10Jun
If there was any car you would be in during a rainstorm, the Zastava Koral (lovingly called the Yugo) should NOT be it. It could be a fatal mistake on your part.
This car was called the Yugo because it was manufactured in Yugoslavia. The makers, Zastava, marketed it as a simple, low cost car. Then it went to the US in 1985 and sold 45,000 units. However there were negative comments regarding this car. First, most people found it uncomfortable and unreliable. There were comments saying that its transmission performance was horrible.
However, the worst was yet to come for this little car. Reportedly, in 1989, a 31-year old lady’s Yugo was blown off a bridge’s railing by 50MPH gales. Unfortunately she never survived the incident.
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Is this the worst car ever made or what?
20Aug
Image source: www.thetorquereport.com
Way back in the 1970’s, the first Volkswagen Scirocco was introduced and just a racy skin draped over the framework of the then-new Rabbit S er, Golf. This year Volkswagen repeated that same method with the introduction of a new front-drive Scirocco that, under the skin, is basically a Golf S er, Rabbit.
The new Scirocco is currently VW’s only coupe and, thanks to an aggressively sculpted body and a particularly wide-looking nose, it’s a truly stunning machine. It backs up those looks with engines culled from the Golf range < a 197-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter four is the most powerful option and a 138-hp common rail 2.0-liter turbodiesel, the most economical. Transmission choices are a conventional six-speed manual or a seven-speed dual-clutch “DSG” paddle-shifted, automated manual. Even the sportiest Scirocco is reported to get somewhere near 37 mpg while topping out at 146 mph.
08Apr
The East German car, Sachsenring Trabant or “Trabi” was famous for one thing: it was made from recycled cotton. Not the whole car mind you but just the exterior panels. The bad news was that the car was known to be noisy and smoked “..like an oilfield on fire.”
It was a happy accident. Wolfgang Barthel, the creator of the body panel was experimenting on different products to substitute for steel since the government couldn’t afford to purchase large quantities of the material. Russia provided him with a large supply of cotton that he can experiment on.
Luckily, he was able to produce something that was strong, lightweight, and rust-free: the Duroplast. He then applied this to the steel frame of the car and voila! The Trabi came into existence.
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