Hold onto your cevapi: the Yugo is back, and it’ll get a manual gearbox

They will be partying on the streets of Kragujevac tonight, because the Yugo is back. Yep, entrepreneur, engineer, automotive exec and university professor Dr. Aleksandar Bjelić has acquired the naming rights to Zastava’s communist cult hero, and he’s teamed up with Serbian designer Darko Marčeta to produce this 1:5 scale model that previews a future production car.

Looks super cool, doesn’t it? That’s possibly the first time anyone has ever described a Yugo in that way, but we’re seeing a retrotastic cross between a Lancia Delta Integrale and a modern-day Hyundai Ioniq 5.

And don’t worry, because the Yugo isn’t about to become yet another identikit crossover. The newly formed Yugo Automobile showed off its model at the Car Design Event 2025 and said that the production car would be a B-segment hatchback, so it’ll rival things like the Toyota Yaris, the Renault Clio and the Volkswagen Polo. It will also be a three-door! Its makers say that the layout “underscores the affordability and the sportiness of the new model”. This is sounding excellent.

It gets better too. The new Yugo will apparently launch with combustion engines and a choice of either manual or automatic gearboxes. A small, affordable manual hatchback in this day and age? Hurrah! We’re also told “electrified versions are possible, as well as different body versions”. Reborn Yugo Cabrio? Yes please.

Despite being launched in 1980 using shortened Fiat 128 underpinnings, production of the original Yugo in Kragujevac continued all the way through to 2008. Almost 800,000 were built in total, with the dinky hatch providing basic, affordable transportation for the masses. Also provided the punchline to many, many jokes.

This new one shouldn’t be, though. In fact, the next step will apparently be the “announcement of a sporty derivative” alongside further technical details at CDE Classic later in the year. We’ll then be treated to a fully functioning prototype at the 2027 Belgrade Expo. Fingers crossed it has slightly more than the 45 horsepower of early original Yugos.