Dragan Begovic, at 45 years old, is among the youngest employees at Zastava Automotive, the state-owned Serbian carmaker. He joined as an engineer in 1989, when annual output at the factory in Kragujevac, hub of the former Yugoslavia’s motor industry, peaked at nearly 200,000 vehicles.

Within two years, war and sanctions had severed many of Zastava’s supply chains and splintered its domestic market. Ten years later Nato bombing did so much damage that the company has been hand painting its cars ever since.