Bad advertising… Catastrophic sales results… Extremely poor quality level…
All of these were the reasons why the Yugo as a car did not succeed in its campaign in America.
But despite that, with a little creativity, it became a perfect base for creatives from the beginning of the nineties.
And here's how…
Over the course of just a few years, the Yugo won a handful of superlative titles in the US. But all those superlatives unfortunately had negative suffixes. Because being the worst, the most corruptible, the ugliest, the most uncomfortable and the slowest are definitely not epithets that anyone in this world should feel proud of.
But that's exactly what happened for Yugo. And from the premiere on the market “across the pond” until today, the Yugo is considered by many to be the worst car ever sold in America.
… and then the nineties came…
In the early nineties, MC Hammer started a dance revolution and went bankrupt twice. In the movie world, audiences were mesmerized by Ghost, Thelma and Louise, and Goodfellas, but those same audiences were made to suffer stomach upsets and fainting spells by movies like Dead Alive and Audition. Therefore, the Yugo actually fit perfectly into the polyvalence of the nineties of the last century. Because as a car it was undesirable and bad, but on the other hand it was cheap enough for some of the art students of the time to use it as a canvas for their creative works.
Then Uncle Kevin bought 39 copies of the Yugo for 3,600 dollars and gave them to his students who created their works based on this hated fruit of communism on four wheels.
And then in 1995, a series of presentations of those works was created under the name “Yugo Next” and these artistically inclined Jugićs passed fairs in New York, Los Angeles, Montreal and several other cities in America and Canada.
The students set to work wholeheartedly, and in a relatively short time a whole force of incredible works was created. After all, how else to describe Yugo accordion, Yugo toaster, Yugo toilet and Yugo piano?
No way, right?!
Therefore, this Yugo is for me the most controversial work that appeared as an exhibit as part of the “Yugo Next” exhibition series in 1995 Namely, among all these works of art, the Yugo stands out, which was made as a confessional that an average Catholic church could boast of. So even though this information may not sound like something special, it is worth remembering how Yugo arrived from Kragujevac, which is in Serbia. And in Serbia, the Catholic churches are not really “in”, but instead the Orthodox faith and Orthodox churches are “in”.
Therefore, this Yugo is for me the most controversial work that appeared as an exhibit as part of the “Yugo Next” exhibition series in 1995.artistic Yuga.
The idea itself therefore gave birth to some very interesting works. And the author of the idea himself said, “I am really pleasantly surprised by the works. Because all together represent an incredible amount of imagination, and that is sometimes the most difficult part of any creative process.
The idea started with the thought “Where to go when the Yugo won't start” and grew into a desire to turn a useless product into something else. I wanted to give this particular useless product a new life and new functionality. And my students succeeded in all that. And they did the task in an impressive way”.
Basically, there you go… This artistic escapade did a lot more for Yugo than any marketing department that filled the airwaves of certain TV stations in America with its advertisements. And with that, at least for a moment, the Yugo got a completely different status from an angular and to Americans funny car.
So even though many lists of the worst cars of all time in America often have the Yugo in first place, it's nice for us here to see that something positive has happened out of that whole ugly and funny story.
Especially in our region, where Yugo still gathers admirers around him.
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