Junkyard Find: 1990 Geo Metro LSi Convertible
GM and Ford sold quite a few of their badge-engineered micro-import gas-sippers (the Kia Pride aka Ford Festiva/Aspire and Suzuki Cultus aka Chevy Sprint/Geo Metro) in the 1980s and 1990s, and that means that I see a lot of these cars in the junkyard these days. It takes a special Metro to warrant inclusion here— so far we’ve seen this ’90 Metro El Camino, this ’92 LSi convertible, this electric-powered ’95 Metro, and this ’91 Suzuki Swift so far, plus this bonus Honda CBR1000-powered LeMons race-winning Metro— and I think a happy yellow LSi convertible is more interesting than your ordinary Geozuki.
The demographic group in California (where I photographed this car) most likely to drive a 24-year-old Geo also happens to overlap with groups most likely to buy Deadline fashions. Here in Colorado, you’d be more likely to see Grenade Gloves stickers on such a car.
This style of automotive tape graphics peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, though Chrysler kept going with them well into the late 1990s.
You’ll find one in every car, kid. You’ll see.
We’ve all seen the US-market Metro ads by now, so let’s go to the car’s homeland. Can any of you Japanese speakers tell us what’s happening here?
Such a happy little car!
There was a Cultus Esteem.
In Canada, it was the Pontiac Firefly.
In Australia, it was the Holden Barina.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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A roommate had four door Metro in college. Carrying four full sized guys, the driving stability on the road was downright dangerous. It was clearly a disposable car.
My college car was a 93 2 door GEO Metro 5 speed with no radio. I use to drive it from Chicago to St. Louis every other weekend after putting only 5 dollars in the tank. It was actually kind of speedy on the highway until an truck needed to pass me but none the less, it was actually a decent car for a rather broke student back in 2002. Any who, I ended up killing the radiator during a hot Missouri summer and the car never recovered.