#Yugo June 9

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June 2026 several of us are going to take on the 30-Day Movie Scene Coach4aday Challenge. Each day we share a YouTube clip from a movie and explain what is intriguing about that particular scene. It is a simple daily activity of sharing a Movie Scene. My focus today is on the preposterous amount of YUGO cars in the 2000 film “Drowning Mona“.

This month marks the 78th consecutive month that friends Jeff Neelon and Jaclyn Donovan have taken on some sort of challenge. For June 2026 participants simply commit to sharing one movie scene from a film. Each scene just needs to be accompanied by a simple explanation on what is happening or why it was chosen. Hope you decide to join us or enjoy the clips we share.

Day 9-Yugo Cars

My friends think that I am not a sophisticated film connoisseur because I loved the 2000 movie “Drowning Mona“. What made it hilarious to me was the sheer number of Yugo cars that it featured. It didn’t hurt that it had Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Will Ferrell as part of the cast.

Growing up in the 1970’s people my age knew of the Yugo and especially its reputation. The Yugo was a small, inexpensive hatchback built by the Yugoslav automaker Zastava Automobiles.

The Yugo came to the United States in 1985 through the efforts of American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin. Believing there was a market for an ultra-affordable new car, Bricklin arranged to import the Yugo from what was then Yugoslavia. The entry-level Yugo GV (“Great Value”) debuted at a sticker price of about $3,990, making it the least expensive new car available in America at the time. Despite the price it proved to be a “Lemon“.

Drowning Mona centers on the suspicious death of the notoriously unpleasant Mona Dearly played by Bette Midler, whose Yugo plunges into a river. As the local sheriff investigates, he discovers that nearly everyone in Verplanck, New York, had a reason to want Mona dead. The film explains the town’s unusual abundance of Yugo’s by claiming that the automaker selected Verplanck in 1975 as a testing site, resulting in nearly every resident driving one of the quirky little cars.

Going to share two scenes

Video Clip #1

The trailer

Video Clip #2

Video collage of Yugo’s