To a pervasive degree, our world is shaped by fateful, corporate decisions. From the IPhone to the BMW, companies, the world over, produce innovative products in the hopes of maximizing both profitability and market share. Then, once these products are widely available, it is left to customer choice to separate the winners from the losers, the diamonds from the lemons. And boy, have there been some lemons. After all, for every Snapple, there is New Coke. And for every BMW, there is the Yugo.
This legendarily awful car, as Mr. Vuic demonstrates in this, his riveting look at an epic fail, is surely one of the worst vehicles in the history of personal transport. From its sloppy construction to its infamously underpowered engine, the Yugo, was the result of a slap-dash attempt by the communist Yugoslavia of the 1980s to generate a car industry that would alleviate its debts by servicing the world with a small car done dirt cheap. It should come as no surprise then that the Yugo, from its insubstantial weight to its problematic spare tire stored in the engine compartment, suffered numerous, devastating problems. And yet, despite its farcical faults, seemingly all of which have been memorialized in hundreds of jokes -- the best of which Mr. Vuic includes at the beginning of each of his chapters --, nearly 200,000 Yugos were sold in the United States from 1985 to 1989 when its problematic history finally overcame its bargain-bin pricetag and doomed it to the status of laughingstock.
As much as the folly of the Yugo prompts amusement, there is a serious side to this humorous story. From the pro-Yugoslavian lobbyists inside the American government who helped to make the car a reality, to the charismatic showmen who actually sold it, Mr. Vuic lifts the hood on the story of the Yugo, the little car that couldn't, in an attempt to understand just how such a poorly designed car could get through the rigorous screening that keeps most of the world's worst cars off American roads. He discovers that the Yugo likely wasn't as bad as it was purported to be, that its Yugoslavian designers worked hard and meant well when they modified the car from the Fiat it was based on, and that its disrepute likely stemmed as much from the chicanery of its salesmen as it did from its shortcomings as a vehicle. Here, Mr. Vuic is at his best, reconstructing the career of Malcolm Bricklin, a many-times-failed entrepreneur whose cockiness and boastfulness ensured that the Yugo would be a disappointment. For as much work as he did to seize upon the Yugo as an opportunity, to help steer it through the safety testing and bring it to market in the United States, his overconfidence, at best, and his fraud, at worst, clinched his and the Yugo's demise.
The Yugois a delightful tale about an epically bad car and its epically over-the-top salesman. Mr. Vuic is a talented author who balances, here, the humor of the Yugo's history with the dark side of capitalism. For as much as it encourages innovation by enticing winners with rich profits and widespread fame, it also encourages shysters to take shortcuts in order to attain that fame and fortune. There is likely no solution to this problem except, perhaps, to always doubt that which seems too good to be true. This is a thorough examination of a failed car, the era that spawned it and the high jinks that sealed its fate. As funny as it is informative and one of the best light-hearted efforts of non-fiction this year. (5/5 Stars)
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