Geo Metros are Making a Comeback
The Geo Metro gets about 40 mpg (highway), which is about as good as a Toyota Prius.
Brenton Netz from St. Cloud is doing brisk business reconditioning Geo Metros (or, as I like to call them, Pregnant Rollerskates) and Ford Festivas and selling them on eBay.
After buying a Metro on Craigslist in Montana and driving it back to his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Netz realized how rarely he was making trips to the pump.
He realized that he had stumbled upon a possible side business and began buying one-way tickets to states in the West to purchase as many of the cars as he could. Netz said he has sold about a dozen cars and has eight more sitting in his backyard…
It seems, Netz said, people are beginning to realize that their car choices need to be focused more on practicality than status and appearance.
I work in Eden Prairie. A great many of my co-workers come from farther south and west. Not just Chanhassen, Chaska, and Shakopee. Waconia, Jordan, Belle Plain, Prior Lake. One guy comes from New Ulm! And they’re all hunting and fishing types so they’re driving these big honking trucks. One guy was crying about how it cost him $95 to fill up his gigantic whatever the Dodge version of an F350 is. Boo frickin’ hoo! I’d love to see these manly men driving the Pregnant Rollerskate.
(via @aeklund)
That’s a great story.
Have you ever also noticed that it’s the big trucks/suvs that are in the left lane, going 80, while it’s the smaller cars that are going the speed limit. Very little sympathy for these people.
Pregnant Rollerskate is a good one. I always called them eggs on wheels.
I almost missed my exit off of 494 today looking at a Metro. On the return trip I saw some Suzuki equivalent. They’re everywhere!
My friend used to own a Geo Metro that she’d bought for $400, and we took it on a road trip to the Ozarks in 2004. On our last day there, the transmission busted and we were stuck in Yellville, Arkansas for three days. We almost Greyhound-ed it back and left the car for parts, but the local mechanic (who, coincidentally, grew up in Shakopee) said it was worth the $1,000 to fix the transmission because of what my friend could save in gas.
Great car, we were very fond of it. Tiny and not very hardy though, Geo Metroids would definitely lose in a nasty car fight.