17. Yugo GV
Back in the late ’80s, the ex-Yugoslav car manufacturer Crvena Zastava made a brave attempt to enter the American market. They did it with a compact model they called the Yugo. The Yugo was a three-door hatchback they built on a Fiat 127 base, but with some improvements in the design and technology. Under the hood was a 1.1-liter four-cylinder engine with electronic fuel injection. However, for the U.S. market, car buyers got updated equipment, a radio, and even air conditioning as an option. From today’s viewpoint, the Yugo was a basic, even primitive car. But for the middle of the ’80s, it was a decent proposition as well as a solution to the economy car dilemma.
Fiat mechanics were relatively common in the USA since Fiat had just left the American market in the early ’80s. So, why did the Yugo received such bad reviews from Consumer Reports back in the day? The reason was simple: driving dynamics and quality. Both were horrible, even by the standards of the day. The engine only produced 65 HP that went to the front wheels over a badly-assembled five-speed manual gearbox. The performance was painfully slow, but that is not the worst thing. The fit and finish were bad, and to make things worse, Yugo importer Malcolm Bricklin didn’t import enough spare parts. That meant that if your Yugo broke down, and eventually they all did, the spare parts had to travel for months from Yugoslavia to America.