BOL automobiles...

[cfz2882]

mid-'80s BOL imports

seems there was a bit of a boom in small,simple cars in the mid '80s that continued
into the early '90s:yugo '85-90,volkswagen fox '87-93,hyundai excell '86- ,subaru
justy,chevy sprint,ETC...
Some yugos actually lasted for over 15yrs though from what i understand they had
a faulty piston design inherited from fiat;fiat corrected the fault(that could
result in broken piston from high rpm flogging)but apparently nobody told yugo
of the improved design...yugo had a seperate "export grade"assembly area for yugos
bound for export LOL
The volkswagen fox,made in brazil,had lengthwise mounted engine though it was
frontdrive(this car my fave of the BOL mid '80s imports)
In canada,russian ladas,czech skodas were avalible and they also got the RWD
hyundai pony starting about 1984.
For the chevette,i heard GM wanted to discontinue the car around 1979,but it kept
selling good well into the mid '80s so they kept making it-i think production
stopped in early 1988 and i kinda remember kind of a closeout sale on the chevette
at that time,a price of $5200 IIRC-cheaper than anything except yugo and hyundai.

 

[hydralique]

The Yugo engine is based on the Fiat 1100/1300/1500 single overhead cam family introduced for the 128 in the very late '60s. It's an excellent engine, extraordinarily smooth, durable, and capable of extended high RPM use. Part of this is due to the overhead cam valvetrain design and part to the very short stroke that keeps piston speeds down. Because it was intended as Fiat's middle range engine it didn't get the hemi head of the larger twincam 124 engines, but Fiat had years of experience in making simple but effective wedge heads that breathed well.

 

I've had three of these engines in X1/9s and received good service from all of them. The last one was a little tired but still running decently with over 180,000 miles on it, much of it in heavy traffic, when I sold it to a new owner some time ago. He's a collector and still uses the car on a limited basis. Even wth stock rods and crank a properly built Fiat single cam engine with some additional compression, heavy duty valve springs and a hotter cam will happily turn 8000 rpm. If Yugo had any problem with that engine it was due to their ineptness, not Fiat's original design.

 

Probably the weakest part of a single cam Fiat powertrain is the gearbox. It isn't bad but as noted in the owner's manual and shop manual oil with hypoid additive must not be used as it will damage the synchronizers. Once the synchos get weak the teeth become damaged and a gearbox rebuild is needed, whereas some stronger gearboxes may go years with bad synchros and just make crunching noises (Alfa gearboxes come to mind, second gear synchro always seems to go early). I would guess that gearbox woes put more Yugos into the scrapyard than engine problems.

 

[cfz2882]

fiat in the USA

don't know if its true,but i heard somewhere that part of the reason fiat developed
a bad reputation for reliability in the '70s is dealers were supposed to have
buyers of new fiats return to the dealer after a certain mileage to have the head
bolts retorqed and this was not getting done-resulting in blown head gaskets...
i've never owned an intact fiat,but i have firsthand experience with russian ladas
LOL-those are pretty much a russki fiat,at least the 2101-2107 RWD sedans.