1987 Suzuki Samurai 17k Miles One Owner on 2040-cars

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Autoblog Minute: VW Q3 financial woes, 2015 Tokyo Motor Show

Consumer Reports pulls its Tesla recommendation, the U.S. Copyright Office offers a ruling affecting car owners, VW gets hit hard with third-quarter losses, and lots of exciting news from Tokyo. Autoblog senior editor Greg Migliore reports on this edition of Autoblog Minute Weekly Recap. Show full video transcript text [00:00:00] Consumer Reports pulls its Tesla recommendation, the U.S. copyright office offers a ruling that affects car owners and gear heads, VW gets hit hard with third-quarter losses, and lots of exciting news from Tokyo. I'm senior editor Greg Migliore and this is your Autoblog Minute Weekly Recap. After a week away testing vehicles for Autoblog's Tech of the Year award, we're back in the office to recap the week in automotive news. [00:00:30] One of the things you might have missed was Consumer Reports pulling its recommendation of Tesla's Model S sedan. The blemish for Tesla comes after a tally of reviews from customer surveys. The most common problem areas for the Model S as cited by survey takers included: the drivetrain, power equipment, charging equipment, body and sunroof squeaks, rattles, and leaks. So lots of stuff. Though they could not ignore a score of "worse-than-average", Consumer Reports still [00:01:00] highlighted the fact that the Model S was "the best performing car" they've ever tested. Telsa CEO Elon Musk took to social media to defend his sedans saying: "Consumer Reports reliability survey includes a lot of early production cars. Already addressed in new cars." And, "Tesla gets top rating of any company in service. Most important, CR says 97% of owners expect their next car to be a Tesla (the acid test)." In Financial news, Volkswagen took a hit and reported an operating loss of [00:01:30] $3.84 billion. This is the first such loss for VW in 15 years. Toyota reclaimed the crown as the world's largest automaker as well. It's important that it's not all doom and gloom for VW though in Q3. Sales revenues were up and the company's automotive division boasts $30 billion dollars in liquid assets. It's a sizable war chest that will no doubt come in handy, as the company has yet to feel the full brunt of the diesel emissions scandal. Good news for gear heads. The US copyright office [00:02:00] ruled in favor of mechanics and car owners by granting an exception to existing copyright law. The law was originally meant to prevent software pirating and bootlegging of Hollywood movies.

Junkyard Gem: 2005 Suzuki Verona

The ways of the far-flung GM Empire could be mysterious, a couple of decades back, especially when Daewoo and/or Suzuki were involved. After The General's (relative) success selling the Daewoo LeMans with Pontiac badges here, Daewoo decided to bring three models to the United States with its own badging: the Lanos, Nubira and Leganza. Unfortunately for that effort, Daewoo's CEO fled South Korea to evade embezzlement and fraud charges just as the first models hit American showrooms in 1999, and the company went bankrupt soon after. The last year for the trio of Daewoo-badged models here was 2002… but we weren't done with those cars yet! Today's Junkyard Gem is an example of the next-generation Leganza, found in a Denver-area self-service wrecking yard recently. GM began selling Suzuki cars in North America with the Chevrolet Sprint (aka Suzuki Cultus) in 1985. The following year, Suzuki began importing the Jimny with Suzuki Samurai badging. Many Suzukis followed over the next quarter-century, with Chevrolet, Geo and Suzuki branding applied along the way. Since GM bought all of Daewoo's car-building operations during the chaos of the early 2000s, it made sense to keep selling the descendants of the three Daewoo models that had been offered here. They'd have made sense as Geos, but the Geo brand got the axe after 1997. Saturn? For Opels, sure, but not Daewoos. Isuzu had gone all-truck here after the final Styluses and Storms left the showrooms as 1993 models (though the Honda Odyssey was sold here with Isuzu emblems), so that was out. So, Chevrolet and Suzuki got the honors. The next-generation Daewoo Lanos subcompact became the Chevrolet Aveo, the next-generation Daewoo Nubira compact became the Suzuki Reno, and the next-generation Daewoo Leganza midsize sedan became the Suzuki Verona. The Verona was available for just the 2004 through 2006 model years. Note that the dealership decal features the Pets.com Sock Puppet. That's because the now-defunct 1-800-Bar-None company bought the rights to the Sock Puppet in 2002 (two years after Pets.com went kerblooey as the highest-profile casualty of the Dot-Com Crash) and used it in their advertising. All Leganzas had four-cylinder engines driving the front wheels, but the Verona got this very unusual longitudinally-mounted straight-six rig. It thus joins the Volvo S80 in the elite club for this powertrain setup.

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Geo Metro LSi

General Motors created the Geo brand in order to sell cars built in partnership with Suzuki, Isuzu and Toyota in the United States, and Geo-badged machinery was sold from the 1989 through 1997 model years. Today's Junkyard Gem, found in a New Orleans self-service boneyard recently, is one of the very last Geos ever built. There was always a close relationship between Geo and Chevrolet, which GM demonstrated by sneaking the Chevrolet bowtie into the Geo logo. The first three Geo-branded models began their careers with Chevrolet badging before getting Geo-ized for 1989. The Spectrum, twin to the Isuzu I-Mark, was a Chevrolet from 1985 through 1988. The 1985-1988 Chevrolet Sprint was a badge-engineered first-generation Suzuki Cultus, with its second-generation successor becoming the Geo Metro. The Prizm was a NUMMI-built Toyota Corolla Sprinter, which replaced the Sprinter-based 1985-1987 Chevrolet Nova. The Daewoo-built Pontiac LeMans never became a Geo, presumably because its ancestry was South Korean rather than Japanese. In 1989, Geo added the Storm (Isuzu Impulse), followed by the Tracker (Suzuki Sidekick) as a 1990 model. In December 1996, GM announced that the Geo brand would get the axe in the fall of 1997, with the Prizm, Tracker and Metro becoming Chevrolets. This car was built at CAMI Automotive in Canada in May 1997, making it one of the final handful of Geos assembled. The Chevrolet Metro stuck around through 2001. For its final model year, the Geo Metro was available with one of two trim levels: base and LSi. This car is an LSi three-door hatchback, which had an MSRP of $9,180 ($17,906 in 2024 dollars). The base three-door hatchback for 1997 listed at $8,580, or $16,735 after inflation. The most important difference between the base and LSi versions was found under the hood. The base Metro got a 1.0-liter three-cylinder engine rated at 55 horsepower and 58 pound-feet, while the LSi got the 1.3-liter "big-block" four-cylinder with 70 horses and 74 pound-feet. I owned a '96 Metro with the four-banger for a brief period, and it wasn't quite intolerably slow. This car has the optional three-speed automatic, which added $595 ($1,161 today) to the price. It also has air conditioning and a Delco AM/FM radio, which were included as part of the $1,346 1SE option package ($2,625 in today's money). It was thus a boring but serviceable commuter car that sipped gas and got its job done for 27 years and 113,610 miles.