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The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History
by Jason Vuic
Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo was a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. By 2000, NPR's Car Talk declared it "the worst car of the millennium." And for most Americans that’s where the story begins and ends. Hardly. The short, unhappy life of the car, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is rollicking and astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and improvident bankers, shake vigorously, and you’ve got The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History.
Brilliantly re-creating the amazing confluence of events that produced the Yugo, Yugoslav expert Jason Vuic uproariously tells the story of the car that became an international joke: The American CEO who happens upon a Yugo right when his company needs to find a new import or go under. A State Department eager to aid Yugoslavia's nonaligned communist government. Zastava Automobiles, which overhauls its factory to produce an American-ready Yugo in six months. And a hole left by Detroit in the cheap subcompact market that creates a race to the bottom that leaves the Yugo .... at the bottom.
"Overall, this business history, a detailed mix of U.S. and Eastern European accounts, is well researched, quite readable, and leavened with bits of humor. The plentiful minutiae will make it best for committed business students and serious car buffs." - Library Journal
"Overly detailed, but a hoot for car enthusiasts and a case study for business schools." - Kirkus Reviews
"Jason Vuic provides a thoroughly researched and illuminating account of what turned into a spectacular disaster." - The Economist
"As historian Jason Vuic chronicles in his captivating, unexpected new book, for a fleeting moment amid the clichéd go-go excesses of the 1980s, the $3,995 Yugo- loosely based on a Fiat and produced by a one-time arms manufacturer called Zastava- captured the wallets, if not exactly the hearts, of Americans and introduced some oddball charm and entrepreneurial zest into the staid confines of the U.S. auto market. Vuic's history is a fascinating read, and an instructive one for the present moment." - Tom Vanderbilt, Slate
"Creating the Yugo required dozens of corporations, thousands of Yugoslavians, international diplomacy, a Cold War, marketing genius, consumer idiocy, and major screw-ups from not just one political ideology but all of them. Any knucklehead with a lawnmower engine and a monkey wrench can build a bad car. It took Communism, Socialism and Capitalism to build a Yugo. And Jason Vuic has the story." - PJ O'Rourke
"A crosscultural tale of the little car that couldn't. Thoroughly researched, tellingly told- and hilarious!" - Phil Patton, author of Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Famous Automobile
"Testimony to the dishonesty, gullibility, greed, cynicism, stupidity and incompetence of virtually everyone involved in attempting to palm off a ramshackle Balkan-made leftover on the hapless American car buyer who turned out not to be so hapless after all. The saga of the Yugo proves that failure may not be as instructive as success, but its lots more entertaining." - Bruce McCall, author of Marveltown
"Was the Yugo the worst car in history? No, although it wasn't far behind such automotive insults as the Trabant. Is this the most enjoyable car book of the year? Yes! Few car books can match Jason Vuic's supporting cast of earnest automotive executives, politicians and out-and-out hucksters. Chapter after chapter is filled with such outrageous actions in the name of selling cars that you have to keep repeating this mantra: ‘It's not libel if it's true.' " - James B. Treece, Industry Editor, Automotive News
This information about The Yugo was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jason Vuic is an assistant professor of modern European history at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia. He lives in Staunton, Virginia, with his wife, Kara.
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