I belong to a car co-op, and the closest vehicle to my house is a Geo Metro.
I find it’s got really bad sightlines. Massive blindspots at 11 o’clock and 2 o’clock because the frame between the windshield and the side windows is very close to your head.
I have a '94 Metro. Yeah, it’s not the coolest car on the road, but with 131K miles, it still gets in the upper 30’s for gas mileage. We pretty much only use it for in-town driving, no long distances.
Ours is an automatic – I think a manual would have more power, as the car drags ass getting up to speed, but no problems cruising at 70 mph.
Parts haven’t been ridiculous IMO, and it has needed maybe $500 worth of work in 7 years, not counting oil changes, tires and the like.
I drove my Geo Metro over 100,00 miles then sold it to a high school kid for $2500 and he got another 40K on it until he totalled it (he walked away from the accident). It was still running fine as far as I know. The car was reliable ann got great gas mileage. My was a manual transmission, which gave it very sufficient pep. I traded up to a mnivan so my 2 dobermans and my germand shepherd would have more room. It turns out they still all want to sit in the front seat at the same time.
StG
I had a '90 metro and it lasted 10 years and 160k miles. I was good to it though and pumped constant maintenence into it. Parts are expensive though, as was stated, but there are so many of the little guys in wrecking/spares yards now that finding parts to pull somewhere is easy. They’re the ultimate pre-fab throwaway car, when it dies just toss it and get another.
Mine was a stick shift. Do NOT get the automatics, the gearing on them makes them very slow and gutless. The manual transmission did just fine though. Freeway speeds were no problem up to 75mph or so.
Drawbacks…road noise was my biggest complaint, it sounds like you’re in a waterfall. Tires wore out quickly, maybe the loose suspension or alignment to blame. I never really felt safe, crash protection is non-existant.