Back in the 80’s, a friend of mine had been driving his Renault Le Car for over 100,000 miles when the frame- such as it was, allowed the front of the car to partially detach from the rear of the car, leaving him with the front end of the driver’s seat scraping the ground like a bizzarre french earth grader.

We managed to screw enough plywood to it to get it on the road again- it still ran pretty well- but there was no way it would ever do any expressway driving again.

This guy- we’ll call him Chuck- had a penchant for the cheap like nobody I’ve ever known. I swear to god, he’d make his kids line up on bath day from cleanest to dirtiest and bathe in that order.

Anyway, he lamented the loss of his beloved Le Car, and bitched that he was going to have to buy some piece of shit gas guzzler escort (Imagine that!) when he stumbled onto his dream car. A Yugo GT.

It had a .9 liter (or thereabouts) engine, and it had the acceleration of a turtle with weak knees. And he was in love. it was cheap, used, and moderately well cared for. he brought it to the house and gleamed with pride. He handmade a stainless exhaust for it. He built a special stand that would allow him to drop the (60 lb) transmission and change the clutch himself. he handsewed himself some vinyl seat covers and babied the little bastard.

he was most especially proud of the GT stripe decals. Even going so far as to buy a special dressing to keep them shiny and black against the goat’s vomit green of the sheet metal.

I helped him weatherproof and undercoat it, he wasn’t going to let it die.

And, excited as hell about his new “sporty” car, he even let me drive it.

Words alone cannot express how underwhelming it was. Nuff said.