Rumors have long circulated about the revival of an extinct brand. It is the Zastava Koral, known to many as Yugo. It was a compact car manufactured in the former Yugoslavia (hence the name) that became a symbol of the Cold War and one of the most controversial cars in history.
Now the brand wants to return to the European market with an affordable city car, ultra-low running costs and a retro design.
A city car with a starting price of 12,000 euros, driven by a hybrid system and astonishing consumption: the keys to the new Yugo
Perhaps 2027 will be the year we see Serbia’s automotive industry resurge. Aleksandar Bjelic is a Serbian engineer-entrepreneur who owns the rights to the brand originally known as Zastava and who has set out to dominate the European market next year.
Based in Germany, he has more than 30 years of experience in the German automotive scene, and he has joined forces with Serbian graphic designer Darko Marčeta to reinterpret the classic, square lines of the original utilitarian into a modern and stylish form.
The objective? To rehabilitate the brand’s image with an unbeatable product that could deal a heavy blow to Dacia: a city car under 20,000 euros—rumors even of a starting price of 12,000 euros—driven by a hybrid system with a range extender and a consumption around 2.2 liters per 100 kilometers.
It would be a hybrid with a system similar to Nissan’s e-Power: the combustion engine never powers the wheels and only acts as a range extender for the electric motor.
And the car’s development appears to be complete: “In 2027 we will present a prototype equipped with a four-cylinder internal combustion engine. The team is already working on it. The engine and transmission are supplied by a partner whose name I cannot reveal yet,” commented Bjelic.
But as our colleagues at L’Automobile point out, copying Dacia’s approach won’t be easy. Let us recall the challenges Louis Schweitzer faced in the early 2000s when attempting to bring the Romanian manufacturer, recently acquired by Renault, to market.
To succeed in this segment and make the vehicle profitable, high production volumes are required to offset costs, in addition to a large factory.
From the car for the Yugoslav people to memes in the United States
The Yugo was born in 1980, built by the state-owned Zastava in Kragujevac (present-day Serbia). Its design was based on the Fiat 127 platform and it was meant to be the people’s car of Yugoslavia, akin to the Volkswagen Beetle.
It ended up in the USA with strong initial success due to its rock-bottom price, but its reputation later turned into a meme: the frequent, severe mechanical failures—and the lack of basic quality control—ultimately earned it the label “the worst car in history.”
The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was followed by the destruction of the Zastava factory in 1999, leaving the brand in a critical situation. Production continued in limited runs, and the last Yugo left the assembly line on November 11, 2008, after 28 years of production and a total of 794,428 units built. We will see if its comeback can make amends.
Images | Yugo
