Zastava Yugo

Cars have been used as punch lines for years. Pontiac Aztek, Ford Pinto, Edsel, more recently Toyota--as their profiles rose in the national headlines, the nation's laugh leaders have sought to shoot them down. And then there was the Yugo--an icon of cheapness, rather than economy.

The Yugo 45 was based on the Fiat 127 mini-car, which launched in Italy in 1971, was voted European Car of the Year in 1972, sold its 1 millionth unit in 1974 and stopped production in 1982. Launched in 1980, the Yugo 45 quickly became a national favorite. ''The Yugo was affordable, cheap to keep running, easy to repair, and cheaper than any other full-size vehicle you could buy in Yugoslavia at the time,'' a Serbian correspondent who lived through the time of Yugo tells us. ''We had a VW Golf plant and a Renault factory at the time as well, but those cars were more expensive.'' Skodas were often out of reach, but the Yugo was still a step up from a two-stroke Trabant.

They touched down on American soil in 1987 after a couple of false starts earlier in the 1980s; Malcolm Bricklin, he of the Subaru 360 and later the eponymous Canadian-built sports car, was the importer. The aggressive ad campaign was all about price--$3,990 to start, absurdly cheap even in 1987--and little else; the Yugo's model designation, GV, meant ''great value,'' for heaven's sake. For that money, you got an 1,100cc four with a four-speed manual transmission. A 1,300cc four was an upgrade, as was a five-speed stick or a three-speed automatic in later models.

''The Yugo is thought of like a pet--you have a dog, you have a Yugo,'' our Croatian correspondent explains. ''They needed care.'' The Americans who bought these were looking at a simple, cheap turnkey car; car care wasn't in their vocabulary. Many didn't change the oil as they should have, and others refused to heed the 40,000-mile changing schedule for the timing belt on this interference engine. Plenty of valves and pistons interfered as a result. But plenty of other random mechanical maladies plagued the Yugo, and it quickly developed a reputation for requiring overwhelming and pricey repairs, many of which occurred just after the meager warranty expired.

The complicated carburetor-plus-emissions-control system of the 1980s was still cheaper than adapting some flavor of EFI (which finally became standard in the U.S. in 1990), and this came back to bite Yugo as the U.S. government demanded an emissions-related recall. It was enough to drive the already-flagging company from our shores for good. Plus, anyone weaned on Honda Civics, Ford Fiestas and the like would have been shocked at the dismal materials and quality control on display, no matter the price. A convertible model from 1990-on, noted with some bemusement by the motoring press of the time, sold few copies and was widely seen as too little, too late.

And here's a shocker: According to our Croatian correspondent, ''Quality-wise, the U.S. cars were actually better than what we had available in the home market.'' We weren't quite sure what to say to that, so he filled in the gap for us. ''Local cars rusted after four or five years, but the export models were made of zinc-dipped materials. Once American sales stopped, some of the U.S. leftovers were sold here; they were considered upscale compared to most of the locally sold ones.'' Stories of the time told of Malcolm Bricklin hand-picking factory workers to build the American-bound cars to maintain a quality image.

The factory was bombed by NATO during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, which stopped the cars being built--for a time. (Zastava, literal translation ''red flag,'' also made arms at this time--some feel that NATO bombed the wrong plant, while some felt that taking out a manufacturing base was a ploy to make the region more dependent on the West.) The plant got up and running again in 2000, and Zastava continued to build Yugos. The new car was given a slick new nose that didn't fit the carryover sheetmetal and renamed Koral. Production ceased in 2008, when Zastava sold out to Fiat. At this point, the Yugo finally died, after nearly 800,000 units built--a whopping 141,000 of these built for American consumption.

Who's laughing now?