The suspension and safety features were absolute crap. The perfect target audience for them was young singles buying their first car with their own limited money. These were also the least experienced drivers and least able to handle unexpected variances in driving conditions.
I was in the Navy when they were popular. I spent my money on an 8 year old Honda Prelude with 96,000 mles showing on the odometer. A friend bought a brand new Yugo and spent a bit LESS than I did on the 1979 Honda (in 1987). She died in (or rather half out of) that car less than a year after she bought it when a large truck passed her on the highway and literally BLEW the Yugo off the road. According to the accident report she was driving 55 MPH and the truck was going about 75 MPH. Skid marks showed the Yugo literally slid sideways at nearly a right angle to her direction of travel. It slid over almost 12 inches before flipping and rolling down a slight embankment at he roadside. During the roll the seatbelt loosened enough that her upper body came out the driver side window and her neck was broken. The car was almost pancake flat after the roll so she most likely would have not survived anyway. Our Volkswagen Beetles, on the other hand, may nudge around a bit in a high wind but generally keep their grip. And if one rolls one over it's much safer than any other car I know --- and quite a fascinating ride. I know firsthand from putting regular belted tires on the non-beaded wheels of one of my '64's many years ago. Flip, skid, flip. Replace the popped off tire. Restart engine. Drive away with a few new "wrinkles" in the body. Gerald On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:11:28 -0800 (PST) marc vellat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I guess that depends upon how liberal your definition > of "car" is. Basically it's the mechanicals of a Fiat > 128 Sedan in an even cheesier body, assembled in > Yugoslavia by workers who evidently didn't take much > pride in their product. The genuine Fiat 128 wasn't > really a bad car in its day - the Sport Coupe and > Tri-Porte models had a better suspension by far, the > Sedans got a front suspension that makes a > SuperBeetle's look robust (good enough for a shitbox > but no performance-handling potential). The > Communist-built version had some major quality-control > issues, though. The 1116cc engine uses pressed-in > wristpins (larger variants of the same engine like the > 1290 had full-floating pins like your VW) and that was > one of the more serious problems with the Yugo motors > - the pins weren't properly fitted and the engines > tended to self-destruct. They were also "interference" > engines, meaning that if the camshaft drive belt > breaks you can count on at least 5 bent valves even if > it was only idling in the driveway, and far worse > damage at high speed. Running one past 40-50,000mi > without replacing the belt was asking for trouble, but > the cheapskates who bought these cars seldom did > proper maintenance, so many of them died that way. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_128 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo > > --- asad ishaque <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > ....Is Yugo a car??? Never made it to this part of > > the world.... > > > > Asad _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
