What do you call a Yugo with a flat tire? Totaled. What’s included in every Yugo owner’s manual? A bus schedule. What do you call a Yugo that breaks down after 100 miles? An overachiever. How do you double the value of your Yugo?  Fill the tank full of gas.  How do you make a Yugo go faster?  Hook it up to a fast tow truck.

Americans love to hate the Yugo. It has been included on — and topped — many worst-car lists, including TIME’s 50 worst cars of all time. In The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History, Jason Vuic details why — despite the book’s clever title — the Yugo isn’t the worst car ever. Vuic explores how this little East European car that couldn’t quickly fell from “Yugomania” glory to being one of the most loathed cars of all time.

The Yugo has been called a hopelessly degenerate hunk of trash and a vile little car. Critics have said it’s hard to view on a full stomach. It’s easy to start feeling bad for the little guy.
Oh, sure. I had these memories as a kid in the 1980s of the car being panned by everyone, but I didn’t approach this book just to make fun of the car. I like little cars. I really didn’t pan the car. I’ve read a couple reviews that say, “Vuic doesn’t lay off the Yugo.” But I’m not really calling it anything. I’m trying to examine why Americans have made it such an icon for failure. I wanted to understand why we hate this car so much, even though most Americans have never seen a Yugo, let alone driven one.

But you deem it the “worst car in history” in the title of your book.
Absolutely. That is what it is known as to anyone over 35 who has heard of the Yugo. But I actually believe it is not the worst car in history. If a car is marketed in the United States and sold in the United States, that means it passed certain presale standards. [The Yugo] had to pass a safety test, a crash test. It had to pass an emissions test.

So it is one of the worst cars in American history, but not necessarily in the world’s history?
Americans tend to see America as the world. The Yugo was a bad car in America in the 1980s, but we don’t realize that there are many, many cars that never dreamed of coming to America. The Russian Ladas and the Czech Skodas of the world. Just the fact that the Yugo came here meant it was far and away better than many other cars in many other countries.