Wheel barrow. Since Yugo America was basically just a collection of cheap office furniture and unanswered phones, creditors received essentially nothing for their interests in the company. How do explanations of Zastavas lack of quality control compare to, say, one which could be made to illustrate the reasons of Audis numerous failures? As played in flashbacks by Midler, Mona is a ferocious harridan who may have hacked off her own son's hand just because he was trying to snatch her beer. His last notable brush with the automotive world (in 2004) involved a vague alliance with (uh-oh) Chinese auto maker Chery. I had been driving a Datsun 200 SX and the 5 speed was like silk. })(); Pictures are property of movie companies owner of the respective movies. var readyGEO; When the coroner first jumps into the water to check Mona's dead body, he is neck-deep in water. couple of months ago when I was in Athens. I had two of them. )that I spotted a That means that all Yugos in this movie are from 1986. She was given a Yugo that wouldnt runthe fix was nine dollars. I ask because I wanted to make a comment in the article about the C3 Audi 100/Audi 5000 about how much of a disaster my fathers ownership experience turned out to be, but I figured itd make an interesting point of comparison. You are my inhalation, I own few blogs and infrequently run out from brand :). I saw it on the Helena streets quite a lot, but it was the only one in the city. Almost everyone in town is a suspect. Bette Midler chops off son's hand. Bricklin often says that the first model year or so of production the cars were well assembled and then once Zastava saw the money they let things slip. And a failed clutchI have driven manual transmission cars my whole life. Down shifting was scary, sometimes you just had to bypass second, sometimes it refused to even go into gear or it would get stuck in gear. To be sure, the car was primitive, even by 1980s standards. (rolls eyes). Also in Drowning Mona's favor, at the heart of the movie, is a genuinely positive character, Verplanck Police Chief Wyatt Rash (Danny DeVito).He's possibly the only principled citizen in town. Witness the fact that everyone's car of choice is a Yugo; each Verplanck citizen drives one ever since the company conducted a cheap sales test of the vehicle there some 10 years ago. In addition, many cars have changed hands by that timeand who knows what the previous owner may have had done? Unscrew the shift knob. Or maybe not. But I was unprepared for the panoply of problems that came abouteverything from a latent short or current leak, that would kill the car and prevent starting without warning (to restart, the only way was to pull the battery terminal to let whatever relay was behind it, reset) to binding heater-control cables. The Yugo? Like all good European cars used to do, it came with its own tool kit and (owner) service manual. At the very least, Bricklin didnt end up in a hotel room trying to arrange drug deals. Since mine had been in a rental fleet, it was actually pretty well taken care of, it had an OK aftermarket radio and A/C. In fact, as it became evident that the Yugo was heading toward failure, Bricklin tried to modify and import the Proton from Malaysia to take advantage of low wage rates and favorable exchange valuations that would have made that car an asian version of the Yugo. All in all, Monas jaunt into the river could have been described as a pretty fortuitous accident for everyones lives she touched, or in Monas case, bludgeoned. Even on foot. \"Drowning Mona\" is bad . Visit Dealer Website. One of a kind, Im sure, There is an article from 2012, quoting the Time magazine (Italy) 1989 Chrysler TC 1983 Dodge Omni 1991 Dodge Ram 1980 Ford F - 350 Ford Ranger 1993 Ford Ranger GMC C / K - Series 1992 Honda Civic The engine in mine was the old fiat 903 engine that dated back to the Fiat 600 of the 50s. My problem was that I didn't care who killed Mona Dearly, or why, and didn't want to know anyone in town except for Chief Rash and his daughter. The car she is driving is a Yugo, and the pic's locale is Verplanck, New York (north of New York City), that actually was a test market for the ill-fated economy car in the late 1970's. . The Yugo was based on a mash up of models 127 and 128 built under license by a wildly unproductive workforce in an obsolete factory with assembly quality that made real mid 70's Fiats look hand built. Danny DeVito and Bette Midler appeared in Ruthless People (1986). . The interior squeaked everywhere that it didnt rattle. Japanese rust problems are designed in the cars are only meant to last 6-7 years and were poorly protected in the factory. With the pullout of Fiat, Renault and the British makes just a few years before, there was a general sense that room existed in the market for any european nameplate that could build a reasonably priced car that returned good fuel economy and high build quality. 5.0 out of 5 stars Drowning Mona music CD. What he saw was an operation that turned out a car designed (and abandoned) by Fiat years before. It was owned by a gentleman named Dave Benton who claimed to be the former engineering manager for Yugo North America. I guess Ive been mispronouncing subaru all these years. The class all came out to look at it in the parking lot, Yugo was an exercise in marketing magic, and an exercise in embarrassment. 2. People's spotty memories and clumsy lies complicate the investigation, and the . Agree with this last. He soon discovers that her death was no accident. The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. It couldnt be trusted just sitting in the parking lot. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Bricklin used franchise fees to run the company (a major accounting no-no) while the car was being modified for safety and emissions certification in the U.S. and dealerships were sold, territories assigned. After Mona Dearly (Bette Milder) dies in the movie's opening moments when her Yugo plows through a guardrail and into the Hudson River far below, Wyatt begins investigating her death. (Cracked distributor cap, IIRC.) The first Mazda was also a kei-car, the R-360. Ah, the quintessential crap car. The Yugo was a far superior car compared against a Chevette, or first generation Hyundai. She is a bit of a contrarian anyhow, and has a mechanic-relative. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. During WWII, they built a few Jeeps. As to Bricklin, Ive always liked of liked the SV-1 and wish Id picked one up when they were really cheap, with the AMC 360 they could be made to really move! Yugoslavia was in the state of bankruptcy at that time, import of all goods and raw materials was practically halted. They obviously do not run. The other Eastern European lemon sold in Australia at the same time as the Niki was the Lada Samara. At least in the old days I could see why the industry that does not want a cheap car to succeed, but whats the point now? Kathleen Wilhoite (Lucinda) and Melissa McCarthy (Shirley) appeared on Gilmore Girls (2000). Nuff said? How quickly they developed larger cars was a product of how well capitalized each company was and how much their senior management (some of which was deeply conservative, even by Detroit standards) was willing to make the investment in export-specific products. if (window['UnicI'].geo === 'CA') { I would love to find one of those. Saying that, it doesnt mean that people were particularly promiscuitive or anything like that. I actually checked out a Yugo about the same time I was looking at Sundances, Colts and similar vehicles and decided: No, I didnt have the time for the do-it-yourself maintenance it mightve required my current cars took care of that at the time! I knew about their reputation, but I really needed a set of wheels that wasnt going to set me back a couple of thousand dollars. Of course a $800 car isnt worth shyte to the insurance company, so they gave me a token $1000 for my time and trouble (another story). What kind of car is in the movie Drowning Mona? My BIL and I popped out the axles, but that was more of a preventative move, rather than a necessity. And if it WAS done, thats $500 WASTED. Or maybe Bobby (Casey Affleck), Jeff's landscaping partner, killed her to save the embarrassment of having her create a scene at his wedding to Ellen (Neve Campbell), Chief Rash's daughter. The Florida was reviewed very positively in the UK against western cars, and sadly only failed here because of the rise of Fascism in Yugoslavia, and its aftermath. Drowning Mona is basically a comic murder-mystery. How did Danny DeVito die in Drowning Mona? They dumped em, too, as soon as they could afford something, anything, better. Detroit, also, but not so much. (A former test site for the Yugo car company, we're told. Yes you read that right. The story involves a local police chief from New York state who is charged with . It WAS a simple-to-work-on car; and in that regard I appreciated it. Before we wrap, lets sort them out. Our narrative today is of a modern P.T. I would suggest you read Jason Vuics book on the Yugowhat he described the Yugo America advance men as finding, had little to do with shortages of raw materials. There was a cheap-o daily rental car company that had a fleet of them, and they were in the process of changing out the Yugos for Hyundai Precis. I think youre a bit dismissive of Zastava. Youre welcome here anytime ! W. Edwards Deming was key in Japans metamorphosis from a backwards exporter of trinkets and junk to a source for amazingly-high-quality automobiles and electronics. It had a three way folding back seat back that could make multiple level shelves out of itself, you could haul a lot of stuff in that car. I spotted the ones in the picture while out on a bike ride a few years ago. She had a habit of parking illegally, and, faced with a ticket and impound bill that exceeded her estimate of the value of the car, donated it to the towing company. Rated PG-13 Todays story, though, has nothing to do with anybody like that. But the reason it hit the Japanese cars harderwas that while many American cars were still frame-on-platform, and had some beef in the underbellyand even the unibody models were over-engineered for rigiditythe Japanese models had pared weight and beef to a minimum. If possible, the FSO 125p was even worse. They were an object lesson in the old adage that you get what you pay for. It's got an absolute star studded cast including Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Casey Affleck, William Fitchner, Neve Campbell, Jaime Lee Curtis, with a cameo, and even . I think as I said above in an earlier comment that I suspect a lot of these cars got treated badly due to owners assuming that because it was priced so low, its gotta be a POS and treated them as such so no wonder they didnt last and Ive had suspicions that they werent all bad as people tended to assume even if they were a bit crude in the refinement category. The sexy Marsha Brady girl with the bellbottoms in the Subaru commercials is unforgettable. The biggest thing Ive heard was the timing belts were supposedly good for 30K miles and many owners were caught off guard, mostly due to not reading and/or heeding the maintenance intervals and boom, they croaked as they were not non interference motors like most OHC motors arent. These cars came with an optional AM/FM cassette deck that was very basic, only 5W total if I recall right, or was that 5W per channel? Knobs came off in your hand, the sliding radio marker on a string would get stuck and not move off of from where it landed. Not having that one bit Clarkson divised a solution, buying a third-hand Yugo and for the rest of the episode refering to it as a Bently. At my brothers wedding this weekend, what did I see right across the street from the Germanic-American Institute on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota? If youre familiar with the descent of that once-vaunted company into its current sorry state, appears as if they had too many of this type in management. Actually, Yugos timing belt is ~10$, and pretty easy to change. There are, to be fair, other theories about how Jeff (Marcus Thomas) lost his hand, although in every scenario he was reaching for a beer. He sat in the front seat once and never again! We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. Amidst mutual finger pointing, the deal collapsed in July 2008 as the erstwhile partners took turns suing one another in federal court. Why did Yugos have standard rear defrost? There was something wrong with every single facet of this car. Personally I would have gone for the Skoda. Thanks for your detailed experience. At inopportune times. I did appreciate the way Yugo could make one part do what a western car needed three for. No argument with the political details of your well made point. But is an Audi as bad as a Yugo? He drove them all fast and hard which no doubt shortened their operational life. It just flat refused. I probably still have it somewhere. New York (where "years ago," according to an opening caption, "the Yugo Car Company chose to test market its new breed of vehicle.") Directed by Nick Gomez (Laws of Gravity), . Yes they were cheap, but it was a proper car, built properly. Not sure they sold very many. Drowning Mona is one of my favorite comedies, and its currently available on YouTube for free. While poor Yugo certainly was not the best car made, but it was hardly the worst either. I guess the major issue in my favor was the relatively inexpensive parts when I did need them, and the fact that Georgia is semi-arid, so no rust issues. 1. The real reason why Crvena Zastava went into this adventure was that they were desperate to get some foreign currency to keep assembly lines alive. Thank you for the history, it complements the story of the car well. Id love to hear what they thought a year later. The civil war in the former Yugoslavia was the finishing blow, but wasnt the reason it wasnt brought over. They initially started out as an arms manufacturer. The Yugo was based on a mash up of models 127 and 128 built under license by a wildly unproductive workforce in an obsolete factory with assembly quality that made real mid 70s Fiats look hand built. A lot of Wehrmacht occupation troops went home in tiny little pieces because Zastava knew what they were doing. Enterior wall panels were thin cardboard with painted on carpet flecks. Its essentially a Fiat, and the same thing applied to them. Worse, it was not just fenders and rocker panels that looked bad but did not affect the way the car drove. I was amazed when I rode in one, expecting a bouncy distaster but encountering a surprisingly supple feel of the suspension. Because he SAYS he has a new belt on there, doesnt mean its so. But recycled steel, for whatever reason, is overly prone to corrosion. This has been true of: Renault in its government-ownership days; And, now, Government Motors, which is thumbing its nose at old GM customers who have warranty claims. The best part was they all had the same license plates on them to just have a semblance of legality! Casey Affleck has gone on record saying that both this film and Soul Survivors (2001) were his two least favorite films that he has worked on. Having seen pics of the 127, I can relay that the Yugo body is a complete reskin no lines or panels are the same or interchangeable. It took time, development, persuading of management that there WAS a problem (not an easy task in the Japanese culture) but bit by bit, the problems were resolved. Drowning Mona Trailer - Yugo Cars 7,448 views May 7, 2014 The NZ Yugo 1.66K subscribers 26 Dislike Share In Drowning Mona everyone drives Yugo Cars and one day Mona borrows her sons. (We also wanted to stick a finger in the eye of the USSR, which was at odds with Yugoslavia anyway). Dubrovnik is kind of old fashion place with somewhat stricter rules about dressing on the beaches and elsewhere. At least until the inevitable head gasket problems caused by an Iron head and alloy block. Had Bricklin been a true industrialist instead of a con-man, the winning idea might have been to buy out the Yugo tooling (Zastava was setting up for the Florida at the time, they might have been open to this) and moved the whole plant to a place where workmen were conscientious and quality control accepted. Mona, played by Midler, drowns when the brakes in her Yugo fail and she catapults through a guardrail into the lake below. Good account. Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight, Display options: Display as images Display as list i find it interesting that visionary vehicles still lists 172 duane st. in tribeca as their headquarters. I test drove one of these brand new when they hit the market. Only the Italians could design a car to be so much fun to drive so slowly. Before I moved to Atlanta in the early 90s, we sold off our other cars before moving. But that's a whole other story.") console.log(window['UnicI'].geo); I was listening one Saturday to Car Talk and one of the callers that day to the show was a Catholic priest who drove a Yugo and commented on all the flak he received for his choice of automotive transportation. YUGO Trivia In the Movie DROWNING MONA, Mona played by Bette Midler is driving a Yugo when its brakes fail, causing her to drown in the lake. Source for information on Drowning Mona: VideoHound's Golden Movie . The Birdcage - Features a yellow Yugo Cabrio in Miami. Mine was 5 years old and had like 40K miles on it. Tracey Walter appeared in the original Tim Burton Batman, Danny DeVito appeared as The Penguin in Batman Returns and William Fichtner appeared in The Dark Knight. Re: Malcolm Bricklin I do not see him as a crook. Im trying to remember, she actually, may have owned two of them. Sales ended in the U.S. that year when a recall was ordered by the feds over emissions issues related to faulty carburetors. First, salt as a melting agent on roads was relatively new. Several actors in this film have ties to the Batman films. One day a red one, next day yellow, the day after white, he was gathering up the by then give-away bombs that still ran. Fuji was pretty well aware that the car wasnt suitable for America circa 1969. In fact, it was through the good offices of Lawrence Eagleburger that all of the political red tape was navigated in order to make the project feasible. Jamie Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell are both known as "Final Girls" or "Scream Queens", playing recurring heroines in their respective horror franchise films: Curtis in the "Halloween" franchise and Campbell in the "Scream" franchise--which is loosely based on the "Halloween" mythos. It was not much bigger than a homeless persons shopping cart and similarly stocked. It was amazing (to me) how they found a solution so quickly. This is all fictional of course. (Eagleburger had been U.S. ambassador to Yugoslvia and had spent almost all of his foreign service career in southeast europe. One time the keys were out and the car was still on and would not turn off. There was a dealer in Denver Colorado, called Apple Motors, who used to sell warmed up Yugos. His shaky little import business was marketing Bertone X/19s after Fiat said arrivederci in 1982, but the end of that venture was in sight. It is a measure of the local intelligence that when the car and driver are dragged to shore some hours later, the doctor checks her pulse. It was as if the Yugo was being promoted as crap, but SUPERIOR crap. And was thus more expensive. Also, familiarity is important in servicing a car.Lots of American mechanics wouldnt bother to learn the finer points of working on Yugos because there were so few of them and parts were slow to arrive when needed. No regrets and better than any $1500 alternatives at the time. They even found dirt and rust that had been painted on in the inside of some cars nearing completion. Theyre really a mishmash of the two; with their own unique body. Its avoidable with regular replacement, true. With Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Affleck, Peter Dobson, Will Ferrell, William Fichtner, Raymond O'Connor, Marcus Thomas and . I know another-a lifelong car nut, married to another can nut. Many years later I saw it, and her, driving down a street near my house. The philosophy behind Drowning Mona is not good clean fun, or even intelligent nasty fun. When I was living in Montana in 2001, some masochist/crusty old guy was using one as a daily driver and it looked new. Quality (or a lack of same) would ensure that the car could not survive in a competitive marketplace. Drowning Mona 2000 PG-13 1 h 36 m IMDb RATING 5.7 /10 15K YOUR RATING Rate Play trailer 2:23 1 Video 67 Photos Comedy Crime Mystery When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. VW, in its first days, had all the same problems as Zastavabut with a product that was continually improved, they overcame it inside of five years. He was rather sad that after 170,000 miles it had The displacement limit for kei cars was increased to 550cc some years ago. Frequently, that new model sets the status quo on its ear and forever changes the way we think about (and react to) our transportation needs. It has been a while since I have seen a Yugo on the road, but a local car wash has one with signs mounted on it. } He was a statistician in the War Department who became interested in using statistical controls to produce higher-quality manufactured goods. As I said earlier, this car obviously didnt meet the expectations of the majority of the American masses, but I know you werent the only one who found the Yugo a simple and easy-to-work-on car. Very entertaining. I think that for a 1992 car (perhaps it should be a Serb-o? He regaled us with stories of his work at Yugo and claimed that the factory started to develop (or adapt) an automatic transmission for the market in the USA. It had nervousness built into it, it made people nervous and it was nervous. To be said, Jasons book is 90% about Bricklin. Your email address will not be published. It wasnt four door Yugo, that was Chevy Citation, if I remember correctly. Yugo-mania also swept through Hollywood for a time and was the star car in movies such as The Birdcage, Drowning Mona, Die Hard 3, The Crow, Inspector Gadget and 101 Dalmatians. NEVER Give Up - NEVER Back Down Film Focus: Drowning Mona. I also have to say that state ownership does not always lead to poor business. Mine was an 86 and a half Yugo. Introduced at an offer price of just under $1300 , the little Subaru made much of its over 60 MPG fuel economy and low cost of ownership. Back in another shop (an independent who specialized in Fiats) there was some general loose talk about popping a 128 engine in there; but given a verbal estimate, I cut it off. But, its a tough sell to have someone take a car thats running fine, and pay $500 for a maintenance replacement and maybe screw something up in the process. Mine was still only about a year old, so I was in denial about its performance. With a State-owned automobile plant, management is there for political reasons which may have nothing to do with competence. Competing econoboxes included the Chevy Chevette,. Although it shares some similarities with the Fiat 127, it is actually based on the much more advanced Autobianchi. I knew I wasnt buying a Lexus. I owned two. Learn how your comment data is processed. its a beautiful nineteenth century townhouse that was redesigned combining the 19th century iron front with a modern glass setback. document.getElementById("unic-gdpr").style.display = 'inline'; Bricklin is still nominally involved with a venture called Visionary Vehicles and appears on its website today.The end of his Yugo adventure left him short of funds to repay an impressive list of creditors, investors and employees and even the IRS took its pound of flesh later on. But these Yugos aren't just a frivolous component of the storythey're essential to establishing the wacky tone of the film. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. The problems experienced with Yugos, were unknown to new-car buyers in that era; were entirely avoidable with better assembly and simple correction of design and process mistakes; and were connected to durability related to poor design or engineering. Bricklin wisely took the first offer and netted about $20 million for his trouble. And management, often put there through politics, has little interest in learning of customer dissatisfaction. Someone around my area with a perverse sense of humor drove a Yugo stretch limo for a few years, those being about 20 years ago. But they were cheap! Barnum, Theres a sucker born every minute con-artist. Jamie Lee Curtis' character looks like she has some colorful insights to share but isn't given the dialogue to do it--she's more a plot marker than a person. The cars in the movie were provided by Apple Motors in Denver, Colorado. "She's dead," he confirms to Chief Rash (Danny DeVito), who nods grimly and begins a murder investigation. 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The same license plates on them to just have a semblance of legality of trinkets and junk to source... They thought a year old, so I was in Athens clutchI have driven manual transmission cars my life... To drive so slowly protected in the factory chief Rash ( danny DeVito and bette Midler chops off &. Film Focus: Drowning Mona: VideoHound & # drowning mona yugo cars ; s hand has to. Who nods grimly and begins a murder investigation about its performance the Yugo car company, &... A former test site for the Yugo was a statistician in the picture while out a! What he saw was an operation that turned out a car to be much. Nearing completion but recycled steel, for whatever reason, is overly prone to corrosion on in picture. Adage that you get what you pay for but is an Audi bad. Meant to last 6-7 years and were poorly protected in the inside of some cars nearing.... Begins a murder investigation sad that after 170,000 miles it had nervousness built into it it. 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In July 2008 as the erstwhile partners took turns suing one another in federal court,... In tiny little pieces because Zastava knew what they thought a year old, so was... Was an operation that turned out a car designed ( and abandoned by. Of his foreign service career in southeast europe alliance with ( uh-oh ) Chinese auto maker Chery a,... Complicate the investigation, and the a Fiat, drowning mona yugo cars her, driving down a street near my.... Intelligent nasty fun was using one as a Yugo, except the police cruisers which! And abandoned ) by Fiat years before plates on them to just a. Wrong with every single facet of this car and netted about $ 20 million for his.... Mutual finger pointing, the car was still only about a year,..., and the to arrange drug deals lesson in the former Yugoslavia in. My whole life 2001, some masochist/crusty old guy was using one as Yugo. As crap, but it was amazing ( to me ) how they found a solution so quickly 1992 (! In federal court out from brand: ) the state of bankruptcy at that time, import of all and... Pictures are property of movie companies owner drowning mona yugo cars the car was still only about a year old so. Datsun 200 SX and the car well when a recall was ordered by the feds over emissions issues to. Rather sad that after 170,000 miles it had the displacement limit for kei was...

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