It's every car lover's worst nightmare: You click on a blog post about bad cars, and there's a picture of your ride. Not just a car exactly like yours, but *your car. That's *you behind the wheel, fresh from a trip to Taco Bell.
That's just what happened to Ben Hase, a Yugo owner from Wausau, WI. Knowing Hase's affection for the much maligned Yugoslav hatchback, his roommate told him to check out our Q&A with Jason Vuic, author of Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History. Right there, beneath the headline, was a photo of Hase's bright red Yugo GVX.
Hase E-mailed us, thrilled that someone had captured a photo of his car and uploaded it to Flickr. The car itself had been destroyed in an accident, but he'd had a lot of fun with it before its untimely demise.
Hase's love for the Yugo began three years ago, when he first spotted it in the classifieds. "I don't know why I liked it so much but once I saw it I knew that I wanted it," he said. "I had to drive for about half an hour to see the car. Once I test drove it I immediately fell in love. I bought it on the spot."
He estimates he spent three times what he paid for the car in repairs (by our estimate, hopefully no more than $15), but quickly learned Dan Neil's axiom that driving fast in a slow car is more fun than driving slow in a fast car.
"The handling on the car was great. The car was so light that power steering was not even necessary, it was like I could feel the road when I was driving," he said. "The Yugo wasn't fast but it was so fun to drive. It was also fun waving to all the people that would stare at me as I drove by. "
Not so fun: bruising his passenger's knee every time he shifted into 5th gear. Also not fun: getting T-boned on the passenger side of a Yugo by a drunk driver going 40 miles an hour.
"When the cars made contact almost all of the Yugo's windows exploded. The car spun around 3 times before coming to a stop," he said. Hase wasn't injured, but his father -- in the passenger seat -- took a few weeks to fully recover.
The Yugo is undriveable now, but Hase dreams of finding a working Yugo that he can restore with parts from his first car.
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Photos: Ben Hase
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