"What do you do when a Yugo don't go? It's about taking a useless product and giving it a new life," said O'Callaghan, also the exhibit's curator. "I was blown away by the concepts. That's the beauty of this, the imagination." O'Callaghan drew on his experience as a set designer when he headed a project to stage a show at New York's Grand Central Station. His inspiration to fill the 20,000 square feet of space came when he saw some New York area children playing around an abandoned Yugo.
"To me, it looked like the car was in pretty good shape, but I found out the kid's dad couldn't get it repaired. There are no parts, no warranties. When the company went out of business, these poor people got stuck with these cars," said O'Callaghan. By placing an ad in a paper for "Yugos dead or alive," O'Callaghan wound up 39 Yugos, mostly dead, for $3,600.