’96 Geo Prizm image from the web.
After our 1992 Blazer went back off of lease, I convinced my wife that we were spending too much money on fuel and we should get a small car. So we went to look at a new Geo Prizm. Now it wasn’t a bad car and they had lots to choose from… but it really didn’t fit our family’s lifestyle.
Let’s face it I was trying to be cheap, economical.
’96 Geo Prizm interior, image from the web.
The Geo was nice looking; it was a dark green sedan with a gray interior, automatic air, and a tachometer. And it was a great car.
At the time we owned this, we also had a 1980 Buick Park Avenue, and my wife, Cindy, had the shortest commute. So I drove the Prizm.
One day, two years into the lease, the Prizm was rear-ended twice in one accident. I was at a stoplight when a gentleman in an 80’s square-body Chevy truck slammed me at 35. My two-year-old daughter was in the back with her car seat and her pacifier hit the window shield!
Just as I was ready to get out, a Maxima hit the Chevy truck, pushed it further into me which pushed me into a Mercedes 500. The police told me to have my wife take Melissa (our daughter) in to be checked. Cindy pulled up in our beautiful Park Avenue and the policeman asked if that was our other car. I stated that it was, and he chuckled and said: “Bet you wish you driving that today huh?”
It all came to a little over $4500 damage. A high-quality body shop did the very best they could, but that car wasn’t the same afterward.
…
The family and I had scheduled a trip from Davie Florida to Charlotte to see family and decided to put the miles on the lease. On the trip, a storm hit us and our son Jacob told us that rainwater was getting in through the rear door.
That was it. We pulled into my sister’s driveway, kissed her and Mom hello, and said we’d be back. I pulled into a large Chevrolet dealer and told the salesman that I’d driven the Geo up from Florida but I was not driving it back!
In about an hour, we settled on a nice green 97 Blazer four-door (leftover) and signed a new lease. The Prizm was no more.
Two generations of Prizm by the parking lot. Image from the Cohort by Mike Hayes.
Honestly, the Prizm was a really good car. But please don’t ask me to explain why GM started Geo. We could have easily gone into a Corolla which was the same car, or a Honda.
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Glad your Corolla held up and kept your family safe. They’re very tough little cars but I usually dont think of them as all that crashworthy compared to the air bagged tanks we drive now days.
Anyways GM was a hot mess around 1990. I mean how many small cars did you need??? Seems like they were competing with themselves and cannibalizing sales. Going from cheapest to more expensive, GM sold in 1990
Geo Metro(Suzuki)
Pontiac LeMans(Daewoo pos)
Chevy Spectrum(Isuzu)
Geo Storm(Isuzu)
Geo Tracker(Suzuki again)
Chevy Cavalier(GM design duh)
Pontiac Sunbird(GM)
Geo Prism(Toyota)
I dont know what the price difference was, but Id imagine the Prism kinda butting up against low trim 4 cylinder Grand Ams or the Corsica cause those were usually sold with a bunch of $$$ on the hood. The only ones that could have justified their existence is the Metro and Tracker. Which were kinda niche vechiles that I could see GM not wanting to spend $$$ to engineer themselves
GM certainly made extensive use of their Japanese and Korean affiliates, but I never really saw the point of Geo. Or Saturn. It seemed to be like saying GM’s previously-existing US brands had such a bad rep they had to start afresh.
I was in an accident in a 1996 Geo Prizm as well. It was in January 2001 and it was my mom’s car. She was driving me back from a high school basketball tournament in Northeast PA. I had just gotten my DL, and I wanted to drive, but it was snowing and my mother believed I lacked the experience driving in adverse conditions. Ironically, she was and is one of the worst bad weather and night time drivers I have ever met, and this particular drive would prove to be more evidence of that fact. Less than a mile from our house, she slid on some ice, panicked, vastly over corrected and drove us straight into the side of someone’s garage. Both airbags blew, and I ended up with a minor concussion from the passenger seat bag. That little Prizm kept us safe, but was completely totalled. I still believe we would have made it home safely if she had allowed me to drive.
Prizm’s were a great deal on the used market. Much cheaper than their Corolla counterparts.
Cute little hair shirts .
Too bad no one will buy hair shirts anymore .
-Nate
I got rear-ended in our ‘93 Corolla. I had just come to a stop in heavy traffic when BAM!! I felt a huge impact which shoved me into the car in front of me. I was hit by a young woman in a Volvo 240 who admitted she was reaching down to get a cassette tape. I got pushed ever so gently into the Civic in front of me with no visible damage to the Honda or the front of Corolla, beyond some marks from my front license plate screws in the Honda bumper, which the owner brushed off. He was very sympathetic. Both he and the young woman worked at the same office as me, though I didn’t know them. And, the accident happened right in front of a police station and a cop came out when he saw the traffic backing up even worse. The woman who hit me also “confessed” to the cop; he checked our licenses and insurance and then politely told us to get the hell off the road to let the traffic move. I think the Corolla was shortened a bit on one side but cosmetically the body shop got it perfect, and it didn’t seem to hurt its already mediocre road manners. But it was a great car, not at all a hair shirt. 5 speed helped a bit.
A day or two later I walked into work and the Volvo driver was working in the lobby; turns out she was a contract receptionist who rotated between buildings, so I’d never noticed her before. She was very apologetic. Sorry for the tangent, but that’s my pseudo-Prizm story.
My MIL had a Prizm just like this. I recall arguing with her repeatedly around the fact that she actually owned a Toyota. Several holidays were spent in that futile attempt. Until she eventually traded it in for a VW Passat AWD that was actually an Audi A6 (which she also refused to admit, and so the cycle continued).
My family had a 1959 (IIRC) Rambler station wagon. My mother persisted in calling it “the Nash.” Presumably she was conflating it with the Nash Rambler. It really grated on me.
Think how long it might have taken you to figure out that water leak if your youngster hadn’t been back there watching it! My daughter had a trunk leak in her Honda Civic when she was in college and she didn’t notice a problem until the interior of the car started smelling funny.
I agree, that most cars are never the same after they have been hit hard. Though this is becoming less of a problem – mainly because repair costs have gotten so out of hand that cars get totaled much easier than they would have in decades past.
I owned a 93 Geo Prizm for 23 years. It was a good, dependable commuter car. The car was totaled by the insurance company in 2000 after a monster hail storm but I drove it for another 17 years. Just simple regular maintenance kept it running. I traded it in for a VW Beetle. Still occasionally see the old Prizm around town.