Squeezing a Lemon Again.(American entrepreneur hopes to revive Yugo factory near Belgrade)

The affordable-car guru who brought the drab, boxy Yugo to the United States in the 1980s was laughed out of the country. Now Malcolm Bricklin is back in Serbia, trying to revive the Yugo factory outside Belgrade and dreaming of a new assault on the world market. He's got a $200 million joint venture with the government of the former Yugoslavia, namesake of the Yugo. The new models will still be small and unbeatably cheap (as low as $11,000). This time, however, they'll go by a new name. "These will be fun cars that people will be proud to drive," says Bricklin, who for now calls them Visionary Vehicles.

Even his Serb partners don't quite know what to make of this relentlessly optimistic American entrepreneur. Bricklin made a fortune in hardware before getting his start in autos. He imported Subaru minis to the United States in the 1960s, before Japan had a name for cars. In the 1970s he built his dream car, the Bricklin sportster, but it went the way of the DeLorean. In the 1980s he brought the Yugo out of Yugoslavia, and rolling it out a second time won't be easy. Years of neglect have left the Zastava plant a stark symbol of Serbia's cratered road to recovery after a decade of war. Bricklin is gambling that low labor costs, a reform-minded government and a global fad for affordable little vehicles will make a success of the new models--a convertible, a two-door coupe and a pickup truck. "This time things will be different," he says. "With a new regime there is a will to work at the factory, and we won't have problems with quality and deliveries like last time round."

In its 1980s heyday Zastava turned out 220,000 Yugos a year. Bricklin and his partners sold some 160,000 of them in the United States before pulling out in 1988, trailed by jokes that still circulate on the Internet: "How do you double the value of a Yugo? Fill the gas tank." In 1995 New York hosted an art show of Yugos turned into toasters and toilets.

Times were even crueler at home. Civil war left the Zastava plant a sad shell surrounded by unsold Yugos and bombed-out buildings. Sanctions against dictator Slobodan Milosevic cut off the plant from world markets and new technology. "A Yugo is fine for short journeys in Serbia, but I can't imagine people around the world buying them again," says cabby and Yugo owner Milan Avramovic. "I worked for 32 years in Zastava and helped clear the rubble after the NATO bombs, but maybe it's just too late now to rescue it."