Junkyard Find: 1991 Geo Storm GSi
The Storm, a rebadged second-gen Isuzu Impulse sold by GM’s short-lived Geo division, was with us for just the 1990 through 1993 model years and didn’t leave much of an impression. I see the occasional Storm in wrecking yards these days, but it takes a factory-hot-rod GSi version to get me to reach for my camera. We saw this ’90 Storm GSi in a Colorado yard a couple years back, and now I’ve found another in Northern California.
Let’s watch some Storm ads!
The 16-valve performance force from Geo.
The GSi was quite a bit quicker than the ’87 CRX, but depreciation of cars bearing the doomed Geo marque probably meant that this ambitious young paralegal would have been better off sticking with the Honda.
In Canada, you could buy this car as an Asüna Sunfire.
With 130 horsepower, the Storm GSi offered one of the best bang-for-buck deals of its time. I think I’d still have bought the Sentra SE-R, though I was driving something a little more hooptie at the time.
Presented without comment.
Today’s Junkyard Find looks just like my super-rare diecast (actually all-plastic) Geo Storm GSi, which was given to me by a LeMons racer who claimed it was a dealer-promo item.
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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I have a 1991 GEO Prism GSI 5 speed with Toyotas famous high compression 4AGE motor. 130 horse almost 8000 RPM redline 4 wheel discs front and rear sway bars and strut tower bar all stock. Power everything including sunroof and it all works even the AC. It is very light and a blast to drive. We call it the little red devil ;-)
Not sure if anyone cares, but i do have a yellow 1991 geo storm gsi (auto not manual) with all the fixings (though i did take the casset deck out for a new pioneer headunit). it has 28000 miles on it as of 1/27/2016) i have a video of it with a new sound system in it (though this is an old video since then i changed the subwoofer and amp) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpwZlJkj7s