What happened to Geo’s? Metros, Prisms…never hear about them anymore.
Is the Geo line history?
Was that a GM brand? If so, did they not guzzle enough gas or were they not behemoth enough to please GM executives?
“Recent years have seen fading consumer interest in the economy compact market, and production of the last car of the former Geo line, the Prizm, was discontinued in 2002.”
“Recent years have seen fading consumer interest in the economy compact market…”
I bet that trend doesn’t continue.
When will Detriot ever learn?
My dad and I collectively had three Chevy Sprints; one Sprint, and two Sprint Metros. I think these cars are pretty much ‘disposable’. Use 'em up, and throw them away. Too bad, really, since they were really good cars when used within their design envelope. For city driving, they were very peppy. On the freeway, they could travel at prevailing speeds. Where they fell down was on inclines. Fast enough on the flats, but a bugger to get up hills sometimes. Still, they were better than the original Beetle performance-wise. Fifty miles per gallon or more was often seen. (IIRC, my ‘record’ was 60 mpg.) I called mine a ‘Cardis’ because, like Dr. Who’s Tardis, it seemed to have more space on the inside than the outside would indicate. The rear seats were comfortable enough for adults. The front seats were comfortable for long trips. With the rear seatback folded, there was an impressive amount of cargo room. I used to deliver The L.A. Rock Review and The British Weekly all over L.A. and Orange Counties with room to spare. I’ve carried my A-7E ejection seat with the hatchback closed. But the way I drove them, their engines would only last about 140,000 miles before being in need of an overhaul. The cars were so cheap that overhauls were not economically attractive.
I have no doubt that we’ll see more small, economical cars on the road. After 20 years, there’s no point in bringing back the Sprint. Newer designs have more power, nearly-as-good fuel economy, better handling, and equivalent comfort. Still, I’d drive a restored Chevy Sprint Metro/Geo Metro.
And those 2002 Prizims were badged as Chevrolets; the Geo nameplate itself had been retired a couple of years earlier but the idea that we might as well copy rather than reinvent the econobox did take hold. What GM did was collapse the “Geo” operation completely into Chevrolet, and continue filling the econobox segment of Chevy with badged variations on designs from the Korean/Japanese GM-affilates. The current Chevy Aveo is a Suzuki model, made at the GM-Daewoo plant, IIRC.
Non-econobox designs from the international affiliates of GM now get merged into their market-segment level in the US nameplates. (e.g. Pontiac GTO from Holden (Australia); Malibu Maxx, American derivative from a SAAB design)
They still make an el-cheapo car, the Chevy Aveo. Made by the same folks that brought you Daewoo. They just gave up on the Geo name.
While the Geo marque is dead, the GM/Toyota partnership that brought you Geo is still going strong with the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix.
Actually, the Aveo is not a Daewoo, it is the same as a Suzuki Swift. They are just built at a former Daewoo plant.
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/04economycars.htm
A number of cars are built on the GM Corporate Epsilon platform, it is not a Saab design, it just happened that the Saab 9-3 was the first vehicle based on this platform to be marketed. We now have the Malibu (not just the Maxx version, BTW), Pontiac G6, and the new Saturn will be based on the platform as well.
They don’t like to talk about it, but some of the Geos were made with Prizm labor.