The Geo Metro Convertible Was a Hilariously Pathetic 50-Horsepower Economy Car

this is a 1992 geo metro convertible and it is well let's just say the metro was generally agreed to be the most pathetic little pip squeak of a car back when it was on sale and for some reason they made a convertible version so you could be a pathetic little pip squeak with your hair blowing in the wind today i'm going to review this ridiculous little car [Music] before i get started good news this geo metro can be yours it is currently being auctioned live on cars and bids which is my new enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era we've sold mclaren's ferraris porsches but we also like the weird stuff on cars and bids the quirky cars and that includes this metro convertible which is live right now on cars and bids so after you finish watching this video click the link in the description below to head over to the live auction where you can bid for the chance to win this geo metro you won't find one of these anywhere but cars and bids i'll start with a little background back in the 1980s general motors was looking to introduce a line of ultra cheap fuel-efficient cars that didn't really fit in with any of their other brands so they created geo which only sold rebadged japanese cars made by other manufacturers there was the geoprism which was a rebadged toyota corolla there was the geo tracker which was a rebadged suzuki vatara and there was this the geo metro which was a rebadged suzuki swift but swift it was not this version of the metro came out for the 1989 model year the convertible version joined for 1990 and every single metro from this era used a three cylinder engine with about 50 horsepower even though this car weighed under 2 000 pounds acceleration wasn't really a strong suit but there was a benefit to this the car was rated at 46 miles per gallon in the city and 49 miles per gallon on the highway which is an impressive figure even still today unfortunately that's basically the only thing that's impressive about this car as i will show you first i'm going to take you on a tour of this metro and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the metro with getting in you know some of my reviews i show you the key and it's something interesting and cool well in this case this is the key and not at all special looks like the kind of key you'd buy for two dollars at home depot that's what they were using for this car basic key for a basic car and when you open up the door look how thin this door panel is there's no side impact protection in there there's definitely no airbags in there this was a different era very basic car no frills not a lot to pack into that door panel but i don't want to get ahead of myself here because one of the major selling points of this car is the convertible top and the roof operation is rather quirky and interesting it's all manual so let's talk about it now to start the process putting the roof up you first lift off this plastic panel behind the seats you lift it out of place then you slide these plastic panels behind the seats you can sort of pivot them you can see and move it forward and it kind of bumps into the back of the seat so it might help you to put the seat back forward and give you more space but that's what you do next after that you just lift up the top it's a fairly easy process it's a small car it's a small top not very heavy and then you get it right by where the windshield is of course the sun visors have to be down and you just latch it down in place and then your geo metro convertible has the roof up and of course when you're done you slide those panels back into place the ones behind the seat and then you put that big center panel back in place and then you're all set to drive now obviously if you want to put the top down you do the same procedure but in reverse you pull the big center panel off the back you slide the side panels forward then you unlatch the top at the windshield push it down and then you put all of the plastic panels back in place and that's sort of your top cover while you're driving along and you just have to hope that that center panel which seems pretty flimsy and not very tightly in there you have to hope it doesn't just fly off in the wind but there's your geo metro convertible top operation in case you pick up one of these and you're wondering how to put the roof up or down now a bigger quirk than the actual operation of the top might be the fact that they made a convertible version of this car at all it seems bizarre by modern standards because these days convertibles don't really get made unless they're kind of high-end luxury cars that's where most convertibles are now but back when the metro was being made having a really cheap convertible like this wasn't really all that unusual there were convertible versions of everything you had a chevy cavalier convertible you had the volkswagen cabriolet you had a toyota paseo convertible you had this convertibles were just a lot more common than they are today and so as strange as it is to have an ultra cheap car convertible can you imagine chevy making a spark convertible or a toyota yaris convertible that's what this was as strange as that seems now it wasn't that strange back then to have a convertible version of a car like this and by the way a quick note about pricing back in 92 a base model geo metro cost six thousand dollars new if you got the four-door version it was seven thousand dollars new the convertible was quite a premium at ninety seven hundred dollars new under ten grand for a brand new convertible but it was a geo metro anyway next up more interesting quirks in this interior i want to talk about the trunk pass-through situation now in your car if you have a sedan you might be able to fold down your back seats and that creates like a pass-through from the trunk to the interior in this car behind the seats you can see there's a little flap you lift that up and then behind that you can see there's another little flap you go around to the trunk you lift that flap up and then that's your pass-through so there's no like panel separating the interior from the trunk there's no trim no carpeting you just have two like vinyl curtains and that is your trunk passthrough in this car this was a very pathetic car in many ways and one of them was the flimsy afterthought trunk pass-through situation but anyway since we're talking about the trunk let's get back here the only way into the trunk in this car is to stick the key in the back twist it and then lift up the trunk there's no like trunk latch anywhere else now the struts in the trunk are bad so fortunately we have this handy broomstick that we can use to prop up the trunk and as you can see when the trunk is propped this is a pretty reasonably sized trunk especially for a vehicle this small you can get a reasonable amount of cargo in here good space it's not so bad this car is so tiny but it has a decent sized trunk but if you needed more space than this trunk could offer the metro has that capability too because it has a luggage rack mounted on the top of the trunk this was an option that you could get you can see these five sort of plastic pieces mounted on the trunk that was so you could put your luggage on it without scratching the paint and then you would use these little movable hooks sliding down the plastic things to actually tie your luggage down so if you had more luggage than could fit in the trunk you could use this luggage rack this was a common feature on cars in like the 50s and 60s not so today but it was available as an option on the geo metro convertible and this metro convertible has it but anyway back to the interior although i must say there's not that much to cover in here this is a small interior a basic car not too many quirks but there are some worth noting one is the seats you have these flat non-contoured seats they just look like the cheapest crappiest stuff they could find definitely not intended to be supportive if you have back issues or if you want to find a very comfortable position but they do have blue trim going all the way around to match the blue exterior of this car they spent the money to make the seats look good instead of make them comfortable you also have this blue and sort of yellowish green pattern all throughout the seats this fabric on the sea bottom the seat back and on the door panel this was a big 90s thing these sort of colored fabric patterns just to make things more fun inside this car and it certainly has succeeded i for one am having a blast now like i said before not too many frills in this interior it's really not that nice of a place to be some examples of that the center console in this car is just this plastic piece mounted on the carpet with the handbrake sticking out you don't have a big storage area you don't have anything in here really except for the handbrake does it look all that good no frills very small that's your center console deal with it and speaking of cheap stuff in the center on the gear lever you had this shift boot which was just rubber didn't really look all that nice was certainly not as nice as leather in most other vehicles at the time they were just going for the cheapest stuff they could find and it looks like it but it is worth noting with the shifter at least you had a five-speed manual in here no four speed you had that fifth gear for better fuel economy and more gears for better performance prowess it is worth noting though that the automatic version of this car was a three-speed automatic and it wasn't a very good one the auto was rated at 10 miles per gallon less city and highway than the manual the manual's 46 city 49 highway the automatic was 36 city 39 highway you lost 10 miles per gallon just by choosing the automatic so you really wanted to go with the manual in this car to maximize your gas mileage one other kind of funny cost cutting measure obviously this car doesn't have power mirrors if you want to adjust the mirror on the driver's side there's this little stick coming out from the mirror and you just move it around and that moves the mirror which is pretty common on cars with manual mirrors the funny part is over on the passenger side there is no stick they've cost cut out the manual mirror stick instead to move the passenger mirror you actually have to get out go over there and adjust it with your fingers which causes a bit of an issue because then you can't see where you've adjusted it to so then you walk back into the driver's seat oh no it's too high get back out walk back to the passenger seat although i guess in this car it's so tiny you could probably reach across the interior and adjust the mirror that way but the stick would have been helpful however deemed too expensive probably with that said there are some features in this car that i'm surprised to see in here some nice stuff that i wouldn't expect in such a cheap car with such a cheap car reputation for instance you have an airbag in this car only one driver's side not passenger not side airbags but you do have an airbag in here which would have been a big deal on a new car for under 10 grand back in 92. now interestingly when you turn on this car the airbag light briefly turns on like in most cars to let you know the light is working except in this car it says in full rest couldn't figure out what that meant i looked it up inflatable restraint the term airbag was still sort of becoming more common no one was sure what it would be called general motors was calling it the inflatable restraint and if you had a fault there that light would turn on to let you know like a modern airbag light would by the way another feature i'm surprised to see in here the gauge cluster has a full tachometer you would expect that on a car with a manual transmission especially a modern one but really cheap cars sometimes forego a tachometer but they had it here so they weren't doing all cost cutting however the feature i am most surprised to see in here the luxury that this car has that most shocks me is air conditioning this little tiny car has an air conditioning system you press this button you turn on ac and then you can control the temperature i'm really really shocked to see that in a car like this now the owner tells me when you turn on the air conditioning it saps like 10 to 20 percent of this car's power which is a big deal because it doesn't have that much power to begin with but nonetheless ac was there to keep you cool on a day where it was too hot to even put your roof down interesting now with that said it is important to point out general motors pretty much did cost cut wherever possible with this car one good example is the owner's manual you open up the pouch this car comes with an owner's manual but they didn't make a separate owner's manual for the convertible like everybody else would have instead if you got a convertible they gave you a supplement to the original owner's manual which is supposed to override some of the information you got in the standard owner's manual they also gave you of course it also gave you some new information like how to put the top up and down that sort of thing but you had basically two owners manuals because they were too cheap to print up a totally new one just for the convertible and by the way speaking of that convertible owner's manual i love the convertible drawing on the front of the owner's manual this sort of pastel looking thing looks great looks very 90s and it's kind of a cool artist's take on the look of the geo metro convertible by the way two other interesting things in here one i love this emergency key that came in the owner's manual pouch this car came with an emergency plastic key and i'm not sure if you could use that like once to turn the car on or if you could use that to get more real keys made if you lost your key but still an emergency plastic key what a bizarre novelty this car has it's still in the owner's manual after all these years also still in the owner's manual is the original business card from the salesperson from when this car was sold new at george white chevrolet in ames iowa believe it or not that dealership still exists but i bet no one there remembers back when they were selling bright blue metro convertibles new it was a long time ago and speaking of george white chevrolet you can still see their logo back here on the back of this car it's held up well over the years in fact this whole car is held up pretty well it certainly isn't perfect but as metro convertibles go this is certainly one of the nicest ones you will ever find nobody thought to preserve these or save these and it's nice to see one in such relatively nice condition but anyway moving on i want to talk a light bar you can see this car has a giant light bar going across the back that was the standard of its day the late 80s early 90s light bars were hot just as they are now they've completely come back and even economy cars of the day had light bars in the back to let you know just how cool they were that was the trend at the time and next up since i'm on the outside of this car a few more interesting items to discuss one the tires these are incredibly small 13-inch tires with these hubcaps on them and they're just so narrow take a look at how tiny these tires are incredibly small but that was all they needed it wasn't like this vehicle was massive or very heavy so you could get away with putting on these small tires i also want to touch on this this ridiculous little pastel paintbrush graphic down the side this is factoring you can see it on both sides passenger side here and over on the driver's side as well and it was just sort of a 90s thing this was a fun cool car so let's put this little splash of color on the side and a lot of 90s cars had similar graphics like this and it's just kind of funny to see it well preserved nobody ever bothered to take it off and now it looks cool and retro next up another interesting extra item with this car is the geo logo you can see it fully in the front it's sort of this oval shape and it's meant to signify the world the globe and you can see sort of lines of latitude and longitude and in the center you have the chevrolet logo that's because geos were sold at chevrolet dealers like george white chevrolet in ames iowa and it was sort of an entry-level brand for general motors the theory was you buy a geo the cheapest car in the showroom and then maybe a few years later you had a good experience you come back and buy a chevrolet and sort of work your way up through the chevrolet and general motors lineups now as for the design of the logo itself the world logo i think is supposed to signify that this was sort of a world car geo was born in the era where general motors had a very poor reputation for reliability obviously that has changed but back then it was the japanese who had the strongest reliability reputation just like today and since this car was manufactured by suzuki and other geo vehicles were re-badged japanese cars they wanted to signify somehow that it wasn't your typical general motors american crappy car hence the world logos signifying this car came from the globe not just america and that point was driven home in the driver's door jam you open it up to see the vin plate and it says manufactured by suzuki like i said this was a rebadged suzuki swift the swift was sold in north america but we never got the convertible version that was unique to the metro but the car was still built by suzuki and they didn't even try to cover that up that's what it says on the vin plate it was a global car a japanese general motors for better reliability unfortunately being a global car the metro also got a global engine this was a one liter three cylinder that made about 50 horsepower and it just wasn't up to the standard americans were used to in terms of acceleration and performance the trade-off was excellent fuel economy and there still are people who are loyal to the geo metro for its simplicity for its cheapness to own and for its great mileage without having to resort to new technology like hybrid which makes cars more expensive and more complicated but for most people too small of an engine too little power that was kind of the trade-off you got the japanese car with the japanese build quality but you also got 50 horsepower that was a tremendously small number even then and back then the geo metro was the butt of a lot of jokes kind of being referred to as the cheapest crappiest most pathetic car on sale which frankly it was unless of course you got the convertible and so those are the quirks and features of the geo metro convertible now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the metro convertible you know how sometimes you get into an economy car and they have some sport version or some convertible version and you drive that and it just feels like a transformed experience like a totally different and better car yeah this isn't that this car is really just a geo metro but with a removable top like a convertible soft top so it drives like a geo metro this car is not some paragon of handling it's not like the fiat 500 drives okay but then you get into the abarth and it's like amazing this ain't that for one thing it's just slow it is dog slow this car it's almost unbelievable how underperforming it is um geo metro owners will defend this car to that and there are people they will defend this car to the day of their death saying slow simple car that's why fuel economy is good where we went wrong was adding all this tech and complication of cars and i get that but this thing's really slow it's just it's just difficult for a rational modern human being to drive this and not feel a little unsafe especially considering the car itself is so tiny it weighs nothing it has no safety equipment it's just a joke of a car and it's incredibly slow so it's not like you can get out of the way of anything now the other thing you notice especially with this one is the sheer amount of cowl shake in this car chassis rigidity is not a strong suit of the geo metro convertible quite the opposite in fact it is a absolute downfall every bump you go over the windshield just shakes like it wants to come off and this is a nice one this car isn't perfect like i said 28 000 miles though on this car it's not like it's been destroyed and miled up the interior is nice this is how it was from the factory now i'm flooring it here by the way and you can see i'm getting passed by a chevy bolt i'm literally foot on the floor and that bolt just kind of overtook me out accelerating me probably only doing half throttle okay this car just isn't much it's just not all that fast it's just not all that fun to me the quirkiness of this car comes in sort of it was always scapegoated as being the crappiest car of its day once the hugo went away the geo metro was sort of the laughingstock of the car community and driving this one you can certainly see why even the convertible the nice one it's just so pathetic now you know they had air conditioning they had it was it wasn't that bad but it wasn't good the harshness the vibration of this car is also pretty substantial i mean you get it coming through the steering wheel the gear lever the passenger seat you can see it it's not as bad as i was expecting actually i know cars from this era and they're usually a total disaster this one again pretty well kept for a metro convertible but at the end of the day it's still a metro convertible this car is kind of charming in the sense that it's like a simple little car hydraulic steering simple manual transmission you just sort of push the clutch in and go you hear everything you hear the engine um there is some nostalgia there for me like oh this was an era where you know that sort of stuff the cars were simpler and they felt simpler to drive but they they weren't better i mean this one certainly wasn't it does not drive like much of a car just doesn't have any power and it doesn't have any handling and the charm of this car really comes in it's like basicness and the fact that you're just like keeping a geo metro on the road which at this point is actually kind of cool it's like wow okay i haven't seen one of those in a while and i will admit this card does draw some attention it's a bright color convertible top people are looking like is that dude is that a geo met somebody i was just filming somebody came up and said what a cute car and it is kind of cute and so that's the geo metro convertible i've always wanted to review a metro because it's become sort of a cheap car icon and after spending the day with one i can tell you it certainly cheap but it has some charm to it also and you can't argue with almost 50 miles per gallon and now it's time to give this metro convertible a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the metro convertible is fine not ugly not beautiful an easy five out of ten acceleration uh well one out of ten handling is also bad not dangerous but it's not exactly a dynamic masterpiece or anything close and it gets a two out of ten fun factor is somewhat strong though manual transmission convertible top and the irony of driving a geo metro and it gets a three out of ten cool factor is also elevated a bit by its metro-ness it's still not a great car but if i saw one of these at cars and coffee i would definitely give it a glance and it gets a 4 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 15 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features it has only the basics and it gets a 2 out of 10. comfort is fine not especially great it's a small buzzy car with not much interior room and it gets a 3 out of 10. quality is actually ok the interior materials aren't good but reliability is decent and it's just cheap to own with readily available parts and very easy fixing if something does break it gets a 5 out of 10. practicality is low with only two seats and not much other space it gets a two out of ten finally value and i gotta say this car is sort of an icon for people who love cheap cars it's not thrilling or exciting but it is kind of a fun throwback and it's just not expensive probably a few grand for one of the nicest metros i'm sure exists on the planet it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 18 out of 50. added up in the doug score is 33 out of 100 which places it here against other sort of similar cars i've reviewed the geo metro convertible isn't great but it's hilarious and i'm thrilled i had the chance to review one [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,423,020

Keywords: geo metro, geo metro review, geo metro convertible, geo metro convertible review, geo review, geo, cheap car, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: 2IvlXHwVamE

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021