The big scam, catch what you can... There was an ad hoc car buying cooperative made. Since no bank was crazy enough to give loans, because dinar was already unhooked from the mark, Ante Marković's program was let down the drain and the chaos began, this was the last year of SFRY, pepped up with the loads of money we had last year, buying cars was in order. At DBA we already had the third vehicle, a yugo poli, aka polika (as hungarian nicknames were made), aka polica (shelf). It was a two-seater with cargo hold under a plastic dome. Don't know why they branded it as a yugo, it had stojadin's (zastava 101, based on fiat 128) front end and engine. Whatever. That's where I learned to maneuver by big side mirrors, as the inner mirror was useless - there were two layers of glass to the rear, and in it you saw the front reflection far better than the rear view.
The solution to get a car was to associate, as in a cooperative. Some accountant put it together, who worked for one of our more prominent customers (and went independent pretty soon after, if she wasn't one already). It had about 20 members, who will chime in one car share a month, so that each month one toyota corolla will be bought. It will go to whoever is in line for the month, and the list will be made by lottery. The name tags were put into the kinder egg yolks and pulled out of a hat in pivnica. The kinder egg is a condiment, egg shaped, where only the outer shell is milk chocolate. Inside, there's this hollow yolk shell, and in it there's a tiny toy to be assembled, often very innovative, almost always different. From DBA five cars were ordered - one for Sale, Brata and Grgi, plus two for the office. The deal was to order our internal slots so that the office cars go last, as we already had three cars and meanwhile these three will contribute when really necessary, once they get their cars.
It went as it went, Sale was second or third in line and he got his red corolla; Grgi was seventh or ninth and he got his too. And around tenth they ran out of cars, the prices were fluctuating, inflation went crazy, people stopped paying and the whole scheme fell apart. Those who got them, got them, those who didn't, sorry, you paid for nothing. Or to treat those who got them. The two slots for office cars were around 17th position.
Brata would have got it if it only held for 2-3 more months, so he went nuts, of course. The DBA went nuts a little less, not the first time we lost money on something, not the last. Interestingly, Vanji bought the same model of corolla, unrelated to this. Brata later bought an Aleko or some newer model of lada, not the boxy one, and called it SBV, small battle vehicle, for being so heavy and strong, a little tank.
About a year later I sat at a customer of ours, in my street, installed the interest calculation app, and in the other room (behind an accordioned partition, not a wall) a meeting went on, where they were forming a car buying cooperative. I tried hard to not hear them, wanting just to finish the work and get lost, but they were loud. The lady in whose firm this was organized (office material wholesale and retail, possibly used to work in Presprom) was with them at times, and then would say "I'll leave you alone to iron these details out between yourselves" and would come to me. "Mom asks me what will happen to me in five years. You'll drive me around town rich and crazy, that's what will happen... do you hear this chaos?".
Incredible, indeed. As if they never heard how this ends, they start it from scratch, they know better. Don't know how this one ended, don't even remember whether I visited that customer afterwards, even though it's in my street.
(... 39 words...)