From the mid-1980s through the 1990s and even into the 2000s, Americans could buy Japanese cars from General Motors. Geo was General Motors’ answer to popular imports from the likes of Toyota. It was a GM brand that didn’t sell GM vehicles and today, many of its cars are forgotten and disappearing from America’s roads. One of those cars is the Geo Storm, a car that wasn’t just an economical way of getting around, since GM offered a legitimate performance variant and even a shooting brake!
Last time on Holy Grails, readers ColoradoFX4, great falls green, and Jack Trade all nominated the Chevrolet Lumina Z34. In the not-too-distant past, General Motors used to produce a slew of front-wheel-drive coupes. Most of these cars were little more than efficient transportation with some style, but the General did pump out a few that are worth remembering. Available in just coupe form, Chevy Lumina buyers could opt for the high-performance Lumina Z34. Lumina Z34s came with a sport suspension package, a body kit, sporty, overstuffed seats, and a dual exhaust. Under the hood sat a 3.4-liter V6 that made 210 horses and 215 lb-ft torque. It was not the fastest car of its type or even the rarest, but it was a hotter version of a car forgotten by enthusiasts today.
I believe today’s grail follows a similar idea.
The Geo Storm was a common car. Perhaps some of you lovely readers drove one of these in college or at least knew someone with them. And for the younger folks in our audience, maybe you got one of these as a worn hand-me-down during your days in high school. I say that, but the only Geos I remember from my high school parking lot circa 2011 were beaten-down Metros. The more I think about this, the more I fear that I cannot remember when was the last time I’ve seen a Geo Storm in the wild. Sure, I’ve seen photos of Storms at car shows like Radwood, but shows like that are bound to lure these out of hiding. When was the last time you’ve seen someone using a Storm as a daily driver?
Really, it seems that so many Geo products are disappearing from American roads. I see Trackers getting beaten up on Gambler 500s and the occasional Metro convertible, but I can’t tell you when was the time I’ve seen a Prizm. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Spectrum in real life.
Geo Had A Lineup Of Bangers
As I wrote in our last entry, General Motors of the 1980s struggled to maintain momentum. In 1984, GM’s brands hoarded 44.6 percent of the car market. But GM couldn’t hold it all and by 1987, the brands lost their grip, grasping for 36.6 percent market share. In 1992, CNN explained that General Motors made a bet on small fuel-efficient front-wheel-drive cars during a time when the American buying public was still looking for larger vehicles. In the last Holy Grails, I explained the GM-10 program, a development program designed to replace the Chevrolet Celebrity, Pontiac 6000, Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, and Buick Century with a coupe, a sedan, and a wagon for each brand. Each of those cars would be similar underneath.
During the 1980s, General Motors also had a knack for rebadging imported vehicles. The Chevy Chevette-based Pontiac T-1000 died and made way for the 1988 Pontiac LeMans. This was a car designed by Opel in Europe, sold as the Kadett, and built in South Korea by Daewoo, where it was badged as the LeMans. The Chevy Sprint was another weird captive import. Chevy abandoned the development of the M-body, selling it to Suzuki in exchange for a five percent stake. Over in Japan, the car would be known as the Suzuki Cultus and in 1984, it came back to America as the Chevrolet Sprint. And don’t forget about the 1986 Chevrolet Nova, a vehicle built under the famous New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) partnership with Toyota. The Nova, despite the historic name, was really a Toyota Sprinter at heart.
In 1988, the New York Times reported that General Motors had a new plan for its imports. The Chevy Nova would die in 1988, to be replaced by something called the Geo Prizm. As the publication noted, Chevrolet’s marketers felt that the Nova was outdated when it was new and that because it was branded a Chevy, buyers thought it was a domestic product. Geo was created as a subsidiary of Chevrolet to house GM’s captive imports. General Motors reportedly hoped to lure young buyers who might otherwise buy an import like a Toyota. In hindsight, that seemed like an odd plan. General Motors would stop you from buying a Toyota by selling you a Toyota that calls itself something else.
When Geo launched in 1989, the lineup consisted of the Geo Prizm, the Metro, the Spectrum, and the Tracker. The Prizm was still a Toyota Sprinter, the Spectrum was an Isuzu I-Mark, and the Tracker was developed in a joint venture between General Motors of Canada and Suzuki. All of these cars were pretty awesome in their own ways. I’ve off-roaded in Trackers over the years and the little SUV-lets are beasts. To this day I want one for a Gambler 500 rig but I’ve just never found one in good enough shape.
Of course, the Metro needs no introduction. The second-generation Geo Metro is famous for its frugality. This is a car that gets 52 mpg on the highway without using a hybrid system or a diesel engine. Mind you, that’s 52 mpg after the EPA revised fuel economy ratings in 2007. Before revisions, the Metro was rated at 58 mpg.
There was also some meddling behind the Metro. As United Press International reported in 1991, GM brass prevented Suzuki from selling its own super frugal car in the United States. Apparently, this was done in an effort to kneecap the perception that Japanese automakers build more fuel-efficient cars than American automakers.
Storm Warning
That brings us to the Storm. When it was time to put the Isuzu-based Spectrum to pasture, General Motors asked for a replacement. In 1990, Isuzu came out with the second generation of the Impulse, which would get slightly restyled and sold as the Geo Storm. Here’s what Geo had to say about it:
Geo Storm is the new generation of performance coupe, for a new generation of enthusiasts.
The shape is aggressive, the technology leading-edge and the price affordable.
Geo Storm 2 + 2 Coupe features include a spirited 12-valve engine, fully independent suspension, folding rear seat and complete analog instrumentation. A driver’s side Supplemental Inflatable Restraint System (air bag) is a standard safety feature.
Geo Storm GSi is the full-blown Storm, featuring distinctive exterior and interior styling, a high-performance 16-valve engine and Sport Suspension.
If you’ve been waiting for a sports machine with this kind of style and this kind of performance, your Chevrolet/Geo dealer is waiting for you.
The Isuzu Impulse that the Geo is based on was designed under the direction of then Isuzu design head Shiro Nakamura and the inspiration was reportedly 1960s and 1970s GM classics. Nakamura is perhaps best known today for his work on the Nissan GT-R supercar.
The result was a pair of economical cars that managed to blow the press and owners away. The base engine was a 1.6-liter four making 90 HP to 95 HP depending on model year. If you stepped up to the more sporty GSi, power bumped up to 130 HP. Later GSis came with a 1.8-liter four making 140 HP.
Autoweek’s review of the Geo Storm reportedly called it “Slick, Quick And Inexpensive.” I couldn’t find an online copy of this review, but apparently, the car was described as “a good performer” and that it “handles better than the average new car.” Sport Compact Car apparently declared the car third place for its “Top Ten of 1992” and Road & Track is said to have discovered that the Geo Storm could stick to a skidpad like a Mazda RX-7. Sadly, those reviews are all on paper without online copies, but I did find a couple of archived reviews.
In a 1990 Car and Driver test, the Geo Storm went up to bat against 10 other sport coupes from the Volkswagen GTI to the Chevy Beretta GT, where it placed fifth in testing:
Dynamically, the 130-hp coupe acquits itself pretty well. Among the eleven cars in this test, it ties for third in 0-to-60-mph acceleration and in top speed, and it ties for first in roadholding (most drivers enjoyed its secure twirling-road manners). Power steering and low-effort shifting and pedal action give the Storm a light, nimble feel. The driving position and the comfortable seats also earned high praise.
Less popular was the amount of noise the engine makes when working hard. And anyone who actually expects to climb into the Storm’s back seat should note how the roof section thickens to accommodate the hatch hinges—right where a rear-seat passenger would like to put their head.
We look forward to Isuzu’s own version, the new Impulse, with four-wheel drive and Lotus Elan-spec power.
I’ll talk about the Impulse in a moment. For now, enjoy another MotorWeek review:
The Grail
Alright, so we’ve established that the Geo Storm and its Isuzu Impulse sibling are both pretty neat cars. So, what about the grail? Well, Jack Trade thinks that the Geo Storm and the Isuzu Impulse themselves are worthy of being a grail:
The Geo Storm. A great little piece of unpretentious ’90s fun, and a kind of car that basically doesn’t exist anymore – the cheap, fun-within-reason sport coupe.
And it’s really the story of the Storm (and its Isuzu half-brother) that makes its status – GM attempting to finally get a good handle on its import competition b/c joining forces with them instead of going it alone, the heights of the Japanese bubble economy, properly ’90s color palettes, and most of all, that buyers then still wanted cars that were primarily about an everyday enjoyable driving experience. Storms were everywhere back then, but these days, I haven’t seen one in years. Even Stephen Gossin doesn’t seem to run across them!
With that said, both of these cars had special versions of them. The Geo Storm and Isuzu Impulse were produced from 1990 to 1993, a short run for any vehicle. For 1991 and 1992, buyers of the Storm could get the Wagonback, which switched the liftback-style trunk of the base car for a long roof and a hatch. Yep, you could get the Storm as a shooting brake! Sadly, the only engine available here was the 95 HP 1.6-liter four. At least you could have these cars with a manual transmission.
However, you could also get the Isuzu Impulse XS as a Wagonback, and that one comes with a treat. See, General Motors owned Lotus back then, which allowed the Impulse to get a Lotus-tuned chassis with softer springs, stiffer dampers, and larger sway bars. Since the Storm was a stripped-down version of the Impulse, it did not get the fun Lotus chassis tuning. The 1991 Impulse XS version of the Wagonback also got the stronger 1.6-liter DOHC four making 130 HP. In 1992, power bumped up 10 HP.
Depending on who you are, the crown jewel of the twins was the 1991 Impulse RS, which was built for just one year. This raucous version sports an all-wheel-drive system with a 43:57 rear-biased torque split, a rear viscous differential, a center planetary differential, and passive rear-steer. That one gets an even better engine with a 1.6-liter four making 160 HP.
No matter which of these cars floats your boat, it’s going to be pretty rare. It’s reported that just 800 Isuzu Impulse RS were built, of which 600 made it to the United States. The Impulse itself is also pretty rare, with around 13,000 units reportedly built between two generations. It’s unclear how many Storms were built, but as of 2010, it was estimated that 40,300 of them were still on the road.
You won’t be surprised to find that I haven’t found any of these sweet shooting brakes currently for sale in the United States. If you do find one of these things, they shouldn’t be that expensive. A 1991 Isuzu Impulse RS sold on Bring a Trailer for just $11,500. I found many regular Geo Storms and they were well under $5,000 for running examples. Will these cars be future classics? Maybe not, but you can get these pieces of history for cheap!
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I had a Metro myself. Great car, slow and tinny but you could drive it at 9/10ths all the time.
GM commissioned a 1/25 scale promotional model of the Storm from AMT, it was never offered as a snap model kit but was made for at least two years and can be found with both early and late noses.
Feeling so nostalgic. I owned a base ’89 Geo Spectrum, or the identity crisis car as we used to call it. The front and steering wheel had Chevy logos, the back had the Geo logo, and the glass and other random parts had Isuzu logos.
I bought it in 2003 for a song because it already looked like it was on its deathbed. And yet, after replacing the tires and a few screws, it still drove for thousands and thousands of miles, even on ill advised roadtrips.
Yes, you could run faster than the car would go uphill, and the doors felt like they were about to fall off when you were going too fast (downhill of course). But the thing would always start and never complain. Even when I had to refill the cooling system with tap water for a few days because there was a leak and I was too broke to go to the mechanic (or to keep buying coolant).
I ended up giving it to a friend, who still used it for a few more years. Fun fact, he worked in PR and the Geo ended up chauffeuring quite a few celebrities during its golden years. It even attended the Oscars, and had to be pushed out of the parking structure with the help of a bunch of French journalists in tuxedos, because we had left the lights on and the battery died.
Probably it is the car that I miss the most.
I really wanted one of these cars when I was in my early teens. I didnt understand much about cars at that point other than I really liked the yellow one that sat across the street from my school at a little Chevy – Geo dealership. Both the dealership and the lot are long gone and it sounds like the little yellow Storm is probably crushed like my dreams of dating Tiffany Amber Theissen.
I had an Asuna Sunfire.. aka Isuzu Impulse.
One of the things I loved about them was the interior, esp. the dash – it was derided as too space-pod futuristic by some back then, but it was absolutely a harbinger of what was to come. And on a gussied-up economy car? Cool.
I was more partial to the previous generation (83-89) JR Impulse. My brother had an ’85 Turbo and it was a pretty solid car. Its interior was so much better than the later JT cars. The JT Impulse interior looks like GM had heavy input on its design and cost. It looked and felt so much cheaper. The Impulse took a decided step down market with this generation, when everyone else was trying to move up. The 4XE1 was a pretty fun, high-revving engine, but it did not take kindly to anyone not obeying its 60K timing belt and water pump change intervals. It’s probably why you don’t see many of them anymore.
I agree, the first generation was more forward-looking in both the exterior and (especially) the interior. I still remember the print ads from when the Impulse debuted: they had a black background with white or yellow italic text, and between the design and the copy, it seemed like a car of the future.
In fact, the 2nd-generation Impulse was such a non-entity that I never realized it was sold in the US! I thought it only existed here as the Storm.
I dailied a 12-valve Storm for a couple years about fifteen years ago. Parts could be tricky to get. The lower-spec engine wasn’t exactly powerful, but the way the five speed was geared, it was a ton of fun to drive slow-car-fast style. On the interstate it got significantly better mileage at 60 mph than 70 mph because of the gearing. As much fun as that car was, I would LOVE to have an Impulse RS. Parts for those are essentially unobtanium these days, though.
I have fond memories of riding around in my sitter’s Geo Storm in the early 90s. My dad had a collection of classics, but something about the Storm was cooler in a different way.
Yay! So glad to see the Storm getting the recognition it deserves! I daily a 92 wagonback in the summer named Little Red. And a close friend of mine across town has the Impulse wagonback. It’s trippy to see them at carshows together. Another friend of mine has a Storm wagonback in the south. There’s a ragtag group of us preserving as many of these little gems as we can. They are spirited, if not a little pokey by today’s standard, but they bring many smiles per mile.
We so need to hear more.
I’ve never even seen a wagonback version in the wild, and I was so into the Storm back when it came out that I always had my eyes open for them back when they roamed free.
There’s so much to tell! What would you like to know?
There were many more when I was a kid, but I only ever saw one wagonback – a 91 – back then. Admittedly I fogot about the wagonbacks until my friend across town got their Impulse wagonback and then BAM deja vu. I HAD to have one. It was a gnawing need. After a hot minute another close friend of mine acquired and made Red roadworthy, so I took my chance and that’s how we got here. I couldn’t be happier. Best fun adult purchase to date.
Is it true the panels are removable/openable?
And I’m assuming the Storm community can’t be too big at this point, so you’ve likely compared your capacity to a regular one…how much more stuff can fit? Do the rear seats lay flat? (if it were a pure domestic, I’d be pretty sure they wouldn’t, but since it’s not, maybe…)
GM got soooooooooooooooooooo jealous of the Storm, and Geo in general. The Storm’s success made GM kill Isuzu.
Also, the Prizm GSI was the only US-market 4-door Corolla with the 4A-GE
Didn’t the pictured nova have it? A former coworker had a car identical to the black one pictured and I vaguely remember it having a one… It’s been ages though, I may be remembering things
It did – the 1988-only Nova Twin-Cam. So, it can still be said that the only way to get such a Corolla in the U.S., was to visit your Chevy dealer.
Yes. However, Toyota still didn’t offer it on 4-door Corollas sold under their own name.
For some reason the styling on the Storm never appealed to me, and I preferred the look of the Isuzu Impulse. I drove an early press car Storm in 1989. Even though my car at the time was a 95hp Mercury Lynx LS, I was not overly impressed with the Storm and its interior. It was probably good performance for the price, but not my cup of tea.
Ugh! Why did you need to remind me about the Daewoo version of the Pontiac LeMans! I have a friend who had one. The only redeeming quality is that it was cheap transportation. She later traded it for a New Beetle. I was glad to see her in a more reliable car.
they seemed to compete with another unicorn. TheNissan Pulsar NX Sportback.
strange, I had no idea they were made for so few years, they were everywhere back in the day, though none were the shooting brake that I ever saw. I even had a teal 1991 in the stable for a while, it was reliable and kind of fun to drive for the times, but it was really just the the Scion Tc of it’s era.
You neglected to mention that the rear side windows on the WagonBack (both Geo and Isuzu) were designed to be fully removable. I think(?) the intention was some sort of open-air, roadster-ish driving experience. But I don’t think anybody actually removed them.
I did not know this – seems like that was sort of inspired by the Pulsar NX with the removable tops then.
They look like some sort of t-top style removable panels in the photo, but vertical instead of horizontal.
Wow. This is another one of those cars where you used to see a SHIT TON of them on the roads. They seemed like they were super popular with a lot of the girls who went to my high school. I cannot think of the last time I saw one and that is even living out here in Cali where cars don’t rust.
My dad bought a ’91 Prizm GSI brand new the year after I was born and had it until around 2005 or 2006. The lower driver’s door skin was rusting away from the Michigan winters and it finally skipped a tooth on the timing belt. This was the first car I ever drove and have fond memories of the utilitarian simplicity of this handsome little car.
My first car was a light blue ’89 Geo Prism LSi hatchback. This was back in… 2004? It was rusting to death when I bought it for 750$, but that car was shockingly entertaining to drive, seats were comfortable, and outside of the rust, looked pretty sharp. It was a perfect first car, as long as you don’t value safety a whole lot. I loved that car, but Upstate NY salt did not love it.
I just got my subscriber-swag birthday drawing in the (e)mail from Mr. Torchinsky and it happens to be a ’90 Geo Prizm, which was in light blue at the time. My high-school ride. I loved that car too!
Awesome! Yeah, it was honestly a great first car, even though teenage me was hellbent on ruining it, and by the time I was done with it, even David Tracy would have looked at it and said “whoa”.
A coworker had the Isuzu version, drove it a couple of times and it was fun despite the automatic. I’m 6’4″ and it was very cramped though. Don’t know how he survived, he was taller than me. When I finished university I went looking for one (in any version) and they were rare in my area by then. Also it was the early 2000s so most had been fast and furious-ized at that point by their second owners.
Also found out that my neighbour had either the storm or the Asuna version as her first ever new car.
Never drove the Storm, but was a proud owner of a 3-door ’96 Metro LSi… power nothing, a three-banger and a stick. I sure did get 50+ mpg frequently in that little death trap and drove that car so hard just to wring out an ounce of power from it. Since it weighed next to nothing, if you were good on the clutch, you could have tons of fun driving it like a damn go-kart.
My 95 year old father still has one of those, he thought something was wrong with my C30 when he slammed the door and the whole car didn’t rattle and tip
Can you imagine if the Autopian had written Indian Jones and the Last Crusade? Everyone could’ve walked away with a Holy Grail.
Right? A geo storm isn’t even rare. They sucked when they were new. There is nothing holy grail about them.
You should probably do the Prizm next, specifically the GSi version. There’s even a website to help you with your research 😉 prizmgsi.com
My first Prizm was a base model ’90 hatchback that I got in high school. It was sufficient, but the GSi I had seen at Don Kahan Chevrolet a few months after I got mine was what I really decided I needed. It was a couple of decades later, but I got a notchback GSi, which was pretty quickly flipped when I found a hatch GSi close by – one of about 830 ever built. Now that’s a Holy Grail.
Please! I beg of you?!
Don’t fallow me…
In ’92 or so, my dad and I went to check these out at the dealership. Our sales guy offered to let me test drive the GSi. Hell yeah. So, I hop in the driver’s seat of a yellow one, just like the one in the Geo magazine ad in the article above, he gets in the passenger seat and we take off. East Tennessee is hilly. Like, very hilly. We get to the top of a pretty tall hill and the sales guy tells me to floor it all the way to the top of the next hill. I did. It felt like we got two feet of air off of the top of the next hill. The sales guy screams “That was AWESOME. No one else has caught air on a test drive!” He holds up his hand for a high-five and, keeping my eyes on the road, I slapped him across the front of his nose in returning his high-five.
Was the sales guy’s name Putty?
Though I am not a Canadian, I will make mention of Geo’s Canadian counterpart, Asüna, and their version of the Impulse – the Sunfire.
It is interesting to look back at the time and see what the domestic makers were trying to do. GM tried it most of the ways in the end. Import something cheap and sell it under our existing brands (ex. Festiva, pre-Geo Chevys, Dodge/Plymouth Colt)? under a new brand (Geo, Mitsu-based Eagles)? make a better car (Saturn)? base it off someone else (Mazda-based Escort)?
That “More people bought a Geo in its first year than bought Hondas, Toyotas, and Nissans combined in their first two years!” line – technically correct but of course that wasn’t hard to do when you’re operating out of one of if not the most common, established dealer networks in the country…
GM is still trying that – importing Chinese vehicles and selling them under the Buick name. Actually, GM participated in the designing of them in their joint venture with the Chinese, so maybe they have taken half a baby step forward.
The dubious decisions and general confusion among their board of directors seems to be a decades-long problem.
I love that – absent any other info – this could be construed as either a three-cylinder with a four-valve head or as a four-cylinder with a three-valve head.
(Yes, a 2-valve six-cylinder would theoretically be an option, but no one would expect that from a Geo.)
Someone, somewhere must have swapped a supercharged 3800 into a Geo, and if they haven’t, they should.
I think a 3800 would twist a Geo into a small metal ball on launch, but it would be an interesting experiment.
For me, this is The One That Got Away. Iwas all set to buy a secondhand smurf-blue Storm GSi from a dealership, and something the salesman did pissed me off (can’t even remember what) and I walked away. Bought a Ford Escort instead, which had nothing in common with the Storm except its color.