Yugo is NOT coming back to the US

[Ivo Skoric]

True. In the Balkans still the prevailing mentality is to wish your 
neighbor's cow is dead, rather than approaching the neighbor and 
doing business with him. Sad. Obviously, Croatian media delighted in 
the failure of Yugo. And yes, I was in Zagreb last summer, there are 
plenty of Yugos on the streets.

It is also correct that the quality of Yugo cars fell sharply due to 
the quarells within former Yugoslavia. The principal culprit was 
Serbia's decision in 1986 to boycott Slovenian products. That forced 
Zastava Kragujevac to rely for the engine blocks on lower quality 
steel from Serbias Smederevo steel mills - instead of from Slovenian 
Jesenice steel mills. Using the Slovenian steel, Yugo designers were 
able to make engine blocks thiner and lighter, than comparable 
Russian car models had. However, the factory continued with the same 
design, even after they switched to Serbian steel - the results were 
ugly: engine blocks melted, cracked, etc.

Also correct - except for German and Swedish cars, the US buyer 
traditionally does not trust European car makers: there are not many 
French, Italian, or British cars on American roads. Fiat is thought 
to be not much better than Yugo (Zastava models are offshots of Fiat 
models), yet at a far higher price.

As for the ZMW-BMW story - if it is not a hoax coined by the Croatian 
media - it is a sorry trend in the 21st century industry. Of course 
that ZMW could not pose any threat to BMW. They occupy a completely 
different niche of the car market. And truly - this is not a 
copyright or trademark infringement: the names are just similar, not 
identical. But there are more and more examples like that - there is 
a guy that adopted Linux operating system to have more point-and-
click look and feel and called it Lindows - Microsoft is suing him 
now over the name that is too similar to Windows. Corporate 
legislation is biased to protect those who already established strong 
positions in the industry against the upstarts. The result is a world 
where power and wealth is more densely concentyrated in less hands, 
kind of like the world looked like on the eve of the First World War. 
The conclusions are obvious.

ivo

On 12 Feb 2004 at 13:24, melentie wrote:

Hola everyone,
>
>n 2002 James Bricklin (the man who brought both Yugo and Hyundai cars
>to the US) decided to bring re-made Yugo back to the US. Zastava
>weapons factory in Kragujevac, Serbia, which subdivision makes Yugo
>cars, was recovered from the damage it suffered during the 1999 NATO
>bombing, and Yugos were back in production. Bricklin wanted a joint
>venture company and a flashy new name for Yugo in America: ZMW
>(Zastava Motor Works). However, apparently in 2003, BMW (Bayrische
>Motor Werke) threatened to sue, if Yugos were to be marketed under
>that name.

This is ridiculuos. Firstly, if this logic is followed then on a more
general level heaps of companies could sue their competition for
having a similar name ! Secondly, what threat would ZMW possibly pose
to BMW !? I don't get this.

>On top of that, there were some communication problems
>between Zastava and Bricklin, so he shelved the idea of returning
>Yugo's to America. This might have been a sound business decision,
>given that the last month poll by Forbes magazine, AGAIN declared
>Yugo the worst car ever driven in the US by popular vote.

Hey, at least the public remembers the brand! Some PR people would
argue that this is necessarily not a bad thing. Anyway, Yugo might
have been good or bad, but fact is that there are many bigger car
companies who never made it to the American market. And I am not even
talking about East European car companies but about West European.
FIAT would be one of them, if I remeber well.

In fact the achievement wasn't small at all. The car eventhough
assembled and produced in Kragujevac, Serbia had suppliers for the
different parts from all around ex-Yugoslavia. Actually, the quality
of the car fell drastically, once the war started and these supplier
links were being cut. This is also true for the market. Once the war
broke the company couldn't sell any more to the entire territory of
ex-Yu.

>So, for the time being, the only Yugo in America is going to be
>Raccoon's Cyber-
>Yugo....http://balkansnet.org/cyberyugo.html

Good project, right?


>Articles in Croatian:
>http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=185458
>http://www.index.hr/clanak.aspx?id=131324

  What can one say? The articles certanly do not paint a rosy image
nor prospects for Zastava. It looks as if the idea that everything
coming from Serbia is bad, still seems to be haunting the Croatian
media.  (On the other hand if one drives down the Croatian streets,
one might find quite many Yugos still in use.)

The Balkan drama goes on.

When will people learn that these kind of attitudes only empoverish
the region? You cannot have a prosperous Croatia, or Serbia, or
Macedonia, or whatever once the entire region is not prosperous! You
cannot have a safe country, once all of the region is not safe.

And you certainly cannot develop a prosperous region by hoping that
your neighbour fails! It is a huge network, damn it!

Melentie

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