1990 Geo Metro

I was 12 when I bought it for $100 from my siblings' dad - the same 1990 4-door, 3-speed automatic-equipped Geo Metro my sister virtually totaled ten years earlier. I remember smashing the side of my head into the gravel driveway the afternoon it arrived, trying to get an eyeball low enough to see anything of the undercarriage. All I really saw was that the catalytic converter was entirely detached from the exhaust assembly and hanging by bits of rubber, so I grabbed the largest available mallet and pounded away until it came free entirely. My example was equipped with the lessest powerplant ever placed under the hood of a General Motors-badged product: a 1 liter, 3-cylinder Suzuki engine that'd produced all of 55 horsepower (@ 5700rpm) and 58.3 lb.-ft. of torque (@ 3300rpm) when it rolled out of the factory. Who knows how many of these really remained within the form in which I received it - for my 12-year-old self, any sort of automobile was (obviously) a coveted and profound addition. According to the original specifications, the Metro's VMax was 86.99 mph. The gravel road on which we lived provided a perfect 1/2 mile straight on all axes (minus a substantial, sight-line-interrupting dip, it would've been 2.25 miles exactly,) which - as a thoroughly-American yokel - I considered the perfect racing course. I would park the Geo in the center of the road on the North end and call 105.5 KZZT (the oldies station in range) on my wee Nokia block phone, requesting Born To Be Wild. We'd wait through that rough, rattly, odd-numbered idle until the intro of that godforsaken song came through the last functioning speaker, when I'd depress 100% that toy accelerator into the foul floor mat and try not to relent for as long as I dared. On 145/80 R12 (12-inch) wheels and tires, the diameter of genuinely-rural gravel nigh transitions from "rough ride" to "obstacle course," where a significant amount of correction is required to maintian a constant heading. At any real velocity, driving the Metro down that stretch felt like drag racing across a ball pit. I doubt I ever exceeded 65, but it was one helluvan experience.

My example was equipped with the lessest powerplant ever placed under the hood of a General Motors-badged product: a 1 liter, 3-cylinder Suzuki engine that'd produced all of 55 horsepower (@ 5700rpm) and 58.3 lb.-ft. of torque (@ 3300rpm) when it rolled out of the factory. Who knows how many of these really remained within the form in which I received it - for my 12-year-old self, any sort of automobile was (obviously) a coveted and profound addition.

According to the original specifications, the Metro's VMax was 86.99 mph. The gravel road on which we lived provided a perfect 1/2 mile straight on all axes (minus a substantial, sight-line-interrupting dip, it would've been 2.25 miles exactly,) which - as a thoroughly-American yokel - I considered the perfect racing course. I would park the Geo in the center of the road on the North end and call 105.5 KZZT (the oldies station in range) on my wee Nokia block phone, requesting Born To Be Wild. We'd wait through that rough, rattly, odd-numbered idle until the intro of that godforsaken song came through the last functioning speaker, when I'd depress 100% that toy accelerator into the foul floor mat and try not to relent for as long as I dared.

On 145/80 R12 (12-inch) wheels and tires, the diameter of genuinely-rural gravel nigh transitions from “rough ride” to “obstacle course,” where a significant amount of correction is required to maintian a constant heading. At any real velocity, driving the Metro down that stretch felt like drag racing across a ball pit. I doubt I ever exceeded 65, but it was one helluvan experience.