Another in a series of my reviews that appeared in the online version of African Americans On Wheels, a now defunct automotive magazine that was included as an insert in the Sunday newspapers of major cities.
You may be surprised by this, but of all the cars I drove during my sprint at the magazine, this is the one I remember most fondly. Part of the reason is that I love small cars and always have. Nothing makes you really feel that you are part of the driving experience better than a small car. In a big car, you’re just along for the ride. Also, living in crowded Metro D.C. (pun intended), a small car makes getting around much easier. During this week, my wife was taking an MCAT preparation course in DuPont Circle. I had to pick her up every night because it took too long to get back to Arlington on the…er…Metro, which involved changing trains and they didn’t run very often at night. The small size combined with the larger four-cylinder engine made it downright fun to maneuver in, out and around traffic as well as find a space in front of the building to wait. Not as much fun to drive as my sister’s old CRX, but close.
This was another review with minimal changes, which demonstrates that I got the hang of this format pretty quickly. The small changes she made were all improvements in my opinion, so I’m posting this exactly as it was posted on April 28, 1998. I’m not sure why there was nearly a one-month gap between reviews, but I think there may have been some later reviews that never ran since I submitted them every week. She even let this review go 19 words beyond the 350-word limit!
The Chevy Metro is one of the most honest cars on the market. It’s not a truck masquerading as a car, a compact pretending to be a luxury car, or a wagon looking like an SUV. The Metro coupe is an inexpensive sub-compact (almost micro) commuter and damn proud of it. Its only nods to comfort and convenience are a rear-window wiper/washer, air conditioning, and a kickin’ stereo system — all optional.
The look is angular and upright, with a tall roof that extends almost to the rear of the car to provide a generous amount of headroom. Commuters should be small. The Metro and as its Suzuki Swift twin hold the title of the smallest cars sold in America: 149.4 inches long, or a foot shorter than the 2-door Hyundai Accent, its closest competitor. But thanks to its handy hatchback design, there’s 22.5 cubic-feet of cargo space with the rear-seat folded, large enough to hold a 27-inch TV still in the box. The back seat is best for children, but two average-sized adults can fit back there for short trips.
The five-speed transmission shifts smoothly, and the clutch is light (a three-speed automatic is optional, but hurts gas mileage considerably). Power steering is not available on the coupe, so it may be too heavy for some. The 79 horsepower four-cylinder engine provides surprisingly sprightly acceleration while still getting some 40 miles per gallon (a three-cylinder is standard in the base coupe). If safety is your concern, dual front airbags are standard, and antilock brakes are optional.
The Metro’s major weaknesses become evident on the highway, where engine and road noise are extremely high. It doesn’t stack up as road worthy for extensive highway commutes. The ride is poor, and high winds tend to knock it around. Also, the vibration that comes up through the gas pedal can be tiring. Highway commuters may want to look elsewhere.
These sacrifices are bit much for some, especially those who are partial to large cars and sport-utes. As such, sales of small cars have fallen drastically in the past few months, with the Metro being hardest hit. Too bad, because the Metro is a fun, thrifty around-the-town commuter with a low price.
For more information contact 1-800-CHEVY-70
SPECIFICATIONS
Type: 2-Door Hatchback
Engine: 79 horsepower, 1.3 liter I4
Transmission: 5-Speed Manual
EPA Mileage: 39 city/43 highway
Tested Price: $12,215
There is truth to the “27-inch TV still in the box” comment. My wife and I packed all of the wedding gifts we couldn’t use into the Metro and took them down to Service Merchandise to exchange for a 27-inch Sony Trinitron CRT television. When we backed the Metro up to the loading dock, the warehouse worker took one look and said, “That won’t fit in there.” “Give it a try,” I responded. OK, so we had to move our seats almost all the way up, which made driving home quite the adventure, but it still fit.
Service Merchandise. That brought back some memories! Storefront classic, indeed. The Metro and Sprint are cars I’ve neither driven nor even ridden in, but I knew one fan, an owner of several variations of Metro/Sprint whose other rides were high performance motorcycles (Yamaha, Buell – not Suzuki’s).
“Catalog showrooms” like Service Merchandise as far as I can tell have become a completely defunct retailing format. When I grew up in the ’70s, they were commonplace and were my favorite stores to go to. There were three big chains in my area (DC suburbs): Best, W.Bell, and Evans. Half of the stores were devoted to jewelry, which I completely ignored except for a brief period when LED watches were hot. The other half was filled with TVs, stereo gear, small appliances, alarm clocks, camping supplies, and other such household gear I bought with my allowance money. Also records and tapes. Every year (or was it twice a year, don’t remember), they’d mail out new catalogs, which were thinner but glossier than the omnipresent Sears catalog. Sears of course had their famous Christmas “wish book” filled with toys, but for me the Best, Bell, and Evans catalogs were the real wish books.
I didn’t pay much attention to this generation of Metro, but the previous one, sold most famously as a Geo, piqued my attention in more-powerful, better-equipped Suzuki Swift GTi form. I liked it but decided it was just too small.
“Part of the reason is that I love small cars and always have. Nothing makes you really feel that you are part of the driving experience better than a small car.”
Amen, brother! Never had any experience with one of these, though. I often thought that even I would find them too small. Probably not too bad with the 4-cylinder. I shudder to think of driving one of these on the freeway with a 3. I remember one episode of Car Talk where the caller had a (1st gen) Metro with the 3 cylinder and automatic. Before he could tell them the nature of his problem, Tommy blurted, “Now there’s a winning combination!”
The three wasn’t that slow. 79 hp for such a light car made it quite lively, actually. I even drove one with the automatic, and it wasn’t that bad either; more power and less weight than all the Honda Civics and such just 10-15 years earlier. One just had to show it the spurs.
For clarification, the base Metro with the 1.0-liter 3-cylinder made all of 55 horsepower. With only a little over 1,800 pounds to haul around, it wasn’t horrible even with the automatic. Based on that, you can imagine how much fun the additional horsepower and torque of the four-cylinder was, especially with the manual transmission.
My Tercel only weighed 200 lbs more and had an additional 27 hp, an extra cylinder, and a manual…practically a rocket!
Oh right. It just felt like it had 79hp. 🙂
Be still my heart.
My old Swift had the one litre triple, which moved 610kg of car quite nicely. You really felt performance drop off with more passengers on board though.
A girlfriend of mine out of high school had a new 1994 Geo Metro 4-door hatchback (previous body style) with the 1.0L three-cylinder and three-speed auto.
This was the absolute worst powertrain combination imaginable, but the car was surprisingly quick off the line even with 2-3 people onboard… well, that is up to around 25 mph, at which time it upshifted (whether you wanted it to or not) out of its near-“granny low” 1st gear.
Second gear was as wide as the Grand Canyon, and utterly killed any further semblance of acceleration. Third may as well have been an overdrive, even though it kept the engine spinning at close to 4,000 RPM at highway speeds (just a guess – no tach, of course.) There was simply no more power to be had.
I had a 1985 Sprint as my daily for a while until I sold it-which was really easy. I had it about three months or so and just loved it. It was filthy, needed brakes and smelled like wet sheepdog. I replaced the timing belt and tuned it up along with the brakes, all that was needed was cleaning.
The car was utterly gross inside,with cigarettes, wet dog and cheap perfume. I also full of garbage. I pulled the seats and removed the carpet, which steam cleaned like twenty times. I took the seat covers my parents’ house and washed them in the machine. I then steam cleaned all the insulation. Even after all that it still smelled a little like wet dog.
Back on point, even with the 1000 cc three cylinder, the cars had plenty of zip with the five speed since they weren’t very big or heavy. I think they were only like 750 kg or something. I paid $500 and sold it for $2000. Not too shabby.
These were really popular in Canada and the go-to used cars four young drivers. They were Suzuki cars and therefore hard to kill.
Around this time I bought a used previous-gen Metro. It was a pretty good car for me at the time since I was in my early 20s and it was my first non-clunker; I could drive it flat-out all the time and still not look like I was driving irresponsibly. The 3-cylinder engine had an early low oil reminder system; if you heard a sewing-machine noise at idle you were a quart low, which is a significant portion, top it up NOW. Tire pressure was similar, “Armstrong” steering was easy enough at a dead stop, if it wasn’t you needed to air the tires up.
Gas was flirting with the $1/gal mark at the time, I could fill it up and get a 20oz Coke and change back from a $10 bill.
Curiously this reskin and the sedan of the same generation were North America-only, the rest of the world had facelifts of the 1989 body through the early ’00s.
I did not know that. Based on what I just read in the wiki, however, I guess it’s not too surprising:
“Beginning in 1990, all North American M-cars were produced at CAMI Automotive, a 50–50 joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada…”
I like this generation of the Metro LSi 3-door. Something about the styling for such a small car makes it ‘just right’. Certainly a bit unrefined and crude (particularly noticable on the highway, as mentioned), in the city, it was a fine runabout. I vividly recall how used ones (especially the 3-cylinder versions) sold for a premium when the price of gas spiked.
As an added benefit, they fall into the hard-to-kill, ‘cockroach of the road’ category.
I’m amused that in 1998, 27″ was a large TV. Nowadays, it’s hard to find a TV that *small*. 🙂
Those 27″ CRT TVs were big, heavy suckers. Now take one, put thick pieces of Styrofoam at all four corners, and put it in an even bigger box and you get a good idea of what we were shoving in the back of that Metro.
And a Trinitron would weigh 2x as much and be better packed than most.
I had a 32″ CRT TV and mine weighed 100 pounds. To move it any appreciable distance required a furniture dolly. First and last one I bought. Modern TVs are so much easier!
As an aside to the aside, the viewable area in square inches of a CRT is greater than that of a widescreen flat panel.
I remember in 1997 we ordered a 32 inch Philips Magnavox TV, it was as far as we knew the largest TV in our apartment building and the even larger shipping box became a playfort for my siblings and I. Good times!
I had a 1995 Canada only Pontiac Firefly SE hatchback equivalent of the Metro LSI with the 3 speed automatic and the 1.3 four. Great little car. I averaged around 35 mpg driving in the city. I can attest to how much cargo you could haul in it with the rear seat folded. A friend bought an apartment sized portable dishwasher – 18“ wide floor model, not the counter top kind and when I pulled up to the delivery dock at Sears they said there is no way it will fit. I had to push the passenger seat all the way forward and tilted down like when someone is getting in the back seat – it fit barely. She had to wait at the store while I took it home for her and the returned to pick her up.I had that car for 14 years and over 300,000 trouble free km`s.
I hauled the rear end of a Chevy B-body with one. The guys at the wrecking yard were sure it wouldn’t go in but it sure did!
Not a Metro, but I remember taking home a knocked-down (unassembled) queen size bed in my first-gen Fiesta. The guy at the furniture store didn’t believe that it would all fit. And that Fiesta would haul a lot of firewood; ironically, for a car which didn’t deal with rain and wet roads that well, it was pretty impressive on dirt Forest Service roads. Those small upright hatchbacks that came along after the Pinto and Vega were amazingly versatile.
I once worked with an engineer who used to commute in a 3 cyl Metro. He was about 6’4″ with long legs and his round trip commute was about 200-250 miles. Don’t know how he could fit in it or got out of it, but he said it wasn’t a bad little commuter car for the money and got about 50 mpg on the freeway.
For a long time, the 3-cylinder Metro 3-door was the non-hybrid fuel mileage champ. Maybe it still is.
I was just crazy for this generation of “supermini” by Suzuki. In particular – (you all know me well here by now) – I adored out Canadian-only variant sold by Pontiac as the Firefly. I almost bought this car – on 2 different occasions! I almost bought the Firefly LE hatchback, in the same colour as shown in this post, with the 4-cyl. engine, automatic, A/C, AM/FM/cassette stereo, and …. the salesguy was going to throw in a pop-up sunroof! All for $14,000 CAN. at the time (1998). But then my Mother found out that it was “the lightest, smallest car in Canada”, and she freaked. At that time, I wanted her blessing. So I chose a 1998 Suzuki Esteem GLX wagon instead. That satisfied both of us. Here is a pic of a Firefly. I still wish I chose that.
If only the 3cyl came with a turbocharger like their Sprint cousins! The ultimate hot hatch!
I rented one for about a week back in 2000; about two days before Christmas my Plymouth Voyager decided to eat its transmission. Desperate for transportation, I made a call to the local Enterprise franchise and the only vehicle they had was a Geo Metro, and I took it. It was a four door, with automatic and I believe a 4 cylinder. It was a totally unpretentious vehicle but the interior was fairly decent, the driving position was good as was the visibility. Out on the highway it was noisey, rather slow with the automatic and got blown around by passing trucks. Still, it beat walking, got me to the relatives for Christmas and provided transportation until I got my van back. Overall, I have rather fond memories of it.
These were the first GM car to feature daytime running lights — how about that for a claim to fame.
I drove a 1996 LSi, 5MT three-door hatchbacks for a few years. I too grew up driving small cars, and just really feel most comfortable driving one.
I remember editing the Wikipedia article and finally finding a contemporary article that included some of the obscure data that usually only makes it into a press release.
If you really like these cars, here’s that article, now only available on the Wayback archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050703084450/http://www.hardrive.com/reviews/geometro.htm
I recently bought a 1998 Chevy Metro Hatchback 1.0 3 cylinder 5 speed. It’s fully restored. Getting 49 mpg. It’s actually a pretty peppy car with plenty of power and rides comfortable for such a small car. Runs smoothly with no rattles or engine noise at all.