Junkyard Find: 1992 Geo Metro 4-door hatchback

What was the cheapest new four-door car available in the United States for the 1992 model year? Not the Subaru Justy, not the Toyota Tercel, not the Hyundai Excel and not the Suzuki Swift. It was today’s Junkyard Find!

Yes, the base-model 1992 Geo Metro four-door (or five-door, if that’s your preferred nomenclature) hatchback had an MSRP of just $7,399. That’s $16,435 in 2024 dollars, which says a lot about how much more you get with the cheapest available new four-door right now.

Oh, sure, buyers willing to live with a two-door could go cheaper than this car in 1992; a new Yugo GV listed at… well, it’s hard to say, given that the Yugo’s homeland was busy with its civil war and Yugo America Inc folded its tent early in the year; the latest trustworthy Yugo MSRP I could find in my reference library was $4,435 for the base 1990 model ($10,678 in 2024 dollars).

If we’re talking about realistic Metro competitors here, the base 1992 Ford Festiva actually managed to undercut the price tag on the cheapest possible Metro two-door hatchback that year: $6,911 versus $6,999.

The wretched 1992 Hyundai Excel base two-door was even cheaper, at $6,595 ($15,879 in today’s spondoolies). The cheapest 1992 Subaru Justy was $6,445, and Subaru likely could have squeezed a four-door under the Metro’s cost if it hadn’t insisted on selling all its U.S.-market four-door Justys with four-wheel-drive by that time.

Those reviewers who whine about the Mitsubishi Mirage’s lack of horsepower (I say it’s a good-enough car with an excellent warranty for the money, or at least the last one I reviewed was) should consider the engine in this car.

That’s one liter (actually 0.993 liters) of displacement from three rampaging cylinders, rated at 55 horsepower and 58 pound-feet. The good news is that it has electronic fuel injection and an overhead camshaft.

Even better news during a time of recession in California (which is where I found this car) is the fuel economy it delivered with a five-speed manual transmission: 40 miles per gallon on the highway, 38 miles per gallon in the city. You could get the Geo Metro with an automatic, and I’ve found exactly one during my junkyard travels (and that includes EV conversions).

The Metro was based on the second-generation Suzuki Cultus, and it was the successor to the 1985-1988 Chevrolet Sprint (which was based on the first-generation Cultus). You could buy versions of this car all the way through 2017 in Pakistan.

Suzuki began selling the Cultus with Swift badges in the United States as a 1989 model, though Swift prices were always a bit higher than Metro prices.

This car was built at the CAMI plant in Ontario, where Geo Trackers and Suzuki Sidekicks were born in order to circumvent the Chicken Tax.

The Metro entered its second generation as a 1995 model, when the Cultus entered its third generation. It became the Chevrolet Metro starting with the 1998 model year, due to the Geo brand getting axed by The General in 1997.

Production of the Chevrolet Metro continued through 2001, after which it was replaced by the Suzuki Aerio and the Daewoo-built Chevrolet Aveo. Such is the nature of the mighty GM Empire.

This car has a Delco AM/FM/cassette radio, which added $441 to the bottom line ($980 now). Amazingly, the right-side mirror was included at no extra cost on all 1992 Metro models except the gas-mileage-king XFi. I suspect that the radio was a junkyard-obtained unit swapped in long after purchase, since body parts have been swapped as well.

The five-digit odometer means we can’t know the true final mileage. My guess is that the reels turned over once, for a total of 162,150.9 miles during this car’s life on the road (the kind of owners who can get cars to intergalactic odometer readings generally don’t allow their rides to get as hooptiefied as this one, though I have seen exceptions to that rule).

Gas was cheap during the late 1980s and early 1990s, other than a spike after Iraq invaded Kuwait, but some car buyers still wanted good fuel economy.

Gets 100 kilometers per 4.5 liters of gasoline on the Canadian highway. In 1994, the General switched back to the Firefly name that had gone on his Canadian-market Chevy Sprints.