Drowning Mona, Movie, 2000 Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight Display options: Also known as: Todos la queran muerta (Spain) Mais qui a tu Mona ? You are probably also aware of the Honda Z or N360 which was existed around the same time. So whats my point? The first year all those repairs were paid for, so it wasnt as miserable then. They were incredibly simple mechanically. I remember seeing new Yugos at the (I think 1990) Chicago Auto Show. document.getElementById("unic-ccpa").style.display = 'inline'; It was owned by a gentleman named Dave Benton who claimed to be the former engineering manager for Yugo North America. The problem here was, first, poor management, as I noted; second, a workplace culture and a national culture that was absolute authoritarianism. There are many causes for poor management. Subaru was just a little behind the curve in terms of design and safetyas befits a smaller company. In my Country was make an attempt to import the Yugo Cabrio,rebadged as Innocenti Koral Cabrio,but homologation fiche wasn't approved for Italy,but if car was tested by Italian motor magazines(Italy will import Yugos twice,1986 to 1987 with origin name Zastava Yugo and 1990 to 1992 as Innocenti Koral 45 and 55--that rebadged for our Country), I like this movie. I was worried that shed make it. The 360 was a Kei car, which took advantage of reduced taxes and insurance rates in Japan for cars less than three meters long with engines no more than 360cc in displacement. The Yugo got its biggest role in 2000, in Drowning Mona, starring Casey Affleck, Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny DeVito, and Bette Midler, with Will Farrell making a delightful cameo. No regrets and better than any $1500 alternatives at the time. alignments. It wasnt four door Yugo, that was Chevy Citation, if I remember correctly. Parts were cheap due to the exchange rate, so there was not the pressure on dealers to deny problems and warranty claims, like Ford and Vauxhall put on their dealers. Very well-maintained. I would be *shocked* to see a single one moving under its own power in 2011. 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. Last Update: . 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. I saw one not long ago on the streets in Eugene, but couldnt catch it., Theres got to be a comeback there! By May of 1988, Malcom Bricklin needed a lifeboat and he found it on Wall Street. The process, alone, of a car manufacturer as a unit of government, is suspect. 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. But they didnt have a CLUE. Your email address will not be published. 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. I probably still have it somewhere. 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. 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. The lovable numbskulls of Verplanck, New York, are all beside themselves with shock and quiet joy when town bully Mona Dearly dies in a freak accident involving her Yugo, some cut brake lines, and a plunge into the Hudson. R/S AUTOLINE INC. (1.3 miles away) 1215 W IMPERIAL HWY, Suite 213, BREA, CA 92821. I started to work in 1985 as a young engineer in the factory producing electrical equipment for the industry, and was very aware about problems we faced at the time. Barnum, Theres a sucker born every minute con-artist. People's spotty memories and clumsy lies complicate the investigation, and the . One of the magazines rolled one on test, and they had a top speed of around 65mph. Drowning Mona 2000 (PG-13)Strident comedy about the low-IQ denizens of small town Verplanck, New York, where everybody still drives a Yugo (the town was a test market). Its avoidable with regular replacement, true. Needless to say, it wouldve been better if Bently had just gone ahead and let them have the Mulsanne. 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. Kei cars still exist, but the engine size and dimensional standards have been increased somewhat, and the newer Kei cars tend to be very tall, boxy affairs to create the maximum possible cubic footage of interior room within the package limits. The other Eastern European lemon sold in Australia at the same time as the Niki was the Lada Samara. If I remember correctly, the car was equipped with all the usual goodies a Fiat engine with dual Webers, full roll cage, sticky racing tires, etc. Unpaid claims included some warranty work done by dealers on Yugos before sales collapsed. Doug DeMuro joyfully reviewed one a couple of years ago. As for the FloridaBricklin was itching to bring it in. I guess this is so the company could find out how the car is before releasing it to the general public. The possibility upsets Ellen, who explains in some of the movie's best dialogue: "I can't marry a murderer. The poor gal, if I remember, was named Lelo. Possibly most accurate and realistic analysis I have heard yet regarding what happened in ex-Yugoslavia. *shakes tiny fist*. What kind of car is in the movie Drowning Mona? The Tipo 145 was developed in the early 1970s (IIRC), and it showed. The Italian Government and the Unions forced Fiat to cooperate. 1987 brought about several other trims, the GVL, GVS, GVC,which were very similar other than the door panels and seat upholstery. If Germany had built it, would it have been called the Germ? The base GV had a 1.1L, SOHC motor that originated in the Fiat 128 and the GVX had the 1.3L\, SOHC, motor, also from the Fiat 128 and I think it had the 5spd manual in it but the base GV got the 4spd manual. The place where I used to work was given a Yugo 45. setTimeout(waitGEO, 200); Anyway, you got 2 I think 6.5 door speakers standard and an option for 2 46 oval speakers, mounted in the rear cargo covers side panels for a total of 4 speakers and an optional AC unit that replaced the console stack, just below the heater and the floor and it I think augmented the weak heater in these things. I recall A caddy dealer in the Cleveland area who gave away a free Yugo with the purchase of a Cadillac! I think it's worth keeping them separate because it's a in-joke of the film that almost everyone has a Yugo. . But what about quality disasters in a different scenario? The car itself staggered on until early 1992, with steadily declining sales and a dealer network that was slowly (and then quickly) going bankrupt. It broke down like a Yugo. My BIL and I popped out the axles, but that was more of a preventative move, rather than a necessity. The first thing to appear onscreen is a little blurb about the Yugo car company using the town of Verplanck as a test area for their new model years ago. Dubrovnik is kind of old fashion place with somewhat stricter rules about dressing on the beaches and elsewhere. There were surely other goofs that were institutionalized. Well, when someone drowns Mona (Bette Midler), it's almost a cause for celebration in the quiet, upstate New York town of Verplanck, whose one claim to fame - except Mona Dearly - is that it's a hotbed of Yugos. 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. Complete with opera lamps and padded roof. As a result, in mid-1986, Yugo America began selling cars at a starting price of $3,990 (equivalent to $9,863.56 in 2021) for the entry-level GV ("Good Value") hatchback equipped with the 1,100 cc overhead-cam five-main-bearing engine and four-speed manual transmission. 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. Bricklin was kicked out in the first (of two) bankruptcies, true. Pictures provided by: garco, antp, ahight, Display options: Display as images Display as list 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. Because he SAYS he has a new belt on there, doesnt mean its so. It helps to understand that everyone in Verplanck is dim to one degree or another, except for the Rash family. Zastava built some world class arms. I saw this movie. The prototypical belt-driven OHC engine Stateside, was the Pontiac Sixand Joe Sherlock, who has a car blog, The View Through the Windshield (http://www.joesherlock.com/blog.html) was involved in the development of the initial fiberglass-impregnated belt. Only the Italians could design a car to be so much fun to drive so slowly. She wrote something like, How cute, Ill be Lelo in her Yugo.. LIkewise, Yugo UK supported its dealers well. As I understand it, Zastiva had the Yugo designed that way as its plan was, from the beginning, to export the car. You mentioned this before; itd make a great article. She was rather negligent about maintenance, so would have been tough on any vehicle, but her Yugo, like many of its kind, fell apart rather quickly, stressing a budget that was already tight. I was sure youd have had one. So, with connections, he was brought to Japan for a series of lectures; and if America wasnt interested, Japan was very much so. In the moviedrowning MonaI remember there was among the many regular Yugos one that had four doors (a black one).Was it Renault has been in state ownership since the 50s, and has been a very profitable company. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons. Ive talked to other people in the UK who bought them new, and many have had more than one. At only 20,000 miles it was worn out, fading, under powered, rusting, it wanted to die and be buried, it certainly didnt want to be a car! I have only seen one Yugo in my life. Which together would have theoretically allowed the Yugo to be more successful. Jason Vuic details this in his book The Yugo of how management refused plans for premiums for top-grade work or extra effort; of how primitive and shoddy were the paint booths, of how design goofs went uncorrected for years. Do not sell my data The car is the Yugo. He was absolutely correct. During the time the clutch cable was dying, I broke the shifter mechanism, due to the clutch cable dying. After 330,000km with two Yugos, I must be destined to eternal vacation on BOra-Bora . 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. When I was living in Montana in 2001, some masochist/crusty old guy was using one as a daily driver and it looked new. To see mine riding on a tow truck was so humiliating. Appologies for not-nice-said, but there is no other way to do it. That explains why everyone was driving them then. And when longtime resident Mona Dearly (BETTE MIDLER) drove her Yugo into the river to her death, no one really seemed to care. I cant imagine that anybody that test drove one like mine actually laid down real money for one. Change Ad Consent We learn that Verplanck was selected as a test market when the Yugo was being introduced to the United States. To this day I have never felt a more imprecise,balky shifter. 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. 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. Also in that time, poor workmanship wasnt exclusively Yugos problem. Ladas seem to be designed to be overhauled on the roadside these are probably the same. (not the 1st time Ive done this,haha). I remember that time very well, it was impossible to find coffee or bananas or laundry detergent etc in the stores, and the industry was struggling to get raw materials. there used to be a sign on the front that said visionary vehicles but that came down at least two years ago. For the rest of the scene, he is dry from the waist up. A "Fetzer valve" is a fictional part of an engine, introduced in the movie Fletch (1985). These rear engined devices were a blast to drive, with tail-out shenanigans a-la Porsche 911 being easy to emulate. Bowfinger - The main character produced a documentary called The Yugo Story. But with enough TLC (something the average American consumer wasnt high on), maybe they werent so bad (at least a few of them, anyway). Membership also saw a similarly sharp increase, with over 1,800,000 in the same year (300,000 more than in 1970). Drowning Mona is basically a comic murder-mystery. The effort collapsed along with Yugo sales in America. It couldnt be trusted just sitting in the parking lot. its a beautiful nineteenth century townhouse that was redesigned combining the 19th century iron front with a modern glass setback. When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect.When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect.When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect. They probably would have found a customer base in the U.S. Only with the threat of armed intervention by Nato and the UN is an uneasy peace maintained. Whats bad. In a totalitarian state, such as was Yugoslavia, there is no political embarrassment because criticism is a criminal offense. and lso two Horizon ? They were an object lesson in the old adage that you get what you pay for. Other than the time the clutch cable broke, and getting the electrical issues sorted out, the car spent no time in the shop. But after a slow start because of supply problems, the car began selling in volume during year two. (rolls eyes). I also have to say that state ownership does not always lead to poor business. 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