9. Yugo GV
Back in the late 1980s, the ex-Yugoslav car manufacturer, Crvena Zastava, made a brave attempt to enter the American market with the compact model they called the Yugo. The Yugo was a nice-looking three-door hatchback they built on a Fiat 127 base with improvements in design and technology. Under the hood was a 1.1-liter four-cylinder engine with electronic fuel injection. But for the U.S. market, the buyers got updated equipment, radio, and even air conditioning as an option. From today’s standpoint, the Yugo was a basic and even primitive car. However, for the middle of the ’80s, it was a decent proposition as well a solution to the economy car dilemma. The Fiat mechanics were relatively common in the U.S. since Fiat had just left the American market in the early ’80s. So why did the Yugo receive such bad reviews from Consumer Reports back in the day? The reasons were simple: driving dynamics and quality.
Both were horrible, even by the standards of the day. The engine sent 65 HP to the front wheels over a badly-assembled five-speed manual gearbox. The performance was painfully slow, but that was 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. So, if your Yugo broke down, the spare parts had to travel for months from Yugoslavia to America. Despite all that, the Yugo was a sales success because they sold more than 40,000. The price of $4,000 was one of the reasons. The Yugo was the most affordable automobile on sale in America when they introduced it.