it’s an interesting car, it’s easier to find low-mile Ferraris everywhere than low-mile Yugos. And this one is red, too, with Italian pedigree.
A 1990 model, it features big crash pads on the dashboard compared to the earlier cars. There’s probably a joke out there about knee protection in a Yugo, but I certainly hope those help.
Despite barely being used, and also because of it, the Yugo doesn’t work. The seller says it needs a fuel pump due to having sat unused for seven years – the original owners ran the car periodically up until then, after which it just slept in the trailer – and the engine turns over but doesn’t run. The current bid for the car is $5,555 at the time of writing, so even if it doubles, it would still be cheaper than what the car cost new. What a deal! Everybody needs a Yugo sometime.
In closing, I asked a Renault Twingo driving Croatian friend about what he thinks about Yugos. As he put it:
It’s a mode of transportation that mobilized Yugoslavia during a weird period of time. It was basic, it did the job, but the build quality wasn’t particularly great, and since it was the most recognizable car design (or product) of Yugoslavia, it has become a symbol of the period, and thus politicized.
It wasn’t awful for what it was, but in all fairness, it was never supposed to be much.
There you have it: for better or worse, it’s the Trabant of the Balkans.
All photos: Bring A Trailer
My first car was a well used base model 1983 Hyundai Stellar (in Canada). Basic right down to a manual choke, would run all day at 120km/h and 45mpg, topped out at 130. Utter piece of junk but it got me through a degree and across Canada. Definite fancy Yugo vibes.
Weren’t those RWD, too?
They were, according to Wikipedia: Hyundai Stellar – Wikipedia
Those are actually decent figures; I have lots of respect for any crapcan that keeps up with highway speeds without sacrificing much in terms of fuel economy.
The Yugo was a punch line from its US launch. There were Cadillac dealerships offering free Yugos with new Cadillacs. The Hyundai Excel of the time was only reliable by comparison to the Yugo.
It’s an interesting footnote to the US automotive landscape of the time, but was not a significant part of it. I can assume it was more significant around its homeland just after the fall of the USSR, but I never lived behind the iron curtain.
And as far as crap vehicles being significant, I don’t think they are. My wife owned a not that old Dodge Omni when we met and the rear shock towers were completely rotted away. It was a bad car. I have driven and spent time in several Chevettes – they were also bad cars. When an unlicensed teen steals a sibling’s keys and upon returning the car thinks “Wow, what a shitbox” we should just leave it at that.
We have all had bad hookups. Should we keep those dates on our calendar to be celebrated every year? No. You learn from the bad experience and move on.
GLH (and GLHS) were something to be remembered because they managed to sculpt something functionally beautiful from a pile of shit. There is no need to celebrate the shit, but enjoy what someone managed to make in spite of the shit they had to work with.
Escort GT? Yes. Crappy base Escort? No.
There are real consequences to the shittiness of these bad cars. Young people with little education or experience lost their jobs because these f’n things wouldn’t start in the morning. Pardon me if I’m not willing to celebrate their shitiness.
Trabant mentioned, so I’ll note that the Wikipedia page on that car had a bunch of Talk issues about how its “worst car” status in English-speaking sources was basically source from a Libertarian scare piece about how the free market is better for the environment because the two-stroke engines were heavy polluters, etc. Then all the “worst car” listicles just cannibalized each other until it was ingrained in the public consciousness of the internet that it’s the “worst car”. And of course, by the time people in the West saw it, the Berlin Wall was coming down and it was decades out of date, the weird plastic Soviet car, etc.
I saw a PBS transcript from a show called “Scientific American Frontiers”…”SPECIAL FROM GERMANY”, show 402. It was an episode about immortal Trabants (both in the sense they averaged a lifespan of 28 years and in the sense their duroplast bodies were incredibly hard to dispose of) in Germany…and a Mercedes “autopilot” car.
I agree with the premise/title of the article! Economy cars are cooler than supercars, and almost always “more important”. There’s certainly very serious engineering in supercars, but there’s no purpose, few constraints! Every feature and quality of an economical vehicle is a triumph, one that will matter to countless people.
I was in East Germany in 1990 – trust me, everyone there thought it was the worst car ever made too. No one was shedding a tear for it and certainly weren’t waxing nostalgic for the GDR. Let’s not allow our yearning for a warmer, fuzzier capitalism (which I share) make authoritarian socialism look like anything more than the shitshow it truly was.
Fair enough. That PBS show made it clear the hard-fought recycling of cars that sounded like lawnmowers and smelled like burning oil was a mercy to the entire country.
I was researching automotive composites at the time and more struck by the poor quality of English sources than the actual quality of the vehicle or the society that produced it.
I’m personally less familiar with authoritarian communism/socialism as an “industrial” context and more as “don’t wear glasses”. I remember reading somewhat recently that an attempt to pass internet surveillance laws in the EU had been stopped by the collective trauma of the GDR’s secret police.
So, I apologize, I did not mean to imply that system was acceptable.
(I worry that I probably have or will go over all this again, so I also apologize in the event of my terrible memory repeating this error. I have made a note.)
And sadly it’s the same East Germans who are voting for the AfD in record numbers…
Sorry for being huffy – I’m just a middle-aged moderate who feels pretty ignored by too much of the world right now. Populism from the right (Trump) and the left (Mamdani) is a symptom of a broken system / unhappy people. It’s just not the correct answer to those problems, no matter which side it comes from.
People in the eastern half of Germany are most certainly nostalgic for the DDR days (stability, security, free time – at the cost of a lot of freedoms and shopping options), and the Trabant has tons of fans. It was a perfectly competitive car when it came out in 1965 – but by 1989 it was probably one of the worst cars still available.
The high speed handling in that ad looks downright terrifying. It is pirouetteing on one wheel, fully heeled over!
Holding out for a low-miles Dacia 1300
Why not both?
When I listened to the commercial, I thought they said “it will LEAVE you anywhere”. Probably more accurate than the actual ad text.
Oh I miss that rubbery soft plastic of 70/80s Fiats (and their derivatives), made the steering wheel grip very firm, and the handles and gear lever nice to touch.
Off couse dirt stuck to it as well as your skin, so became quite grubby over time. This seems to have none of that yet.
Nice car!
–And the factory original Philips head screw, right in the centre of the instruments, where your eyes are quite often: Just perfection!
Looking at this car in new condition, I can see why people took a chance on it. It wasn’t embarrassing by any stretch. I’m speaking of looks only.
Fair point. Economics dictate economy cars don’t get much maintenance, especially cosmetic. So pretty soon all the examples look pretty beat up, and that impacts our perception of the car. Yugos shouldn’t be judged based on how owners did/didn’t care for them.
They should be judged by the atrocious build quality and legendary unreliability.
But yeah, they look about the same as any other cheap car from the period.
Yeah, I’ve always maintained the Yugo was actually a good looking car.
Was this one in Drowning Mona?
Yes, even the law drove one.
I think the police car was a Dodge Omni.
I forgot about that movie.
Town full of Yugos with vanity plates.
Something is up with the 25 mile Yugo. It looks like it’s been painted on one side, tons of orange peel and crooked pinstripes.
So what you’re saying is that it looks factory-fresh for a Yugo then?
Which is a great argument for preserving them: it’s really fascinating to see what consumers were willing to tolerate back then vs now.
Were they?
Even at a huge discount, these sat unsold.
No, I’m saying parts of it have been poorly repainted.
I understand that, but the factory finish on the Yugos was pretty poor to begin with, so it’s also possible it’s actually NOT been repainted at all, lol.
It is a car that was built in the “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” era. 1990 is when the government if Yugoslavia collapsed and a year before the civil war and genocide started.
Don’t forget the convertible! There was one parked next to me at the first Radwood Philly for about a minute before it was whisked away to the royalty section.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1990-yugo-cabrio-3/
The 110 mph speedometer seems, um, aspirational
A friend and co-worker bought a Yugo, brand new in the early 80’s and was pulled over by a Pennsylvania State Trooper who clocked him at 92 mph! He let my friend go with a warning saying that not a single Traffic Judge in the state would believe that a Yugo could even get close to 92.
Steep enough grade and just about anything can go 92mph
MIL had a 80s Colt that wouldn’t do that downhill on Rt 2 in Arlington MA. 4 MT
I know that road!! (Haven’t lived in Boston since 2009)
…have any handy cliffs nearby?
Possibly, but maybe it could. My 73 hp Subaru GLs could do 110 (the automatic in 3rd, its top gear, and the 5 speed manual in 4th, which was redline for both cars), though the speedometers only went to 85 (Joan Claybrook era). Aero was not great on either those or the Yugo, though I don’t know which was worse. Whether you’d want to do 110 is another question, though the Subarus were largely fine at that speed. The wagon had a little lift, but wasn’t overly light and I put an airdam on the sedan and that didn’t feel light at all.
Maybe they just used some regeared metric speedometers that topped out at 110 kph which would be about 68 mph.
In highschool friends were impressed that my speedometer went to 300.
What car did you have that had a speedo that went all the way to 300 km/h? That’s like 186 MPH!
My Maserati does 185…
There you have it: for better or worse, it’s the Trabant of the Balkans.
This. We in the west really, really don’t know how well we have it. There are a lot of people who regard heat in a car to be a huge option.
You guys can claim on ultra basic cars all you want, but the base 127/128 saved a lot of eastern European shoe leather.
And this was leagues ahead of a Trabant – I’m not sure if this model was sold in East Germany but the Zastava 101 was and it was aspirational, like a Western car compared to the Trabi.
Low mileage Yugos are actually a bit more common than you might imagine. During the time I’ve had mine and been part of the U.S. Facebook group, they pop up from time to time. That is, if a few thousand miles qualifies as “low” for you.
Even if low miles, the interior materials used for these were not high quality, and it’s not uncommon for them to feature age fade at different rates for different pieces. I will say this one looks nearly perfect inside. A rear package tray in this condition is nearly unobtainable. Also I’d love to have that brand-new GV-Plus specific exhaust.
Mine has 45k miles, it’s nice but not showroom like this one. However mine also needs a fuel pump and doesn’t currently run, so there’s that.
My dad had a friend who bought at least one new. Then starting collecting used ones. Even in the early 90s he was looking in the paper to collect them. Because he thought they would be a modern classic and parts would also be unobtainable. I guess he was sort of right. One day he looked in the paper got all excited that there was a bunch for sale. Then realized it was his number. His son and wife conspired to sell some of his cars.
In the early 90’s there was a guy on my paper route that bought a used Yugo right after they pulled out of the US market. I asked him about it and he said he got it really cheap, had 6 parts cars stored at his dad’s farm and he would be good for parts basically forever. About a year later the Yugo was gone and I again asked him about it and he said he had run out of parts. I forget what critical component he said had failed on his runner and had also failed on his parts cars.
I know this guy had a lot of problems with the distributors. I think they made some kind of frankenstein one that worked. He slowly was replacing all the plastic that broke in his driver with random hardware or scrap.
I think the parts supply really did dry up so a lot of them were laid up early for a small but crucial item. Chevettes make a contrast since there were many more of those sold but they exist now in roughly equal numbers because when the late models were cheap beaters the early ones were already common in junkyards, and if the pick-n-pull didn’t have what you needed even new parts were GM cheap and plentiful. So they stayed on the road until they all got used up.
They dried up quicker then people thought. They were set for body panels I think. Until they got crushed. That guy did make some frankenstein parts. But I don’t imagine most people were doing that. It didn’t help that the factory they were built in was a war zone basically as they were pulling out of the market.
Yes, people forget that Yugo left the US market because of the war. Zastava got their parts from all over Yugoslavia so when the war kicked off their parts supply ended. The UN also put a trade embargo on Yugoslavia so even if Zastava could have sourced parts they couldn’t ship them to the USA.
Nissian knew they could beat their good value with a super value. I’m still waiting on the extreme value.
“ a Yugoslavian manufacturer that originally made guns then licence-built Fiats.”
The question, in my mind, is which product resulted in more fatalities. My money is on the latter.
Idk, Zastava arms is still around. It’s might be pretty close. They also were likey the producer most of the small arms used in the Yugoslav Wars. That was about 140k dead. Even if 1/3 was from small arms thats 45k. Even if they built 4m total fiats. That’s roughly 1% ending in fatality that sounds low. But that’s a single long conflict. The guns were used in all sorts of wars even Vietnam. Different middle east wars. And WWII.
To my amazement, I do occasionally still see a Horizon/Omni and I can’t recall seeing a GLH version since maybe the ’90s. The supercar thing is right on and it has precedent, as human history is most often reconstructed from artifacts and stories of the wealthy and powerful. Not only is that the stuff that tends to preserve and be saved, most people who have any passing interest in history are largely interested in warfare or the lives of the upper classes and the fancy stuff rather than the average life of the average person, so if you want to get funding for research or a dig or to maintain a museum, you need to meet that broad appeal to have much of a chance. As someone with more than a passing interest in history, I also like seeing the regular stuff and their poorer survival rates make them more interesting. I’ll walk by 1000 early V8 Mustangs, but stop to check out a base I6 that were once far more plentiful than the V8s but are now rarely seen that haven’t been V8-swapped. Bottom end cars are also usually far more clever than high end cars due to their strained budgets and compromise demands. Things like the spare tire in the engine compartment of that Yugo are things you don’t see anymore and most people probably never would have thought that was a thing if it were before their time. The stories are probably more interesting, too, or they at least make you wonder WTF someone saved one of those. And while it may be a POS, I don’t think the Yugo is terrible to look at.
The spare tire in the engine compartment was actually part of the impact absorption plan. It’s said that was part of why it was rated so poorly in the crash testing, as the test procedure included removing the spare tire.
Interesting. I had heard that the spares helped with safety in regards to some other cars that had them, but never read anything specific or heard that the crash testing removed the spare, which resulted in worse scores.
In some cars the spare was also used to pressurize the windshield washer sprayer instead of a pump.
Beetle for example.
Great in concept, but what if you’re driving down a dusty dirt road and use your washer a lot and then get a flat. Now. Your spare is also flat.
True. Never had that happen with my 914 which also used the spare tire for the washer but I also carried a 12V air compressor just in case.
There is a 46k-Mile 1985 Dodge Omni GLH-T on BaT right now! Somehow there is a reserve set but I think you should go for it and represent!
I have no interest in owning such a thing.
One time I had a girlfriend who bought a Yugo and I ended up driving it a lot. It was terrible, but for the price, it was functional. I remember trying to add a radio to it and finding out that some of the preinstalled wiring was shorted out. I drove it to my local Saab dealer when I was buying my first Saab (’86 900S), and the staff at the dealer reminded me of it every time I visited,
My grandfather came to the US on a boat from the former Yugoslavia in 1927. In the 60s and 70s, he played the standing bass in a tamburitza band (think Balkan mariachi), and traveled the Midwest playing tradition Serb music and contemporary pop/rock covers, including lots of the Beatles.
He ALWAYS drove Buicks because he could fit his bass inside. He often joked about how shitty Yugos were.
I miss him.
I’d argue that in the United States at least, base model cars ARE extremely, museum-quality rare. Mustangs aren’t a fair example, as they’re sporty right out of the gate by virtue of being a Mustang, but most any other car is very hard to find in its most elemental version.
We all want bigger/more/etc. and once you come to terms with parting with a relative-to-you large sum of money, adding a little more at the margin is pretty easy psychologically. Put both together and it’s been a recipe for dealers successfully upselling us since forever.
To actually desire a base model car and then stick to your guns to get it is a feat of willpower most of us just don’t have. Dealers have like one of them somewhere in the fleet so they can advertise its price, and I suspect even that one takes a while to sell.
To desire a base model car and then NOT DRIVE IT, all the more so.
Very true. Base models are for marketing and getting people on the lot. Many sell at a loss so the manufacturer has no incentive to sell a lot of them and generally they are missing features that almost every buyer wants.
The Nissan Versa was an excellent example of this. In 2025 the base Versa S manual was $17,390 but the cheapest CVT was $19,190. This in a time where manual take rates are almost zero and Nissan knew nobody was going to buy it. When Nissan cut production of the manual early in 2025 in response to tariffs they said less than 2,000 were sold in 2024.
And that’s the problem: we’re constantly griping about how OEMs need to build cars like this. We forget that, aside from us, there’s no market for them. Sad as it is, you can’t blame Nissan for scrapping a variant that didn’t sell. Good on them for even trying.
Some people would rather believe conspiracies than the economic reality that manufacturers make what sells.
For only $20 more a month you can have….
This is the car we need right now
Dear Antti, you must’ve missed orientation where even the Autopian Royalty realize that rare doesn’t always translate to valuable. In fact I don’t care if you have Cab Calloway in a Tuxedo singing about Diamond Windows with Platinum Wheels and this Yugo actually had them this isn’t a museum piece
that 3-wheel slide :04 sec into the commercial is incredible. but not sure if that conveys safety.
Well safer than a Reliant Robin which couldn’t be imported to the US.
If that’s what the manufacturer is advertising, imagine what the videos critical of the car would show!!!
I’d love to see them bring this exact same car back. Same engine, same frame, same build quality.
Would those screaming for honest transportation that you can fix with a hammer step up and pay the $14,000 required?
I’d consider it if it came with a decent warranty. It’d be even better if they made an ultra-basic 2-door pickup model like the 1st-generation Chevy Tornado (or Montana)
That would be cool.
No. Because for the rose-colored glasses people seem to have for these things nowadays, it was a terrible car even for its era. Honest transportation that is constantly broken isn’t really transportation at all.
That’s about sums it up. All the gen zs want an 80s or early 90s car. They don’t realize cars didn’t get super reliable until odb ii. I think they just really want something without a screen because screen was their life since birth.
I’m Gen-X and I just really want something without a screen.
I’m late gen x and I just want very minimal screen I can change easy and cheap when it’s outdated and isn’t responsible for anything other then displaying navigation and playing music. And maybe one small screen that shows some info in the cluster.
This is why I think slate is on the right track. Appears to be a very vocal few mainly late gen x to maybe early gen z that are very pro screen. But I also know some 80 year olds that are Tesla obsessed.
I’m a Gen Z and have a big list of 80s and 90s vehicles I want, so I guess that I fit your statement. I think a lot of the appeal of older cars without screens(say pre 2010ish) is they are a good connection to the past. In today’s screen filled, constant information and notifications, cynical world, a car that’s disconnected from that feels refreshing. It feels nice to drive a car from an era before everything went digital and screen heavy; a car from 1995 feels more tactile and real than a car from 2025 (I hope that makes sense). And yes, I do know that older cars weren’t as reliable as today, I’ve heard the stories of hard starting cars, getting a carburetor to work right for different weather, and why 6-digit odometers weren’t a thing until the 80s/early 90s
The kids in their early 20s 15 years ago also had an interest in the 80s cars. Especially the diesels. So it’s not that different. They were big in to vinyl then shortly cassettes. The thing not too long ago seemed to be cassettes again with vinyl sticking around. I think golden era of vehicles is 1996 to 2008ish. You get reliability, decent diagnostics, but not too much tech. Just the right amount. Nothing is in your face. If you have ever dealt with odb I you will realize you don’t want to anymore. That’s why 1996. Most 80s cars don’t drive too good and aren’t very comfortable. There are some exceptions like bmw, merc. Mid 90s had nice seats comfortable interiors with decent suspension. You feel the road but you aren’t fighting a pos. Some of the late 80s early 90s Japanese stuff is decent but there are also people putting stand alone ecu in them because the factory ones might not work finding a replacement would be in similar condition. I’ve seen late 80s early 90s American tbi where people have cut wires and it just assumes variables then they just work.
Trucks starting feeling like driving a car around 2011. That in many ways was interesting but also felt very wrong. I think that might be part of why so many idiots are modifying their trucks to be worse. Just buy the old truck is better.
There were plenty of reliable cars from the era that were also simple to fix, but they’re at restoration age now as age catches up with everything. Of course, reliable then meant more required maintenance, but it was much simpler to do and could largely be scheduled. OK, spark plugs made it 30k instead of 100k, but they didn’t need to be $30 iridium plugs and getting to them was a lot simpler, even on something like a Subaru, which were SOHC at the time and had the plugs right on top. Durability with many cars (largely Japanese) was way up over almost anything made now as the operational safety margins were a lot higher due to lower stresses and overbuilt internal components. They didn’t have the power and efficiency, but they also weren’t overweight monstrosities with shitty space efficiency that needed all the tech advances to have enough power to make up for how much they suck to drive and so that they could get mileage better than a big block muscle car. Headlights, though, were garbage.
Carbs on normal cars usually weren’t that bad by the ’80s, either. Temps around -50, as long as it had a strong battery, most cars would start. I remember my ’84 Subaru starting without even hearing the starter engage—2 pumps of the throttle, turn key while depressing a third time, and it was just running (though that was in more normal temps). That said, I would definitely go for MPFI. Software back then, too, was written by competent people, it was written to be stable and correct out of the box, and the computers that ran it were built more as mission critical devices. Today is the complete opposite.
Oh it was definitely bad alright. It was so bad that in 1988 Yugo hired Penthouse pet of the year, Susan Napoli, to autograph headshots and get people over to the display.
Agreed. However, it would be a total death trap against today’s massive SUVs.
They were a death trap against a Caprice.
I love the philosophy behind its design.
If I had the cash to start a car company, I’d make a modern EV version. It would be mostly analogue, minimal features, minimal things to fail, be designed for low weight(< 2,500 lbs) and low drag(< 0.35 m^2 CdA value), and use a Na battery no larger than 30 kWh, all to keep cost down. I think a price point between $15k-20k new made with 1st world labor is possible, less with Chinese labor. Everything would be repairable with basic tools, and files for all parts would be available to be 3D-printed or CNC milled if needed. Depending on the battery layout chosen, it could even have a “dumb” battery without a BMS, and retain reliability. A comprehensive user manual would be published with procedures regarding every component and system in the car to facilitate DIY repairs, and the goal would be for it to last over 500,000 miles without having to do anything at all to fix it.
We have the technology to do this. It may not be the car everyone wants, but it is definitely the car many peoploe need. The entire design philosophy? Minimal operating cost over the life of the vehicle, and that life WILL be maximized.
It would have to be a diy kit. I think about this like I think about audio components. My amp doesn’t have dc speaker protection, doesn’t detect impedance, doesn’t have an autobiasing circuit and must be checked regularly… and more stuff that would never fly in a consumer product. By relying on myself to (mostly) not be an idiot I can keep excess complexity and components out of the device and it’s much easier to troubleshoot and maintain. Sounds better too.
People will not pay attention to the small things that help keep stuff simple and repairable. All kinds of protection from neglect or abuse have to be built in because only the most enthusiastic of enthusiasts will pay attention. But I do agree that the true enthusiast would indeed be enthusiastic about such a car.
The problem is, what’s the business model once the 500 ppl willing to accept that proposition all have one? (I ask as one of those 500).
The only one I can imagine is something like what nelson pass does. You can get the full featured, finished product version for big $$$. Or you can build a freely published first watt design for not much. Circuit boards are almost always available and often nelson will sell kits of components that were leftovers from buying huge quantities to get perfect matches for the pass labs gear. The documentation is stellar, the designs among the best, but you’re mostly on your own.
In another universe where musk is the engineer he imagines himself to be tesla could have done this. Setup a side channel of no warrantee, no support skateboards to components with a simpler or past gen open controller. Something to use spare parts/capacity and have a real exchange of ideas with the enthusiast community. Then small shops, like maybe toecutter coachworks, could sell the finishing plans and/or kits. It would never make a ton of money, but I don’t think it would lose it either.
It reminds me a little of the end of the “fun internet” era, where small outfits were modifying 2nd gen Priuses to be PHEVs and other fun projects. Those cars got better efficiency than any commercial product, even today. Probably because it didn’t need all the things for successful mainstream sales and support.
Can I get some of what you’re having? If you were rich it is clear it wouldn’t be for long
If it could be massed produced to get the costs down, there’d probably be enough of a global market in order to recoup the R&D and production costs. Keep in mind that I’d build these things to the mechanical reliability standards of an African bush taxi. Without the need for expensive gasoline or diesel to fuel it, and the ability to charge it with a home/office solar panel bank for free, there’d be a compelling use case in the taxi and courier markets. It would be about as cheap per mile to operate as a Tuk Tuk, with all of the benefits that come with a car.
So which markets is this for? The problem is this car will get a reputation for being a POS among the general public who will compare it to the minimal maintenance cars they’ve known their whole lives. It’s a special person who is willing to tolerate that association. It’s a large percentage of us on the site, but we’re not normal.
-said by someone who drove a base first gen Yaris and was constantly mocked by friends and once had a stranger roll down their window at a stoplight to insult me. While I didn’t care, most ppl would…
Sounds like 3 or 4 of the current ev startups combined. BMS is more friend then foe as long as the thing is being used and not sitting forever. LFP NA hybrid seems like the way now until lithium air becomes a thing.
Solar boats are sort of going the way you are thinking. They are living and traveling in vessels they build with open sourced designs for about $30k. No fuel costs.
A BMS that is less “smart” is the sweet spot. Especially with a low-voltage setup that uses high-AH cells as a single series string. I’d go this route with the sodium-ion chemistry.
With certain LFP brands(CALB CA series), you can go without a BMS altogether as a single series string provided the cells have been initially bottom-balanced. All that you have to do is take the pack apart and test each cell if/when it gets unbalanced. Fixing it is simple. However, when one cell fails, you would be stranded since it is a single series string. But you take out the bad cell, hook everything back up, and keep going, but don’t recharge until you’ve drained them all and found a replacement cell, again bottom balancing them, or IF you do recharge, monitor that voltage and unplug before it gets to the constant voltage phase of the charge cycle.
With modern motor technology, you can also do a lot with 72V, and having high current capability to make the desired power is relatively inexpensive at the component level compared to components intended for high voltage use. At 72V, cheap golf cart controllers are bolt in solutions to keep you going down the road if the OEM controller fails. Even certain ebike controllers could work: the FarDriver ND721000 is like $400, and would deliver about 40 peak mechanical horsepower at the wheels in a PMDC motor, and the car could easily be geared to top out at 100+ mph and use it. With a sufficiently slippery body, a sedan would do 100 mph on like 25 horsepower. At 2500 lbs, 0-60 mph could be under 13 seconds as a single speed when peak power is demanded(largely thanks to the torque 1000A phase current would allow). So imagine you fry your controller, and you could put a drop-in replacement yourself for under $500, and it remains perfectly adequate for accelerating up to highway speeds and cruising highway speeds. An OEM controller that does 72V/2000A wouldn’t be much more expensive in mass production, and peak mechanical horsepower at the wheels could climb to well over 150 to get that 0-60 mph time to something more desirable. As long as the battery can put out more power than the controller can use, it will last a very long time.
This would all be in the spirit of the Yugo’s “fix it with a rock and a piece of driftwood at the side of the road” design ethos. For an EV, this is going to be as close as you will get to that, without using a contactor controller setup with a series-wound DC motor(which is a far less electrically and mechanically efficient solution).
I’ve experimented with the Chinese blue prismatic lfp cells that are similar to the calb cells. They do ok with just a charge controller in series. I would still want some kind of monitoring if they were in a sealed pack. I ended up using a couple of micro controllers to monitor cell voltage. They balance ok when charging and most power drains. High power drains could get them more unbalanced then I liked. I threw a couple cheap bms on them for peace of mind.
Chinese old man joy vehicles are built similar to that just with no aero, lower power motors. Maybe 10 to 20 hp.
The cheap solar boats favor 48v for simplicity. They are typically running 8 to 20 hp. Plus various loads for systems. With various hull designs to reduce drag. PWM with AC motors sometimes used.
Are you a fan of the new Aptera 3-wheeler? Doesn’t tick all your boxes, but definitely some of them.
The launch design deal might help them get costs down. It sound like the first 40 possibly more will be built in China. If they import it as a motorcycle could help pricing a lot. Especially if they aren’t looking for a cheaper US market to do actual production in.
Wasn’t there a story here about a Yugo revival as an EV?
There was, and it was not the only attempt.