Background

By the beginning of the 1980s, cars from the COMECON bloc of Communist countries (the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites) were quite a familiar sight on British roads. The East German Wartburg had been imported into the UK from 1964, followed by small numbers of Moskvitch saloons and vans in the mid-1970s. At around the same time, Lada cars began to appear, alongside Skodas from Czechoslovakia and the Polski-Fiat/FSO range of family cars from Poland.

Opinions about these cars from UK car journalists were rather derisive in the main. The only thing to recommend many of them was the price, with poor build quality, lack of comfort, unreliability and heavy depreciation plaguing assessments of the vehicles. So, when Zastava launched its 1100 and 1300 hatchback models in 1981 it was entering an already crowded bargain-basement market which attracted a good deal of skepticism from most consumers and reviewers.

However, Zastava was in a slightly different position. Yugoslavia, although governed by Communists, acted as a balance in Europe between the capitalist West and the Communist East and was not part of the COMECON system. In the 1970s and 1980s the country became a popular destination for many British inter-railers and tourists who were able to access Yugoslavia in a way that would have been impossible elsewhere in the Eastern bloc.

Zastava Cars, 1953-81

Zavodi Crvena Zastava (The Red Flag Factory) at Kragujevac in Serbia, had begun as a weapons maker in the nineteenth century and then went on to manufacture licence built FIAT trucks for the Royal Yugoslav army during the inter-war period. In 1953, with Yugoslavia now under the leadership of wartime partisan leader Josip Broz Tito, the Kragujevac workforce voted overwhelmingly to begin production of passenger cars.

The first few hundred vehicles produced at Kragujevac were actually licence-built Willys Jeeps until in the mid-1950s an agreement was signed with FIAT to build some of their older designs under licence. Then, in the 1960s, Zastava produced under licence the FIAT 1300/1500, a car which became known as “The Yugoslav Mercedes” and for which there was a long waiting list. Those who remember the cars (of which there are still a few examples surviving in the former Yugoslavia) insist that they were the best ever assembled at Kragujevac.

However, the car which put Yugoslavs on the road in large numbers was the Zastava 600 or Fiça (Little Fiat). This was a copy of the very popular Fiat 600 which the Yugoslavs developed and improved with more comfortable interiors and bigger engines. Zastava finally stopped making the Fiça in 1989 with the last version being the substantially re-vamped Zastava 850 which had a Fiat 126 interior. Good, restored examples of the Fiça today can attract prices of between 2,500 and 5,000 euros. These cars were never exported to the UK, however.

Zastava Cars in the UK

 Zastava GB set up its headquarters at Reading in 1981 and the first cars seen by British motorists were the 1100/1300 series in the autumn of that year. These cars were based upon the FIAT 128 which had been voted European car of the year in 1969. The Kragujevac factory produced faithful copies of the 128 saloon, known as the Zastava 128 (Osmiça) and then from 1971 also began production of the Zastava 101. The legendary “Stojadin” was a FIAT 128 with a re-designed rear which was available in 3 and 5 door hatchback versions. In 1982-3 as sales slowly improved, Zastava GB introduced special trim levels in the form of the “Mediteran” and the“Caribbean”. At the same time, the car became available in small numbers in West Germany, France, Belgium and Holland.

By the time the first British users were getting used to their new Yugoslav machines, attention in Yugoslavia had moved away from the Stojadin towards the new “Yugo” series which began production in October 1980 and appeared on British roads from 1983 onward. The “Type 102” answered a call for a small, economical family car and was based mechanically on Fiat’s 127 hatchback. The styling of the car also owed much to the contemporary small Italian Autobianchi Abarth, which was never available in the UK.

The “Type 102” morphed into the early production Yugo 45 with a 903cc engine, later into the 55 with a 1,116cc engine and then the more powerful 65 fitted with a 1,301cc engine also became available on the UK market. The new Yugo competed with indigenous cars such as the Austin Mini-Metro and the Vauxhall Nova, as well as French models like the Citroen Visa and Talbot Samba. The “Yugo” was exported in large numbers (145,511) to the USA in the second half of the 1980s, where it was marketed as a bargain basement car. At the time, the Americans wrote very poor reviews of the Yugo although it subsequently became something of a cult vehicle, appearing in films such as Die Hard, Drowning Mona and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

In 1984 only, Zastava GB imported small numbers of the Zastava 128. After that, with the company’s branding altered to “Yugo Cars”, relegating the Zastava name to the small print, Zastava GB concentrated on selling the 101 range, branded as Yugo 311/313/511/513, and the 45/55 series. The cars sold steadily throughout the decade and even though they managed to avoid the dreadful reviews reserved for Lada and FSO, commentators in the British motoring press were rarely more than lukewarm in their praise of the car - A headline from 1986 read “The Yugo 55 is a good small car, but would you be seen in one?” Brand snobbery in the UK was just as prominent then as it is now.

In 1988, Zastava launched the first of its new “Florida” range, envisaged as a long-term replacement for the ageing Stojadin. Styled by Giorgetto Guigiaro, the car was a modern design for the time, and bore more than a passing resemblance to the Citroen BX and future Citroen Xantia. The “Florida”, marketed as the “Sana” in the UK, first appeared in Britain in 1990 and seemed set to fare well with positive early reviews. The Stojadin range ceased to be exported to the UK in 1991, with sales of the Sana under way.

Sadly, by the end of the 1980s, Yugoslavia was on the brink of a disintegration few would have envisaged under the leadership of Tito. Slovenia was the first to secede from the Federation in the middle of 1991, swiftly followed by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and finally Macedonia. Hostilities, other than in Macedonia, began not long afterwards.

This had direct implications for the company at Kragujevac. The Yugo had been envisaged as an all-Yugoslav car; the alternator came from Slovenia, the plastics and the interior came from factories in Croatia, the seats and rear boot-struts from Kosovo. The disintegration of the Yugoslav federation suddenly saw supplies dry up at Kragujevac and production rates declined steeply. The Sana may well have established Yugo as a fixture in the UK market in the 1990s but political developments left this prospect unrealized.

As the terrible events of the wars of Yugoslav succession (1991-95 and 1999) unfolded, Zastava GB became a barely noticed casualty. In Easter 1999, the Zastava factory in Kragujevac was targeted by NATO forces during the Kosovo campaign and whilst severely damaged was not put out of action. Supplies of vehicles to the UK were however reduced to a trickle in 1991-92 and with the imposition of UN sanctions on Slobodan Miloseviç’s rump Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia and Montenegro), the company folded in 1993. The remaining Yugos on dealer forecourts were sold at drastically reduced prices or written off altogether as economically unviable.

Since 1993

With the folding of the GB arm of the company, Zastava numbers began to drop precipitately on UK roads. 70,000 examples had been sold between 1981 and 1993, with some hanging on grimly until the late 90s or early 2000s. However, spares for the cars became increasingly hard to find prior to widespread availability of the internet and this undoubtedly contributed to their swift disappearance. The mechanic who looked after my first Zastava 513, said he hadn’t seen one for about ten years and indeed he had told the last owner that “I can’t help you, the factory has just been bombed…. “

Today, only 83 examples of all Yugo variants survive in Britain although there may well be a couple of dozen more cars stored in rarely visited garages or barns, which the DVLA (and everyone else) may have lost track of.

Astonishingly, Zastava survived the bloody dissolution of the old federation in the 1990s, and the international isolation that accompanied the Miloseviç years. Improvising and re-building the factory, its workers again began production of the Stojadin and the Yugo in increasing numbers, although production never equaled the profitable years of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Yugo was re-launched early in the 21^st century as the Zastava Koral IN and was Zastava’s most produced car whilst the Stojadin (re-badged as the Zastava Skala 55) and the Zastava Florida IN were also built. At the Belgrade motor show in 2008, the Zastava sales team proudly showed off the latest version of the Skala with an electronic dashboard, tweaked 1,116 cc engine and an opportunity to convert the car’s fuel system to LPG. The car was announced as the second cheapest production vehicle in the world with the advertising slogan “You keep buying them, so we’ll keep building them”. In addition to the factory in Serbia, Egypt’s nationalized car maker Al-Nasr built a CKD version of the Zastava 128 which was very popular with Cairo’s taxi drivers due to its ruggedness and easy maintenance.

By 2008, however, it became clear that Zastava’s future was as a private company, let loose from decades of state ownership. Many suitors came forward, but it was no surprise that FIAT eventually secured the winning bid to take-on Zastava as a going concern in a joint-ownership deal with the Serbian government. The Serbs control 33% of the company, with the Italian conglomerate controlling the remaining 67%

.

Sadly, for our members (and for Zastava owners and fans across the former Yugoslavia) FIAT’s first decision on taking over the plant in November 2008 was to cease all Zastava production. The last car ever made by Zastava, a Koral IN, rolled off the production line on the 20^th November of that year. The Zastava brand now only appears on a tiny number of Stojadin pick-ups which are still made by the company’s small commercial vehicle arm. Other than that, the marque is now defunct.  

In mid-2009, Al-Nasr also announced that they would no longer be making the Zastava 128 under licence, finally bringing to an end production of the vehicle worldwide.