My tour of Serbia in ‘the worst car in history': from medieval castles to brutalist classics

The Guardian

29-04-2025

'Jump in, comrade,' my driver honks and calls out the window of the smallest, boxiest car I've ever seen: the communist vintage Yugo. I'm setting off on a tour of Yugoslav-era Belgrade with driver Vojin Žugić from Yugoverse tours, a company in the business of cold-war nostalgia. The car is a time capsule, with its little cube headlights, cranky gear stick and cassette player. Its horn sounds delightfully cheeky, and the smell of diesel and old leather seats is strong. We trundle around the Serbian capital for half a day, taking in communism's most striking bridges and sites, honking merrily at the many drivers who overtake us. All of them smile and wave, for the Yugo holds fond memories in this part of the world.
Driving around the hippodrome next to Ada Bridge, or under the gravity-defying arch of the experimental brutalist Genex tower, it's easy to get caught up in Žugić's nostalgia – even though he's only 24. 'I love the feel of the mechanics, the simple geometry,' he says of the car. We park at the tower and take the lift to the top floor at 140 metres for spectacular city views from its spaceship-like windows. When it was designed in 1977, this was architecture of an imagined socialist utopia. Though the concrete is a bit shabby up close, the tower has kept its photogenic appeal. Just like our Yugo.
Nearly everybody's family car in the Balkans in the second half of the 20th century, the Yugo was made by Yugoslavian manufacturer Zastava in collaboration with Fiat. Italy had good business relations behind the iron curtain, and gave the designs of the Fiat 500 and 600 to Zastava to reproduce locally. These days, they're mostly driven by older folk who haven't updated their car since the factory ceased production. But in Belgrade, Yugoverse, a group of about 50 young enthusiasts, led by mechanic Jovana Ninković, have been giving these forgotten classics a new lease of life: collecting them, refitting them, meeting up for rallies and driving visitors around.
Žugić tells me the appeal of collecting Zastavas comes partly from 'a responsibility to maintain our country's 20th-century heritage, which is fast disappearing'. The Museum of Automobiles closed in 2024, the brutalist Hotel Yugoslavia was bulldozed in January this year to make way for a Ritz-Carlton, and the iconic Jugosped warehouse, once home to artists' studios and secret raves, has been torn apart to be replaced by a Saudi-backed development of luxury flats.
While the generation that came of age during the brutal 1990s Balkan wars want to erase the past, many young people are looking further back to more peaceful Yugoslav times to forge their identities, Žugić tells me, as we cross the soaring Gazela Bridge over the Sava. 'We see these cars as an essential part of our history. We made them here, we have to look after them because nobody else will,' he says. It's part of a growing passion among gen Z Serbs, such as influencer @easternblocgirl, to preserve a dying heritage and celebrate a brutalist aesthetic in the Balkans.
To explore farther afield, I book a tour with Vlajko Vladan, another young Yugo enthusiast and guide for a youth-led restoration project at Maglič Castle, which has a similar ethos to Yugoverse, chiefly to restore old broken things. He picks me up south of Belgrade and we set off into central Serbia's rolling countryside. We pass the town of Guca, where every August a legendary Gypsy jazz trumpet festival takes place. Soon we find ourselves winding through mountains. It's here our boxy white Yugo comes into its own, chuntering along the bendy roads gracelessly but gloriously.
To one side, a tiny train on its way to the Kosovo border runs alongside a river that feeds into the Ibar valley, dotted with little villages. Some houses have Yugos in varying states of repair parked outside. Their owners look up from tending their vegetables to give us waves of solidarity as we zoom past.
We round a bend and the stone fortress of Maglič comes into view on a dramatic hilltop. The name derives from the word magla, meaning mist in Serbo-Croat, which seems apt given the atmospheric fog rising from the river. Built in the 13th century to withstand Mongol invasions, the crumbling castle was left to decay until a group of young locals decided to save it – and while the state has taken over restoration, the Magličgrad guesthouse, just below the castle, is still community-owned.
After crossing the river by raft, we climb up to the castle and are welcomed by a group of twentysomethings with mandatory shots of rakia – plum brandy from this region. They show me inside the cosy wooden houses, with their stoves and kilim rugs.
Before the light fades, I hike from the castle to a waterfall used as a wild swimming spot. It's here the Maglič team host barbecues and live music nights reminiscent of their grandparents' Yugoslav era – 'a slower time', says Vladan. When I get back, there's a hearty dinner of sausages, pickles and lentils waiting – the kind of hot meal you dream about while on a bracing hike. That night I sleep soundly, well fed and well driven.
The next morning, the Yugo has a few problems starting in the cold. I'm not entirely surprised. Yugos were once nicknamed 'the worst cars in history'. They were the butt of jokes in US films such as Tom Hanks' 1987 buddy cop comedy Dragnet, in which the Yugo was a last-resort getaway drive after Hanks crashed everything else. In Die Hard 3, Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson jumpstart a gold Yugo with a screwdriver.
After much huffing and puffing, our Yugo gets on the road again and I wind down the window to watch the scenery slip by as we head to the Suva Planina mountain, the foothills of the Stara Planina mountains which straddle eastern Serbia and Bulgaria before sweeping down to the Black Sea. We stop for lunch at Kafana Dagi Plus, a restaurant/pub/live music venue that's beyond kitsch but serves excellent food in the southern city of Niš. Then we drive to a scenic spot (near the restaurant Etno dom kafana) to hike the Trem mountain trail. The route is more dramatic than I expect, along a narrow ridge that cuts a seam through the clouds. The valley below is utterly unspoilt, full of lush green hues and tiny villages.
On the long evening drive back to Belgrade, the car's little headlights sweep along the dark road and we blast old 1980s cassettes. I make summer plans to hire one of my Yugo drivers again and head to the Balkan seaside of Montenegro or Croatia, arriving at the coast in style. It will be hot in the chuffy old car, and the windows will be the only air conditioning, but little drawbacks like this don't bother Yugo lovers. Žugić has even found a way to fix an electric engine into his Yugo so it runs totally sustainably. 'That's the thing with these timeless cars – they're easy to refit,' he says. 'Put another engine in and you've got a brand new ride.'
The trip was provided by Yugoverse, which runs tours of Belgrade from April to September (from €65 for a half-day vintage car ride) and Magličgrad, which has rooms and tours from €45 for two people, or €80 for up to seven people, free for volunteers at the site