Zastava 101

Yugo 101 Skala 55/ Zastava Skala 55 Prepared for BBC Top Gear ZastavaNacionale.
.com 2006-2010 November 11th, 2010
Yugo 101 Skala 55/ Zastava Skala 55 Prepared for BBC Top Gear ZastavaNacionale.com 2006-2010 November 11th, 2010
Your 101 Skala 55 ! The life and times of your Skala 55! Built from October 1971 through November 2008 ! Zastava/ Yugo GB! Production, 1970s ! End of production (Nov 21st, 2008)! 15/10/71 - 21/11/08 ! Pickup truck (still in production)!
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Your 101 Skala 55

Going by VIN #VX1128A0001001557, your 101 Skala 55 was most likely built in 1989 or 1990, as a !90 model. If this is indeed the case, it was among the last Zastava cars built in Yugoslavia, before the country plunged into civil war. You might have known it as the Yugo 511 in the U.K.
Your Skala 55 marked the third major revision of the Zastava 101 that debuted in 1971 as a variant of Fiat!s 128, with a Zastava-designed rear hatch and fascia. Along with the square headlamps of the second revision, this model has a refreshed interior (which in retrospect seems more dowdy than the old, rally-inspired stuff from the !70s). The revised range, which debuted in 1988, was marked chiey by a rectangular frame, inset in the grille (see photo above). Although earlier 101 models were also sold in 3-door body styles, by this point only a 5-door model was available. Roughly 3,900mm long, 1,600mm wide and 1,350mm tall, it weighed 835 kilograms.
The 101 Skala 55"s front wheels were powered by a 55-horsepower, 1.1-liter (1,116cc) overhead-cam, Fiat 4-cylinder engine, designed by Ferrari V12 engineer Aurelio Lampredi and built entirely domestically by DMB Motori of Rakovica (pron. rak-o-vitsa), near Belgrade. With 9.2:1 compression, this engine is famously oversquare, with a 80mm bore rather wider than the 55.5mm stroke is long.
Photo: Auto Klub magazine (Croatia)
When new, the Skala 55 would hit 62 mph (100 km/h) from rest in roughly 15 seconds, and could do about 145
km/h at out. Specications suggest that it took about 35 seconds to cover 1,000 meters from rest. Fuel consumption on the combined cycle was about 7.5-8 liters/ 100 kilometers (9 liters in town, 6.6 liters at a steady 90 km/h). There was also a Skala 65, which had a 65-horsepower, 1.3-liter unit (1,299cc). Although the little Zastava Yugo hatchback by this point had a Bosch fuel-injected version of the Skala 65"s engine, no Skala ever had fuel injection. As a result, your car is carbureted (likely single-barrel IPM 32 or MGV 12, although the Skala 65 had a two-barrel Weber unit), and uses leaded petrol (fuel tank capacity 36 liters). Ignition is (Bosch) electronic. Choke is manual (auto on 65). At the time, Zastava had just launched the Florida (in Britain, Sana), with a new gearbox. I believe your car, which may or may not be a 5-speed, beneted from those improvements. Gear ratios are (probably) between 4.091:1 (1st) and 0.863:1 (5th, if so equipped), with a 3.765:1 nal drive. Tires are (probably) 145/80 R13s (the Skala 65 had 155/70 tires, which make a big difference to handling).
Suspension is all-around independent, with MacPherson struts up front and transverse leaf springing at the rear. Braking is by discs up front (227mm) and drums (186mm) at the rear. Steering is rack-and-pinion, with a 10.3-meter turning radius. Essentially, it is a practical, 5-door notchback which is small by today"s standards, but which was cheap, robust, rorty, and packaged well. Between 1971 and 2008, this workhorse sold more than a million copies.
Photo: A
uto Klub
magazin e
(Croatia
The life and times of your Skala 55
Zastava was always quite proud of the 101/ Skala 55, which had front-wheel drive and allaround independent suspension, and which because of modications made to the rear marked the company"s rst serious engineering efforts. It is important to note here that although Yugoslavia was a socialist country, it was not part of the Eastern Bloc. Its citizens traveled freely, and Yugoslavia itself traded freely. Whereas Lada bought Fiat tooling to create Togliatti, Zastava allied itself with Fiat in a manner that it hoped would ensure continual input from the Italians, in addition to independent production. When the 101 beat Fiat"s
The Zastava R&D facility houses this early 101, once rallied by Croatian driver Jovica Palikovi#
own 3P to the 3-door 128 game (there was no Fiat 5-door 128), it became Zastava!s rst export, and to prove its mettle the factory even took a group of them from Kragujevac to Kilimanjaro. Lada has often been accused of stomping out the Italian character from Fiat"s cars but, by contrast, Zastava generally reveled in making affordable machines possessed of a surprising degree of enthusiasm. Part of that was because Yugoslav roads were fairly decent, so the modications made to Ladas were unnecessary. Note that the 101/ Skala 55 produces its peak power at a heady 6,000 rpm (peak torque is about 80 Nm at 3,000 rpm). Indeed, once warm it needs - wants - to
Crash test, Zastava 101 prototype
be revved high and often. A healthy car"s
engine is quite willing, with an unusually rorty engine note, for an econobox. Despite its additional orice, the car was very nearly as rigid as the Fiat 128 sedan, a fact borne out by rallying success across Yugoslavia and abroad (Tour d"Europe 1973 and 1974).
Prvoslav Rakovi# (third from right), managing director of Zavodi Crvena Zastava, faces the media at the 1971 Belgrade International Motor Show
France was one of Zastava"s rst export markets. There, the car was called the 1100, because Peugeot objected to the use of the 101 (x0x) moniker. In time, Zastava exported it to Britain, too, as (rst) the Zastava 1100 and 1300, and later, the Yugo 311/ 313/ 511/ 513.
Zastava turned out almost 90,000 101s in 1979, 9,000 of which in October of that year alone. The following year, as almost 450 left the line each day, Yugoslavia elected it car of the decade. In 1990, or thereabouts (the era in which your car was built), Zastava had made its 3$ millionth automobile and was about to make its millionth Skala 55. The logistics of its production were designed to keep Yugoslavia together. The dashboard came from Croatia; the lighting systems, from Serbia and Slovenia; the seat belts, from Macedonia, and the struts, from Serbia"s Kosovo province. The basic design was already twenty years old, and had resisted several attempts to be put to rest. Zastava wanted to focus on the Florida (in Britain, Sana), a car on which, it is rumored, 700 million euros had been spent developing. Like the Skala 55, the Florida had 5
doors; but it was a thoroughly modern car, with Giugiaro lines (Zastava adapted his Lancia proposal), front struts and oorpan derived from the Fiat Tipo, a gearbox breathed on by Porsche Engineering, and a rear end similar to that of Volkswagen"s Golf II (VW was courting Zastava at the time). Reporting for Top Gear in the late !80s, Tiff Needell remarked that it was surprisingly sporting to drive1 . Even twenty years later, in 2008, Mike Duff wrote for Autocar that the Florida he"d driven during a trip to Kragujevac was a rather good steer2 . Alas, !twas was not to be. When the advent of the Yugoslav Civil War in 1991, Zastava (based in Kragujevac, Serbia) lost its domestic supplier network. At rst, it looked to Europe; but economic sanctions against the two republics remaining in Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro, meant that Zastava could source parts only locally. Production of the Florida continued (much to the surprise of many at the time); but so, too, did the Skala 55 and 65, Skala 128 sedan (a Fiat 128 clone), and the Yugo. The Skala and carbureted Yugos (later, Koral In) were particularly popular in these years for the ease with which they could be converted to run on natural gas. Zastava eventually offered this as a factory option.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCe4lQ2K08Q Autocar, February 20th, 2008 9
Although revisions - some of them major, with Peugeot EURO 3 power - came in 2002, this sub-10k-euro line-up would continue until Nov 2008, when the Serbian government entered into a joint-venture with Fiat. It"s likely they"ll build the next-gen IDEA/ Multipla/ Lancia Musa.
Built from October 1971 through November 2008

Much like the Austin Mini, Citroen 2CV and Renault 4, the Skala 55 was sound in concept and proved evergreen. Better known as the 101 or stojedan/ stojadin (pron. sto-ya-deen), the Skala 55 was made up until very recently; production ended two years ago, almost to the day. Zastava had originally planned to do away with it several times, most recently in the mid-90s. Indeed, its sedan sister - the Skala 128 - died in 2003 (even as they kept making CKDs and shipping them to Egypt for assembly there, where the car remains a popular taxi). Yet the 101 wouldn"t die. Essentially a notchback version of Fiat"s 128, it remained very popular throughout its life. In 2008, as production drew to a close, it was Serbia"s 2nd/ 3rd best-seller, swapping places month-to-month with the Yugo hatchback (rebadged Zastava Koral In and Koral In L) and the Zastava 10 (a locally-assembled Fiat Punto II$). The chief reason was price. A Koral In was about 4,000 euros, new, in 2008. A Florida In stickered at 5,200 euros. The Skala 55 cost 3,750 euros, making it among the world"s ve most affordable cars, in a class with the Lada Riva, Maruti"s 800, and one or two Chinese cars (Tata"s Nano was a few months away). There was another reason to pick the Skala over the Koral: practicality. It was larger, and opening that rear door and folding the rear seats freed up 1,010 liters of cargo space. Yugoslavs liked to build their own houses, and had particular fondness for putting up weekend homes on the coast, or in the forests of Bosnia. With good carrying capacity and independent rear suspension, the Skala 55 was quite adept. As such, although the Yugo is Zastava"s most famous product, the 101/ Skala 55 was built in greater numbers: 1,045,458 versus 794,428. Indeed, the Yugo itself was heavily derived from the 101.
2007 - We"re still building, you"re still buying
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Zastava/ Yugo GB
The 101/ Skala 55 was the rst Zastava exported to the United Kingdom, in 1982, as the 1100 & 1300. A year later, these became the Yugo 311 (3-door, 1.1), Yugo 313 (3-door, 1.3), Yugo 511 (5-door, 1.1), & Yugo 513 (5-door, 1.3). Skala 128 was 411/ 413.
Production, 1970s
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End of production (Nov 21st, 2008)
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15/10/71 - 21/11/08
Pickup truck (still in production)
ZastavaNacionale.com 2006-2010 Miroslav Pa%i# & Dragan Rom%evi# with the assistance of - Zastava Automobili, Kragujevac, Serbia - Sne&ana An'elkovi#/ Zastava-Info - Milan Markovi#/ www.jeja.rs - Danijel Kadarjan/ Pri%a o jednom brendu

Zastava 101

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Zastava 101

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Yugo 101 Skala 55/ Zastava Skala 55 Prepared for BBC Top Gear ZastavaNacionale.

.com 2006-2010 November 11th, 2010

Your 101 Skala 55

Photo: Auto Klub magazine (Croatia)

The life and times of your Skala 55

be revved high and often. A healthy car"s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCe4lQ2K08Q Autocar, February 20th, 2008 9

Built from October 1971 through November 2008

End of production (Nov 21st, 2008)

Pickup truck (still in production)

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