The Yugo

Six months after its American introduction in 1985, the Yugo had become a punch line; within a year, it was a staple of late-night comedy. For most Americans, that's where the story begins and ends. Hardly: the saga of the short, unhappy life of the Yugo, the men who built it, the men who imported it, and the decade that embraced and discarded it is outrageous, astounding, and one of the greatest untold business-cum-morality tales of the 1980s. Mix one rabid entrepreneur, several thousand "good" communists, a willing U.S. State Department, the shortsighted Detroit auto industry, and…