01
Origins
Zastava's 101, launched in 1971 and later sold as the Skala, took Fiat's brilliant 128 — the front-drive template Dante Giacosa had just perfected — and added the one thing Turin initially refused it: a practical opening tailgate. The result was arguably more useful than the original, and it became Yugoslavia's definitive family car, built in Kragujevac in the millions alongside its Yugo sibling and exported widely at fighting prices. Its long life turned from virtue to elegy: production survived the country's collapse, sanctions, and the 1999 bombing of the factory, continuing until 2008 — thirty-seven years, with the last cars mechanically much like the first. The Skala ended as Europe's cheapest new car and its most durable time capsule, a 1971 idea outliving the state that built it.
Zastava Yugo 311 · User Asterion (took the photo himself) on en.wikipedia · CC BY 2.5
