End of the line...

This past week was the end of something that many of you may not even have heard about. The Yugo. That's right, the cheap little car that kinda resembled a VW Rabbit. I don't have a whole lot to say about it but when I read about the factory shutting down, I thought about the time when Yugos were introduced here in the US. Their biggest (and probably only) selling point was that the sticker price was $2995. Aside from seeing a few of them on the road back then, my memory and first impression of a Yugo came from a car show where I first saw one. My cousins, Erica, Mindy, and I had gone to the annual new car show to check out all of the cars for the new year. Surprisingly, Yugo had an exhibit and a couple of vehicles on display. Naturally, we had to check one of these little things out. I remember that the spare tire was mounted under the hood, only a few inches from the exhaust manifold which seemed crazy to me at the time! I also remember that the seats were hard and rough, not a soft material like one would want to sit on. However, the funniest thing about it and the thing that left a permanent impression on me, was when we got in the car and Erica, tried to roll down the window. The window handle literally fell off in her hand!! I kid you not. I couldn't make up a story so funny. We laughed quite a bit at how fitting such an occurrence was! I never sat in another Yugo but that one definitely left a mark on me. I think it just goes to show that sometimes, an item can be so cheaply made that it truly isn't worth having. A nice bicycle may be slower but when the Yugo is stuck on the roadside with parts falling off, the bike will still get you where you're going, eh? The funniest joke I knew regarding these little cars was that you could buy the GT model, which I think was actually a GVX or something like that, but the only difference between it and the base model was a cassette tape (remember those?) that made engine revving sounds!