Ad To Give Away Junk Yugo Has Phone Ringing For Days

Jon and Ronda Chapman just wanted to get rid of the silver-and-gray Yugo with the broken clutch that was cluttering their farm near this southeast Washington town.

So they put an ad in the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin offering to give it away - just to get the old beater off their property.

The phone immediately started ringing. And it rang. And rang. And rang. For days.

“There have been hundreds of calls. The phone rings every 10 minutes,” Ronda Chapman said. “I actually unplugged my phone when I went to bed.”

The 1988 Yugo had a good motor and was in fairly good shape aside from the clutch, she said.

“It was a piece of junk in our yard,” Ronda Chapman said. “We didn’t have time to fix it up to sell it.”

The ad appeared in the freebies section of Tuesday’s paper, and the car went to the very first caller.

But the calls kept coming, into the night.

The Chapmans called Wednesday to cancel the ad, but it ran that day, generating another round of calls.

Most callers hung up quickly when they learned the car was gone.

But one woman was not easily discouraged. After expressing disappointment, she asked if there were any other cars the Chapmans wanted to give away.