As the owner of an Isuzu Trooper, I tend to keep an eye on the strange lovechild born of its relationship with Geo in the early 90s. The Isuzu Impulse was an interesting sport compact car that sounded great on paper – rear wheel drive, turbocharged engine, handling by Lotus – but never mounted a serious challenge to the likes of the VW GTI and Toyota Celica. Eventually, the Impulse disappeared from Isuzu’s lineup but the Geo version continued, and this top-trim GSi model listed here on Facebook Marketplace has under 1,000 original miles owing to its conversion to a track car when new.
This Storm is fascinating to me in a variety of ways: for one thing, it’s literally brand new, with not even 1,000 miles on the clock. However, it’s a track car, so it’s not exactly been kept in an air bubble. The Storm was a punchy little number, and based on the front end design – the later cars lost the retractable headlights of the earliest models – this one has a 1.8L 16-valve engine under the hood kicking out 140 horsepower. Unlike the Isuzu, turbocharging and AWD were not options, so this is the top-shelf offering for a model that wears the Geo badge.
Interestingly, the seller indicates there’s no chance of this Storm going back to street use. While I can’t claim to know the rules regarding registering track cars in every state, I suspect something occurred in this car’s history to ensure it never goes back to road-going condition; otherwise, we would have certainly seen it pop up for sale as a low-mileage hot hatch that a fan of 90s cars and trucks (like me) would have eagerly returned to stock. The seller is in Florida, which makes it stranger still he’s worried about registration issues since Florida is usually pretty lax. He does note it is sold on a registration only, so evidently there’s no title present.
The vibe of this Storm is fantastic, and assuming you figured out a way to get it registered, I love the idea of making the interior a bit more daily driver-friendly and leaving the rest of the car alone. Finding a period-correct track car that doesn’t have a ton of battle scars or otherwise looked like it had been Frankenstein’d to death is no small feat, and this Storm looks like it hasn’t suffered from too many off-course excursions in its few years of active use. I wouldn’t have considered a Geo Storm an ideal track car, but if it’s good enough for Mr. Joe’s Bar to sponsor it, it had to have been mildly competent in competition.
Pocket rocket Geo š š.
The RedLine oil sticker… reminds me how some of the smaller Oil companies have a very devout following. RedLine, Amsoil, Royal Purple. I used Bel-Ray in my motorcycle.
I use RedLine synthetic oils in the transmissions and rear ends of our race cars. After all these years you just can’t beat it for quality and performance.
This looks like a great car for anyone that want to participate in open track day style events, assuming it doesnāt need to too much work to make it track worth.
People should keep this car and itās asking price in mind as an example of why building a ārace carā from scratch is a losing proposition compared to buying one thatās already completed.
Steve R
Brad Penn goes in ours (new name, same green color).
Iāll hafta look up the suzu Impulse. Not familiar, thnx.
We just redid a Geo Tracker (auto to 5 speed, gas tankās frame cross member, turboed, etc). Wish it was the samari. I like those. This seemed what some garages call “a chickās car”…
Looks like a nice enough build. For sure some work to catch up to current standards but a good starting point.
I donāt know that the seller specifically mentions that itās impossible to put back on the street, I think the ad only says that it has never been driven on the street but was made into a race car from new? That said, I am always arguing that you should never drive a caged car without wearing a proper 6-point harness and a helmet. I had a good friend who was a WRC rally driver who got into a minor accident in his rally car. Almost no damage to the car but he was close to dying from smacking his head into the cage. He lost his left eye and never raced again.
Agree on the 6 point harness. If you look on the seat picture on the Facebook ad you can see the shoulder straps bracket welded on the cross bar behind the seat. Since this was an SCCA race car you have to have at least a 5 point harness and a 6 is highly recommended. We have head restraints on either side of the seat to minimize side to side head motion and the required HANS device.