The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History

The Yugo arrived in America in 1985 and quickly became a cultural joke. Within six months of its introduction, it was the subject of ridicule; within a year, late-night comedy shows regularly featured it. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk named it "the worst car of the millennium." This book examines the brief history of the car itself, the people who manufactured it, those who brought it to market, and the era that initially accepted then rejected it. Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic traces how a combination of factors produced the Yugo: an American CEO seeking a new import to save his struggling company, a U.S. State Department willing to support Yugoslavia's nonaligned communist government, Zastava Automobiles' rapid factory retooling to meet American standards, and a gap in Detroit's cheap subcompact market. Vuic details how these elements converged to create what became an international symbol of automotive failure.