Junkyard Find: 1990 Geo Storm GSi
When you think about cheap factory hot rods of the early 1990s, do you think of the Geo Storm GSi? Probably not— the Isuzu-built Storm has been nearly forgotten by now— but the GSi had some pretty impressive performance numbers. How about 130 horsepower in a 2,392-pound car?
The ’90 Storm GSi listed at $11,650 (and that’s the pre-dealer-markdown-and-factory-rebate price), which gave buyers a pretty good bang-for-buck ratio when compared to, say, the 108-horse/2,291-pound/$10,245 Honda Civic Si.
Of course, you see 1990 Civic Sis all the time these days, and this is the first Geo Storm I’ve seen (outside of 24 Hours of LeMons races) in several years.
Storm trivia: what notorious whackjob mass murderer drove a Storm? Answer: Timothy McVeigh, who daily-drove a Storm until a week or so before he did his crime. The Storm, which he dubbed “The Road Warrior,” got rear-ended at a gas station, and McVeigh ended up using a ’77 Mercury Marquis as his getaway car.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Actually, I think that Timothy McVeigh had a Geo Spectrum (the Isuzu-based four-door sedan), not a Storm. When it was wrecked beyond repair, he bought the Marquis.
I Love My Black Geo Storm GSI, I Got It New In 1991, Rebuilt The Whole Car In 2004. Has Only 92,000 miles Moving To Fl. Going To Sell. http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/cto/4731418383.html