Automobile Quarterly: Volume 42, Number 2, Second Quarter 2002 Book

I am not interested in cars. If it runs, has air conditioning, and the radio works, I'm happy. So I don't think I was the target audience for a book dedicated to one car, but it was very enjoyable anyway. Probably because it is more about the communistic system that manufactured it and the shyster businessman who imported it than it is about the technical details of the car. It is very thorough in explaining the business dealings that brought these people together. That means that we do get a brief history of the nation of Yugoslavia starting at WW2, a thorough detailing of Bricklin's various business ventures, and a look at the car industry from Ford through the 1990s. It does get a little far from the point at times.
The author seems to take a more favorable view of the Yugo than you usually get. I don't still don't know enough about the actual car to make a call on that, because there really isn't a lot on the consumer experience with the vehicle. He seems to think that it gets a bad rap simply because it was cheap, had a horrible business model, and people wanted expensive brands. I'm afraid I wasn't really convinced that was the reason it was so disliked. He is also maybe a little impressed with the employment numbers and industrialization process in communist Yugoslavia. Still, he did feel the need to include sections that downplayed the brutality of the prison system and the suppression of dissidents. So while I did enjoy it and learned a lot, I'm unconvinced by the author's conclusions.