Staff Writer
Johannah Freund of Appling gets a lot of stares when she drives down the street.
Annette M. Drowlette/Staff
Johannah Freund shows off her 1986 Yugo, with just more than 56,000 miles on it. She travels 60 miles round trip to work from her Appling home; the car gets more than 40 miles per gallon.
The 38-year-old drives a 1986 Yugo -- a small, discontinued car that was originally made in the Serbian town of Kragujevac.
The price tag: $300.
She has had the car for a little more than a year and spent six weeks fixing it up. She bought the vehicle from a friend, and it had only 56,000 miles on the odometer.
"It's a good little car. It's good on gas mileage. The gas tank in it is not even eight gallons. I can go back and forth five days a week, and I live about 30 miles from my job. It gets 40 to 45 miles to the gallon," Ms. Freund said.
She works at Waffle House on Belair Road.
"People look at me and say, 'Where did you get that? I haven't seen one of those in ages,' " Ms. Freund said. "For a while there, some of the car lots had them buy one, get one free. They said they were not a dependable vehicle. So you'd buy one for about $3,500, and you'd get the other one for free because they said they broke down so much. But once I got this one up and running, I've not had a problem."
She found two Web sites that carry parts and spent $2,000 replacing the fuel lines and the brakes.
"It's a 55 horsepower engine. My lawn mower has more horsepower than my car does," she said.
Overall, Ms. Freund said, she feels safe. The car has seat belts and good steering and handling. Still, she hasn't driven the car faster than 80 mph.
"It's so light and at 80 it starts to go all over the place. Everybody tells me that if I hit anything, it's totaled. That it's a little tin box on wheels. I get picked on unbelievably at Waffle House from our regular customers," she said.
Her manager has a friend who knows three other people locally who own Yugos.
"I would like to buy them and get them up and running. It's a cute little car. Everybody knows me wherever I go," she said.
Reach LaTina Emerson at (706) 823-3227 or latina.emerson@augustachronicle.com.
YUGO HISTORY
The Zastava Koral, or the Yugo, is a subcompact vehicle built by Zastava Corp.
1980: First Yugo produced by Zastava Automobili in Kragujevac, Serbia
1985: Yugo brand, priced at $3,990, was introduced in the U.S. by an American entrepreneur.
1989: Yugo America went bankrupt.
1992: Sales of Yugo in the United States ended.
2008: The last Yugo rolls off the production line at the Zastava factory in Kragujevac.
Sources: nytimes.com; rferl.org
