Yugo Sales Data & Trends for the U.S Automotive Market

The Yugo was a minicar from the Yugoslavian automaker Zastava, imported to the US from 1985 to 1992 by International Automobile Importers from Malcolm Bricklin, the entrepreneur who brought several car brands from all over the world to the United States, of which Subaru has become the most successful.

The Yugo was one of the cheapest cars on the market at just $ 3,990 but it was also ridiculed for being the worst car on the market. Thanks to the many jokes about its unreliability, the Yugo is still famous in the US more than 20 years after the last car was sold. It won many “prizes” like Worst Car Ever and Worst Car of the Millennium. Still, Yugo has sold almost 140.000 cars in the US during its 8-year tenure on the market. In the early nineties, United Nations sanctions on Yugoslavia halted exports of the cars and that was the end of the Yugo in America. Production of the Zastava Koral, as the Yugo was called in its home market, continued until 2008.

Eventually the Zastava factory was bought by Fiat and produced the Fiat Punto hatchback for the local market under its own name. In 2012, the factory that once built the Yugo started production of the Fiat 500L, which was imported to the United States from 2013 for a return of the Yugoslavian (now Serbian) built automobile to North American shores.

Annual Vehicle Sales

Annual Vehicle Sales Chart

Sources: Manufacturers, ANDC