Book Review: <i>The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History</i>-We love Cars

Book Review: <i>The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History</i>: "

Filed under: Budget, Europe, Hatchback, Humor

In 1985, just nine months before the Yugo came to America, Yugo America CEO Malcolm Bricklin and second in command Tony Ciminera toured the Zastava plant in Kragujevac, Yugoslavia. This is where the Yugo 45, the crazy-cheap car Americans would come to know, love and then loathe, would be built and rebadged as the Yugo GV (Bricklin intended GV to stand for 'great value,' but he never bothered paying the ad firm to spread the word). Ciminera was horrified at what he saw.

Workers would take brand new body panels they'd just finished stamping and toss them onto a pile. Meaning that the new cars would roll off the assembly line dented. Bricklin, of course, failed to see the problem and told Ciminera just to fax the Zastava workers a list of changes needed when the two of them returned to the U.S. The problem with that plan was that the Zastava factory didn't have a fax machine. Once they got one, the fax that Ciminera sent them was over four meters long. And Bricklin was sticking to his fanciful nine-month deadline.

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