As an independently wealthy and popular internet blog contributor, I feel compelled to warn my many detractors and fans that it is extraordinarily hazardous to view the next 2 (two) mobile birth controls for an extended period of time. Please be sure to use them in well-ventilated areas, and avoid contact with bleach-based cleansers. In the event of eye, skin, or nose irritation, do not induce vomiting and contact a poison control center immediately.
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Imagine the Yugo board of directors wading deep in thoughts of perestroika and glasnost, wringing their hands over revisions to the flagging GV, knowing that something had to be done to create interest in a small powerless car, wondering what in the world they could do to get a GV into the decision matrix that included Mustang 5.0s and IROC-Zs.
...Hey, a convertible, why not? Mustang and Camaro had one, that must be the key! Let us put it on the fast track, comrades! Long hood and wide haunches, nyet! Pug styling and small wheels, da!
By now you are probably wondering when we get to my long-winded humorless anecdote about the Yugo GV Cabrio. Unfortunately for you, I have no personal experience with the Yugo GV Cabrio. I've never even seen one in real life. Instead I submit an experience related to me by a classmate from college about a similar car, a Volkswagen Golf Cabrio:
"There was one guy in our group of friends, his dad was like, real friendly you know, and he always wanted us to come over and hang out. That was fine because he let us smoke in the house and sometimes he would let us crash there. Anyway he had a regular car, like a BMW 5 series, and the more we were over there the more we wondered if he was gay, because he just seemed that way. It wasn't like, one big thing, he wasn't real swooshy or flaming, he just seemed gay. One day he came home and he had traded in his 530i on a new Volkswagen Cabrio, and we were all pretty sure at that point, but not seriously. Just like "wow he bought a cabrio, he must be gay." A couple months after that he filed for divorce, left his family, and opened a restaurant with another dude in Dupont Circle [a gay gentrified neighborhood in Washington, D.C.- editor]. So he really was gay, and we felt kind of bad about making so much fun of him because it really messed up their family."
Now I don't really care about gay men driving Cabrios, but if you are a potentially gay male who is thinking of leaving your family, don't think you are fooling anybody by just capriciously bringing home a cabrio of any kind, particularly the Yugo GV.
Can you stand it? Do you think you're big enough for this? You can't handle another round of ratings! You want me on this keyboard, you need me on this keyboard!
Aesthetic sex appeal: -8
Hey, at least it's not an Aztek. But it's not too many steps above a wet refrigerator box on the side of the interstate. The GV is short and chubby with big doors and small wheels, kind of like what I imagine a hobbitt pimp's customized Cadillac to look like. No one looks good in a Yugo, and the top down freedom of a Yugo Cabrio says you really do not give two shits about your appearance. That means you are either a eunuch YMCA counselor or married, and if you are driving a cabrio you are certainly not married, because it's illegal in this country.
Mechanical sex appeal: -9
The GV, like other eastern bloc cars, was actually a design borrowed under license from the Italians. I don't get it honestly, how can Italians crank out Pininfarina Ferraris and Fiats at the same time? Law of averages?
Like other low quality unsafe cars (state-owned stalwarts Fiat and Chery), the Yugo was introduced to the U.S. by businessman Malcolm Bricklin. It is unknown what Bricklin was smoking in the 1980s, but rumor has it that the CIA bought the rights to the
substance from Bricklin and introduced it into the ghetto.
The GV (short for Great Value, no kidding) featured a 1.1 liter base model with a 1.3 liter "upgrade" if you really wanted to err on the side of abudance. Even with such a huge, heavy, extravagant engine, a Yugo was once blown completely off the Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan. I don't know what else I can say.
Intellectual sex appeal: -9
This car is the manifestation of toxic non-biodegradable Yakov Smirnoff jokes that have been hanging in the atmosphere since the late 1980s. If we only knew then what we know now.
Even though the purchase of a Yugo is not indicative of brain death, it can be legally cited for the excecution of last will and testament in many countries. It has been called many things by many scholarly journals, but unfortunately I can't find them. As such we will have to settle for comments from popular kindling like Consumer Reports and Car and Driver, who called the GV "the new disposable car from Bic" and asserted that it "hardly qualified as a car". Consumer Reports has no room to be accusatory given their recent history, and in that way derisive critiques from Consumer Reports are funny in a kitschy way, like staying in and watching reruns of Married With Children and drinking Leinenkugel on a Friday night.
Great personality sex appeal: -10
The first great personality perfect score! I would consider a score of -7 or -8 if a normal GV was being reviewed on account of its city sensibility and undeniable kitsch. However, Yugo tried to pull a fast one and inject some personality into the flaccid, unagreeable standard GV by cutting the top off, attempting to connect man with his need to feel the wind in his hair. Thankfully I was able to save the country (again) with my inflated sense of intellectual and moral superiority, and I have once again shown you that no car company should ever do anything that I don't like.
TOTAL SCORE: -36
BELOW: The rear male Yugo courts the female Yugo in an intricate dance ritual as old as the species itself.