1997 Geo Prizm: Regular Car Reviews

nice corolla except it isn't this is rcr's website this is where you click to submit your car for review this is where you buy merch this is where you sign up for bonus content and this is a toyota sprinter but the name has little to do with the ae86 sprinter truano because not all sprinters were sport coupes some were cars lower tier than the corolla but higher tier than the tercel somehow because it looks like general motors didn't even try to hide that this is a japanese car all that well i mean you open the hood there it is a 4a fe engine with no variable valves and a three-speed automatic now that's kind of a clue most usdm corollas had four-speed automatics this doesn't and it has a minimalist dash windy windows uh general motors delco radio to give clueless parents the impression that they were buying an american car from kunkelman used cars [Music] driving impressions it's a corolla with no overdrive i'm here trying to count the shifts because i didn't believe that this 1990s toyota product only had three speeds i'm laying into it and it's not shifting the engine's revving too high oh there really isn't a fourth gear toyota's a131l gearbox was an eisenwarner farmout job that appeared in cheap stuff that they made we're toyota normally we're swinging at every pitch but we're just gonna phone it in today here's a cheap three speed to squeeze every yen we can out of the e100 chassis yeah we know the a131l had solenoid problems but look the sprinter is going to america and they're used to three-speed transmission taking whale what it's not gonna even say toyota on it so there's no losing face here well what about the gear shift lever are we gonna put a new you know like gear lever in there no just block off the space where the od button was nevertheless this is still a good buy in 2021. geo was general motors blanket of subterfuge for every overseas gray market car they could get their hands on what i don't understand is what did toyota get out of this exchange and it couldn't have been the cavalier that they rebranded as a toyota i'd like to think that toyota in the late 1990s was having such a good run with no worthy opponents that they became like katherine hans character in parks and recreation when she said if you like chess which i do but you have no one to play with which i don't sometimes you have to play against yourself it's 1997. our team is so strong we're literally sending some of our second stringers over to the other sideline to make this game challenging this is such a good buy in 2021 because some aging gen xers have had these in the backyards of their myers town quarter acre properties you see a geoprism pop up on facebook marketplace you answer the ad go to the house knock on the door and a 13 year old opens the screen door and doesn't say anything just stares at you from behind their yellow tinted gamer glasses you don't say anything either until a moan yell comes from the upper regions of this dimly lit bi-level jesse who's there and jesse still doesn't say anything they continue standing walleyed jesse and then like a startled fawn jesse bounds back into the darkened residence and you hear some words being spoken [Music] and the mother cross dissolves out of the shadows wearing a men's champion t-shirt breasts dancing weakly and unbounded underneath yeah you hear about the car then yes hi thank you for taking the time for me and it's out back then go around the gate's unlocked so you go around to the back of the bi-level and you see a sun-bleached geo-prism sitting in the yard that the residents were just mowing around the keys are in it the mother calls indifferently from the upstairs window you try the ignition and the car starts with no hesitation you try the gear lever it moves into drive and the vehicle rolls up and out of the four tire craters it created i'll pay 700 you holler from the driver's window and from inside the house you hear something heavy and wet fall on a linoleum floor followed by a resigned all right and you drive away knowing you have a machine that will run for four years with only two oil changes and one set of tires 1997 geoprism here comes cousin charlie who hasn't been in touch since the last family reunion appearing through a cloud of cigarillo smoke answering questions about the last five years like he was just asked to read out loud in class this is the second generation geoprism which is based on the ae 92 chassis which would technically make it an e100 platform but it was known within general motors as the s platform a group that included the toyota e90 e100 and e110 platforms 1997 was the last year these were marketed under the geo name before becoming chevrolets and for the final year the prism got a 1.6 liter 4afe engine making around 100 horsepower at 5600 rpm and 105 pound-feet of torque at 4400 rpm only three speeds to work with so it has a hell of a hard time going uphill with any efficiency but for the amount of horsepower it has it accelerates pretty well julia says she's gotten this up to 90 miles an hour which sounds kind of dicey uh when uh your existence is this precarious because you're gonna stand on these brakes i mean this this car definitely had a life you gotta plan ahead exit routes like a gender reveal party but this is a great daily because those toyota a series engines were easier to maintain and didn't have the same spare part availability issues as pricier dailies that threw up engine codes every 50 miles in the 90s the car is currently sitting at 104 915 miles and honestly it radiates the type of slacker vibes that anybody with social anxiety would kill to have you cannot touch the bottomless randle and dante energy of a car this unpretentious a prism shows up at the player haters ball in a tracksuit ready to make enemies is that a new cologne or did raid switch up their formula christopher there he is congratulations on the new relationship i didn't know the body pillow placed at installment plans hey tom so glad you could get off work to be here i know refreshing kiwi farms every 15 minutes is thirsty work and it remains a cool car yes cool but only in the passive sense cool in the way that cynicism can't reach it's a car that hears toyota called they want their corolla back and it responds with your mom called she once [Music] every auto manufacturer engages a little bit of tourism and toyota isn't really any different and it all goes back to the partnership that made this car possible you see this was all part of a joint venture between general motors and toyota called nume nummi short for new united motor manufacturing incorporated the nume plant was originally general motors fremont assembly plant and the partnership made sense not just from an economic standpoint but as a face-saving measure between 1962 and 1982 the fremont assembly was quote considered the worst workforce in the automotive industry in the united states and that's directly from a rep from the united auto workers union by the name of bruce lee not the bruce lee you're thinking of but as that bruce lee once said mistakes are always forgivable if one has the courage to admit them and that seems to be what general motors was doing by making this partnership they were admitting that mistakes were made and there was a chance to correct them and mutual benefit could be had in the arrangement but it all begs the question of how an assembly plant from the big three even got to such a low point a journalist by the name of matthew e may answered that question in his article the art of replacing systems the fremont assembly plant suffered from 20 absenteeism meaning entire shifts would be sometimes missing a fifth of their workforce and another fifth of the workforce would rather be enjoying a fifth somewhere else workers were rumored to be hiding beer coolers in the cars as they were sending them down the line and cleaning crews had to be brought in to remove all the empty liquor bottles from the employee lot at the end of every shift change you had some people getting high and others taking break time with prostitutes out of a nearby rv the plant even saw four drug-related homicides in a single year you had employees who couldn't care less about their job if they were working for shinra just before the meteor hit some of them seemed to actively resent working for gm as one accountant recalled workers sabotaging cars by doing things like placing coke bottles in the door panels of the cars to annoy whoever ended up buying them basically the fremont assembly was making gm look worse than a ceo who doesn't claim children mistresses or income during the tail end of that 20-year period gm was in a rough spot due to the fuel crisis of the 70s the rise of import vehicles and the miserable build quality of cars from the fremont plant whose productivity bordered on non-existent so gm paired up with toyota to create nume as a joint venture to make cars that both brands could sell under their respective names it ended up being a partnership that would last from 1984 to 2010. and over that period the nume factory produced the e-90 through the e-140 toyota corollas as well as the toyota tacoma the 80s chevy nova even the hilux pickup as well as the pontiac vibe and the geoprism but the partnership died because gm's gone to gm and by the time they filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 there was nothing to be done even with everybody from the mayor of fremont to california governor arnold schwarzenegger trying to encourage the automakers to find some product that would help keep the plant open but gm had to pull out so toyota did too even though they offered to make a variant of the prius hybrid at the plant it just wasn't going to work out so the nume factory became the first toyota manufacturing plant to ever close and now the factory belongs to tesla 1997 geoprism it's like something the lead character in a kevin smith movie would drive but that paradoxically bland weirdness is part of the appeal as in the year 1997 itself gas was 1.22 cents deep blue was the king of chess we lost biggie and got stuck with puff will smith fought aliens for the second time in as many years the jerky boys existed as well as a semi-charmed life okay computer and freaking twisted metal two driving around inspector being too naive to realize that every ending was a bad ending that's what the geo is the automotive version of a year that had some awful things happen but a lot of good things too but that's most years isn't it brian it was a trap i showed up at marion's house and next thing i know i'm in a shack next to the mercedes airport in argentina help me shut up you think you were slick huh have your fun and then run out on your responsibility i promise it wasn't fun at all okay okay maybe just a little but it was a cop i said shut up once i seduced that lady and got the time technology i put it on your dumb car leave my car out of this stop interrupting this was my chance to make you see how you messed up before taking everything away from you i programmed every jump and this is going to be your last or my name isn't trent falcon wrath cha-ching you

Channel: Regular Car Reviews

Views: 406,852

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Regular Car Reveiws, Car Review, Car Satire, Mr Regular, RCR, Geo, Geo prizm, Geo Prisem, Geo car, Chevy Prism, NUMMI, Nummi Plan, Freemont assembly

Id: 4wMkPGwaA-g

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021