Im thinkin about moving about 20-30 miles away from work... cuz thats where I can afford a house and not a tiny cramped condo.. anyways.. For work commute purposes, I was thinkin about gettin' a Metro.. Anyone know is those are easy to work on? And gas mialage? Parts prices etc?

This is something Im planning **IF** i get a home a distance from work.. lol
-tim

NO NOT A METRO. A ricer for the commute is a good idea. But NOT a Metro. Hyundai, Honda, Only American small I would buy is Ford Focus or the older Escort.

Jeff

Why not metro? just curious... trying to weigh my options ;-)

My buddy used to have one he put rims, exhaust, stereo with 2 15" subs in the back and later 2 10" JL w3s, homeade intake, and some other little things. It was a 5 speed. It actually ran really well for a Geo Metro. He then ended up painting it primer black. Put a clutch in it and drove it's wheels off. It did seem to break fairly often like I think it needed wheel bearings when he sold it but what do you expect for a car you can get for $500 or so. It was actually pretty quick for a Geo Metro. I think he wishes he had it back. He said he got either 50 or 60mpg I forgot which. It didn't seem like it was easy to work on it was one of the Suzuki motors that just seem to be a crappy design and a pita to work on. He said the same thing and I think it might have been one of the reasons he wanted to get rid of it. At the same time it was super cheap and just a decent car. If I had of known he wasgoing to sell it I would have bought it. Esepcially since it had 2 10" JLs with it that he paid $440 for a couple months earlier he sold the whole car with them for $500 with a fairly new tach that was $120 and quite a few other things I could have easily sold and gotten more than the car was worth and still had a cheap car thats good on gas to drive around.

Metro are not a very good ride. Every one I have heard were breaking and hard to fix. And they are ugly.

Jeff

The ugliest car I ever saw passed me on Thursday. It was a white Metro with a young chick driving it. The hatchbacks are not as bad as the sedan looking ones.

Have you thought about a VW Diesel? I hear the newer ones are good cars, the older ones suck eggs. Not the engines, the dual mass flywheels, door handles,and auto transmissions. TDIforum.com is the ultimate website for this. Some of these guys are getting 700 miles on a tank! I spent days there looking into it.

Another option to look at is a 2001-2002 or so Kia Rio. My wife had one before we got married (her first car) and that was the most reliable little car I've ever seen. Only thing that ever went wrong with it was a thermostat going out once.

If you find one thats been taken care of with somewhat low miles (under 100,000), they've got decent get up and go out of that little 1.5L DOHC I4, and it never dropped below 30 mpg. Most of the time, without bad winds, it'd get mid 30s to low 40s. One time, on a long trip to Rochester MN from where I'm at, we had a wind actually helping us for once, pushing us. It got 46 mpg.

You can't find them as cheap as a Geo Metro, but for a few thousand, they are excellent little cars.

EDIT: And those MPGs were mostly at 75+ mph, BTW.

Sorry Jason, but I wouldn't recommend any Kia as their quality is not the best as I hear, and their resale value is horrible. I also definetly would not support a reverse engineering car also. I have heard that they stole a bunch of quality control pointers from Toyota a few years back, something that costs a lot of money for any company to figure out over years of building cars.

Go for an older Japanese car, they are very reilable, and should give you good fuel mileage. The newer ones, like the newer civics are not as good as they use to be.

Just my 2cents!

go for the Geo!
I have one and its decent for communiting to and from work.
paid $100 for it, and it gets 40-45 or so MPG.
has a slight rod knock, and very easy to work on.

cheap parts, a set of rod bearings for it are $10-12
i love it.
you get what you pay for really.
mine has about 148,000 miles and runs fine, have driven it about 5000 miles so far without a
problem. - its a 5 speed.

now the same car with the Automatic.... are horrible.
transmissions are common to go bad in the A/T.

wtf??? hard to work on???
dont justify on something you dont own.
I own one and love the way its set up.
Very easy to work on.
engine is removed with like 6 bolts.
timing belt is crank, tensioner, cam.
water pump is seperate from timing belt.
parts are easy to find in your local junkyard.
If you take care of it like i have done so to mine, it will
last a good while.

i drive mine an average of 70-75MPH on interstate at least 3 times a week to VaBeach - about 20-30 miles each way.
uses some oil, but its all good.
i use it as a utility vehicle, i seriously currently have about 30 gallons of Used vegatable oil in the backseat behind the passenger seat in a barrel.
its an ugly car, but it does me good and saves me money, and i love the POS.
use it as a field car often also.
cant beat it for $100.

ORIGINAL: jason.w

Another option to look at is a 2001-2002 or so Kia Rio. My wife had one before we got married (her first car) and that was the most reliable little car I've ever seen. Only thing that ever went wrong with it was a thermostat going out once.

No offense but I think I'd rather have the Geo Metro. BTW my buddies was a Hatchback and didn't look too bad.

Anyway about the Japenese cars I totally agree there. I'd recommend a Honda or Toyota over most anything as they are super reliable and get decent gas mileage. Our 06 Accord v6 6 speed manual can get about 34-35mpg if you drive it normal. Thats mixxed city and highway. All that plus will spin the wheels at 40mph in 2nd gear not even touching the clutch. It's pretty quick for a family sedan, gets good gas milage, handles well, and just fun to drive.

Our older 96 Accord EX 4 cylinder Automatic has 225k or so miles on it. Owned since new. It doesn't seem to get as good of gas milage but gets decent. No where near the power though. However its a pretty good car an imo one of the best looking cars out there. I love that body style. I just wish it was a 5 speed instead of auto.



I was just giving you my opinion on the Metro since you asked but honestly a Japenese car is probably a way better quality car.

Geo! There great. haha was my first car. Ran the wheels off of it during high school. Demo derby last year finnished it off. had for 6 years. those things were made to be fix.

No offense taken, I just don't think you guys are giving the Kias/Hyundais enough credit. The only 1st Generation Rios I've heard of problems with are when someone treats them like crap, or a previous owner treated them like crap, and then they complain how the car falls apart on them.

Some of their models are junk, true. The newer Rios and minivans are supposed to be pretty questionable. But the 1st Generation Rios and the newer Spectras are supposed to be really nicely built, economy cars. Will they be quite as good as Honda or Toyota? Maybe not, but they will be darn close, and half the cost.

The Japanese built cars are nice, no doubt about it you guys, but we're talking about buying a cheap little car for gas saving, right? A Honda/Toyota, unless you go back quite a few years, does not = cheap. And I can guarantee you that a Rio will have more get up and go than a Geo Metro when you need it (not that a Geo is a bad car, don't take that the wrong way).

I guess what it boils down to is personal preference.

ORIGINAL: jason.w
No offense taken, I just don't think you guys are giving the Kias/Hyundais enough credit. The only 1st Generation Rios I've heard of problems with are when someone treats them like crap, or a previous owner treated them like crap, and then they complain how the car falls apart on them.

Some of their models are junk, true.


Sorry I am going to have to disagree with you all the way arround on a kia.... back when you could get two base model rio's for around 6g I bout one for my ex. on all my cars I do all the reugular maintenance and suggested maintenance at about 500 miles early... at 7k miles it died, completely. dragged it into the dealer, they couldn't figure out why it wouldn't run.. gave us a new car. new car was nothing but problems. the first day we owned it, we had to bring it back to the shop for a missfire (bad coil). the next week had it start misfiring again (bad coil again). broght it back to the shop. they fixed it. drove it out the driveway and home (8.3 miles) and the thing shut off on us. they replaced the fuel pump, the coil (third time for those keeping score) and two grounds. at this point we had maybe 700 miles on the car, and there was over 3k on the clock. car ran great for about a month, then suffered complete hydrolic failure. they ended up replacing the master cylander, and the clutch pedal assembly. drove the car for about another month and the computer died on us. took them a month four coils and about three dozen other parts to figure out that was what was wrong with it. they figure it was also why we had so many electrical problems.

I finally gave up on that car at that point they gave us a new one and the first thing I did was put a for sale sign in the window. during the time the second rio was in the shop I went to a buddy of mine who has about a dozen escorts, festiva's, omni's, and geo's in his yard at any given time. pulled parts from this one and that one and got a car running. gave him $200 far a little convertible. took it to mako gave them another $200 to make it all one color. outside regular maintenance on the geo the only thing that has had to be replaced are, headlight switch, top, and a clutch. it still runs great. and when we sold the car to her sister we actually made a profit on it. (sold for $600)

flash to now.
Fiance' has a 01 sephia. the rear break rotors are not what the dealer listed as correct parts numbers. the belts are the biggest PITA to do, you have to lift the car up and remove the passenger tire, and splash guard. there is lots of rust on it. it will only run on NKG silver sparkplugs, otherwise it runs like cr**. AC always runs. and the car occasionally stalls and starts for no apparent reason. not to mention I have had the windshield replaced twice on it because it whistles at highway speeds. and if you look at the build sheet it says it has ABS, but there is no way in heck this car has ABS (dealer even confirmed the car is non ABS eqquipped). the interior is literally falling apart. cant get into the glovebox, the list goes on and on and on about how much of a S pile these cars are.

I'm about to go spend another couple hundred at my buddies place... except she doesn't want anything older than what she currently has.

Maybe my wife had really good luck then. Or maybe you had really bad luck. I don't know.

And I never said the Sephia was a good car, don't know anything about them. My father-in-law, due to the luck my wife had, has purchased three different Spectras at different times. Hardly any problems (ones not caused by my mother-in-law, that is) at all.

My wife's next SUV will either be a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited with 6-speed manual, or a Kia SUV with the 5-speed manual. (Or so she's decided so far. She loves her manual transmissions and wants to have one again.) If we pick the Kia, I guess I'll learn a lot more about the newer ones and if they are reliable or not.

Kia and Daewoo: the Koreans make junk CNC machine tools, I see no reason whytheir cars would be any better. Not that I wouldrecommend a Chevy Suzuki Geo Metro either.

A big thing to watch for on the older Metros is that they like to rust around the A-arms.

I had a 90 and a 94........And I miss them alot!