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Final Parking Space: 1993 Geo Storm GSi
General Motors launched its Geo brand in 1989 in order to sell vehicles built or designed by its Japanese joint-venture partners. During the marque’s 18-year life, only two genuine performance models were offered to its buyers: the Prizm GSi and the Storm GSi. Here’s a final-model-year example of the latter type, found in a High Plains Colorado boneyard recently.
The prehistory of Geo began in 1972, when GM started selling the Isuzu Faster with Chevrolet LUV badges in the United States. For 1985, the Suzuki Cultus got Chevrolet badges and became the Sprint in the United States (and the Pontiac Firefly in Canada). Also for the 1985 model year, GM and Toyota began building AE82 Corolla Sprinters with Chevrolet Nova badging at the NUMMI plant on the site of Fremont Assembly in California.
The Chevrolet Spectrum, which was an Isuzu Gemini and essentially identical to the U.S.-market Isuzu I-Mark, hit American showrooms at about the same time as the Sprint and Nova. Chevrolet dealers in the United States offered an amazing ten separate car models for 1986; today Chevrolet offers us just the Malibu and the Corvette (unless you consider crossover SUVs to be genuine cars, which I don’t).
GM made the decision to put all its Japanese cars into a single brand, and thus was Geo born for the 1989 model year (Pontiac was selling the Daewoo LeMans with Pontiac badging at the time, but South Korean manufacturers were excluded from Geo). The Spectrum and Tracker (Suzuki Sidekick) came first, as 1989 models, with the Spectrum bearing both Chevrolet and Geo badges for a few months.
The brand was launched with a theme song borrowed from Rodgers & Hammerstein, with the Metro (second-generation Suzuki Cultus), Prizm (NUMMI-built Toyota E90 Sprinter), and Storm (Isuzu Gemini Coupe aka Piazza Nero aka Impulse) joining as 1990 models.
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The Storm was sold just for the 1990 through 1993 model years; it was badged as the Asüna Sunfire in Canada (we’ll get into some of GM’s other goofy north-of-the-border badge engineering adventures another time). It was available as a liftback coupe and as a three-door hatchback sold as the Storm Wagonback. The Wagonback sold poorly and is the rarest of all Geos today.
The factory-hot-rod Prizm GSi got a Corolla GT-S powertrain, while the Storm GSi received a screaming 1.6-liter DOHC inline-four rated at 130 horsepower.
With a price tag of just $11,650 ($28,860 after inflation), the 1990 Storm GSi offered plenty of performance per dollar. It cost only $520 more than the 1990 Honda CRX Si, for example, but boasted a far superior power-to-weight ratio (17.6 pounds per horsepower versus 20.1 for the Honda).
An automatic transmission was available for $545 ($1350 in 2025 money), but this car has the base five-speed. Two-pedal Storms weren’t commonplace, but I have seen a couple during my junkyard travels.
This one is in very nice condition, which makes sense given the low miles.
The interior is a bit dirty but otherwise intact. This car will be a parts bonanza for Front Range Colorado Storm (and Impulse) owners.
It appears that Chesrown Chevrolet in Denver became Autonation Chevrolet North at some point after this car was sold.
1993 was the final model year for Isuzu-built cars sold in the United States; after that, we just got trucks from the brand named after a beloved Japanese river. The last Isuzu cars Americans could buy were the Stylus and the Storm (the Impulse got the axe in 1992). To further degrade the storied Japanese manufacturer on this side of the Pacific, GM slapped Isuzu badges on the S-10, Trailblazer, and Colorado during Isuzu’s final years here.
The Geo brand itself was discontinued in 1997, by which time only the Prizm, Tracker, and Metro were being built. All three became Chevrolets, with the Chevy Tracker surviving all the way through 2004.
Priced under 11 grand at your local Chevrolet/Geo dealer!
Toyota and Honda were the last word in the world of sporty imports, but that was just the calm… before the Storm.
This tachycardic commercial for the final-year Storm isn’t quite up to JDM Toyota Starlet panic levels, but gets pretty close by American standards.
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I always thought these cars looked like shrunken versions of the Camaro of the day. Decent cars for a young person to get to and from school, work, etc.
This thing sounds like it has more performance chops than I would have ever associated with anything with a Geo badge. I always thought of them as three-cylinder ultra-economy basic transportation cars
OWNED A PRIZM, MOST RELIABLE CAR I EVER OWNED.
Tangential thought. I find the prices adjusted for inflation to be interesting when compared to the MSRP of some current offerings. If I look at the prices of more reasonably current performance cars (civic SI, MX5), it seems they’re within a couple grand of 29k. But the value/performance of the current offerings far exceed the performance of the GEO Storm. Seems like, at least in some pockets of the auto industry, companies now are objectively better than where they were 20-30 years ago. Maybe that’s obvious to some, but I find it useful to take a step back from time to time and ask oneself if progress is truly being made.
I had one of these on the used lot in the mid 90’s. It was the base hatch version in some kind of calypso green looking color. I remember the doors feeling tinny and the seats feeling like they were stuffed with newspapers. Still, some young girl loved the looks enough to scoop it up.
The GSi version here is a nice example of how manufacturers were once conscious to create performance models for every price bracket. Good luck finding any new performance car, or any car at all for that matter, that can offer that kind of value and fun today.
I always thought the Storm was a pretty cool looking car, almost bought one even. I wanted a teal one and managed to find it at a local dealer, between the hard sell, the drum brakes in the rear, and the lack of 5 speed I took a hard pass. I don’t regret it either, that car would have been less than useless with an automatic.
67000 miles and it’s in a yard. It wasn’t wrecked, so somehow suffered some internal catastrophe. Doubtful it would have been abandoned if it was still in okay shape. Not a very good testament to either production quality or owner care…
I liked these from the first time I saw one, and might have bought one for my 55-mile round-trip commute, if I could have afforded to replace the 1983 Scamp 4-speed that I was commuting in. With young children, and a nearly-new (and very useful for our needs) 1991 Suburban, though, money was a little tight then.
Didn’t they have handling/suspension tuned by Lotus? Or was that just the Isuzu twin?
Isuzu only, I don’t recall GM ever paying for that license. Maybe they should have, since Lotus did engineering on the ZR-1 at the time.