#Storm

Rare Rides broached the subject of Lister once before, with the Le Mans — a little-known and heavily modified version of the Jaguar XJS. Today’s Rare Ride is what most think of when they hear the Lister name: the Storm.

The Storm was the Geo-ized American-market version of the 1990-1993 Isuzu Gemini Coupe, and the GSi version was cheaper and more powerful than most of its sport-compact competition of the era. Most of them seemed to come in bright yellow paint, and most of them were crushed before they hit their tenth birthday. Still, some of them survived as long as any Civic Si or Sentra SE-R.

Here’s one that I found in a Denver-area self-service yard last year.

TTAC commentator kericf writes:

Sajeev,

I know you experienced the deluge of rain in Houston (Last October, and it was pretty bad. —SM). We live on the north side of the city and own a six-month-old 2015 Ford Expedition EL that has been outside its whole life (it doesn’t fit in the garage). It has seen much heavier rain than we had this weekend, but not a storm that lasted so long.

Water somehow got into the headliner and dropped into the interior. It does have a sunroof and roof rack. The dealership has only had it a day but hasn’t been able to figure out the source of the leak. It hasn’t leaked before. We are baffled and I have a feeling the dealership will be too.

Volkswagen’s chief in China says they’re probably not retaking the crown from General Motors there anytime soon.

That, Apple’s lead car guy is gone, Takata’s in trouble and more … after the break!

Imagine if you will.

The world’s largest and most consistently successful automaker is in deep trouble. Not because of profits, but because of products.

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.

For decades, conventional wisdom has said that a car is the worst place to be caught during a tornado, besides maybe a mobile home. Hundreds of photos of demolished vehicles thrown about by violent twisters seem to provide ample support for that conclusion. Driving instructors, safety advocates, and meteorologists have all argued that a ditch or culvert provides better protection than an easily-overturned car. Over the last decade or so, however, a debate has been brewing between weather and safety experts about the soundness of this advice.

Giving gifts to 24 Hours of LeMons judges in order to ensure smooth turning of the gears of justice has been a tradition for several many years now. While jugs of quality booze remain the most common judicial bribe, keeping my liver at least semi-functional mandates that most of that stuff get passed on to track workers. Not so with bribes involving weird toy cars, however; I’ve got quite a collection of such gifts on my office bookshelves now. While I prize my Leyland P76, Nissan Prairie, and Impala Hell Project diorama, the car that now sits in the place of honor on my desk is one that I received from a Denver racer who couldn’t wait for the B.F.E. GP next month and came by Chez Murilee with this lovely Detroito-Tokyo icon of the early 1990s.

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?