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Industry-Leading Tamper-Proof Fuel Cap - 1989 Yugo GVL Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.comEdmunds.com Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 10,316
edited December 2015 in Yugo
Industry-Leading Tamper-Proof Fuel Cap - 1989 Yugo GVL Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds long-term 1989 Yugo GVL provides effective low-tech security against fuel thieves.

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Comments

  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    You know...we haven't actually gotten a fuel economy report on the Yugo. I know it was going to be sort of rough, considering the sludge and carb issue, but now that it's fixed, what are y'all getting? How's the '89 Yugo with state of the 70s technology doing stacked against other econoboxes with 40 years of technology advancements doing?
  • jakek66jakek66 Member Posts: 60
    ^^^ I bet the current cars do much better than you think compared to this. My guess is it gets 25-30 mpg, 35 if lucky. That's in a car with no safety features, extremely small and uncomfortable, SLOW, with no luxuries. My '16 GTI gets 34 MPG without a hybrid and can go 0-60 in under 6 seconds. They'd never dream of that in 1989.
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    jakek66 said:

    ^^^ I bet the current cars do much better than you think compared to this. My guess is it gets 25-30 mpg, 35 if lucky. That's in a car with no safety features, extremely small and uncomfortable, SLOW, with no luxuries. My '16 GTI gets 34 MPG without a hybrid and can go 0-60 in under 6 seconds. They'd never dream of that in 1989.

    @jakek66 : I agree with what you're saying. The Yugo isn't anything you'd scream about wanting. It's absolutely doubtful that you'd take a Yugo over any other economy car today, whether you're looking at comfort, style, fuel economy, dependability, or whatever else you can think of. But, for a budget minded person, a $600 dollar Yugo may make sense, even with "only" a 25-30 mpg fuel economy. It used to be that a lot of people bought motorcycles due to the fuel economy. Anymore, that argument isn't valid.
  • brianknightbrianknight Member Posts: 7
    daryleason said:

    jakek66 said:

    ^^^ I bet the current cars do much better than you think compared to this. My guess is it gets 25-30 mpg, 35 if lucky. That's in a car with no safety features, extremely small and uncomfortable, SLOW, with no luxuries. My '16 GTI gets 34 MPG without a hybrid and can go 0-60 in under 6 seconds. They'd never dream of that in 1989.

    @jakek66 : I agree with what you're saying. The Yugo isn't anything you'd scream about wanting. It's absolutely doubtful that you'd take a Yugo over any other economy car today, whether you're looking at comfort, style, fuel economy, dependability, or whatever else you can think of. But, for a budget minded person, a $600 dollar Yugo may make sense, even with "only" a 25-30 mpg fuel economy. It used to be that a lot of people bought motorcycles due to the fuel economy. Anymore, that argument isn't valid.
    If the only thing your budget allows is a Yugo (of any price); then you don't have a budget; you have a problem.

    Look at all that Edmunds has spent on the Yugo since they got it, with the repairs. They have the luxury of a company expense account to pay for them all and a fleet to drive when this one needs to get towed/pushed/dragged somewhere - someone with only $600 to spend on a car likely wouldn't be able to keep up the repairs or have other cars to use when this one goes offline.

    Wasn't the Yugo supposed to be a penalty box, anyway? Just once I'd like to see a blog entry for it from someone who was forced to drive it against his will - because, penalty box. :D
  • thecardoc3thecardoc3 Member Posts: 5,858
    FWIW. It takes very little effort to defeat one of those locking caps and that doesn't mean you have to destroy it. The only thing that is required is that you have a way to lock the upper and lower halves of the cap together just like the lock cylinder does.
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    @brianknight : What you're saying about the Yugo is true on cost of repairs. But where the person who spends $600 on a Yugo differs is that odds are favorable they'd do more of the repairs themselves. This is sort of the mentality that Edmunds erred on, in my opinion, when they did the long-term road test on the Lexus ES here a year or two ago, where they bought a used car and tried to see if it was worth it compared to a new car. However, instead of doing what most people would do; buy the car, and only pay for repairs as they accumulated, they "budgeted" a new-car's monthly cost and applied it to the used car. No one that's going to buy a cheap used car is going to say "I'll still budget $650 towards my car." What they'd really do is buy it and drive it until they have to do something to it. So I think their cost analysis was way off.
  • longtimelurkerlongtimelurker Member Posts: 455
    Maybe they could spend a few bucks getting it vacuumed out.
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    Frankly...I think they should go Low-Buck Redneck and use an old oil rag as a gas cap. How many times I saw that growing up in the 80s and 90s on craptacular cars, I couldn't even begin to tell you.
  • desmoliciousdesmolicious Member Posts: 671
    edited January 2016
    daryleason said:

    Frankly...I think they should go Low-Buck Redneck and use an old oil rag as a gas cap. How many times I saw that growing up in the 80s and 90s on craptacular cars, I couldn't even begin to tell you.

    Ah yes, the rolling Molotov Cocktail. A classic look.
  • daryleasondaryleason Member Posts: 501
    desmolicious said:

    daryleason said:

    Frankly...I think they should go Low-Buck Redneck and use an old oil rag as a gas cap. How many times I saw that growing up in the 80s and 90s on craptacular cars, I couldn't even begin to tell you.

    Ah yes, the rolling Molotov Cocktail. A classic look.
    Sure, it might blow up...but it's Eastern European. It might do that on it's own anyways. You have "Day Two" mods for a car that should fit with the persona of the car. So for something like classic muscle, big rubber on the back, foxtale from the mirror, open headers on the engine. On a Yugo, you do oil-rag gascaps
  • milos_mmilos_m Member Posts: 2
    I live in Serbia, own and drive a Yugo, and I also have issues opening the cap and often can't do it myself either! :D Though, I refuel it once in a few years, as it runs (almost solely, and very happily) on LPG, ever since 2008. One more remarkable thing to note is that Yugo, as far as I know, also has an anti-siphoning device built into the tank! My father discovered it once he tried to siphon some fuel from a car to use in his motorbike, as he regularly did so with his previous car. Also, Yugo has another factory built theft-protection mechanism. Steering wheel will lock into a certain position if turned around with the ignition key removed! It's a mechanical protection, a metal "tooth" fits into a hole made specifically for the purpose in the steering wheel axle. It is released again by placing and turning the ignition key a little to retract the "tooth" from it's hole in the axle - the steering wheel will unlock and rotate freely again.
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