Geo Metro
Classic · Geo
Geo Metro: GM's Suzuki-Built Fuel Sipper
The Geo Metro is a small car GM sold in North America from 1989 through 2001, based on the Suzuki Cultus. It wore the Geo name through 1997 and the Chevrolet name from 1998, and it came as a three-door hatchback, five-door hatchback, four-door sedan, and two-door convertible.
Production of the first Geo Metro, the equivalent of the second-generation Suzuki Cultus, began at Suzuki's Hamamatsu plant in Japan in late 1988, and it replaced the Chevrolet Sprint in the US for 1989. From 1990, North American Metros came from CAMI Automotive, a 50-50 GM and Suzuki joint venture in Ingersoll, Ontario. First-generation Metros used three-cylinder engines, and the XFi version was rated at 53 mpg city and 58 mpg highway.
The 1995 second generation was designed at GM's Design Center, built only at CAMI, and offered as a three-door hatchback or four-door sedan. Base cars kept a 1.0-liter three-cylinder with throttle-body injection, the last engine on a US-market vehicle to use it, while a 1.3-liter four made 70 hp, and 79 hp in LSi models built after 1997. At launch it was the smallest car in the world to meet the coming 1997 North American side-impact standards. Forty-one percent of its buyers were buying their first car.
Sales slid as small cars fell out of favor: 55,600 Metros in 1997, down from 88,700 the year before. It became a Chevrolet for 1998, the final 2001 lineup was just the four-door LSi sedan, and CAMI built the last Metro, a red sedan, on April 26, 2001. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranked the Metro and Suzuki Swift as the top two gas-fueled vehicles on its greenest-vehicles list in 1998 and 1999.