1998 Chevrolet Metro review from North America

Broken wiper arm.

Passenger seat latch was sticky, causing trouble accessing rear seats from the passenger side.

Check engine light came on, found out it was the oxygen sensor, replaced it, but light still came on. Research found trouble with fuel injector system passageway clogged being cause of the continued fault display.

Gas filler pipe rusted. I fixed it temporarily with a coat of seal-all, which seemed to work well until the end.

Rust, and more rust. The front suspension mount rusted out, causing the passenger side front wheel to sag after hard braking for some racoons. This was the death of this car, as there wasn't enough solid metal to weld to for a proper repair.

I loved this car, it has great space for such a small car, and gets great gas mileage.

The standard shifter always worked well, and the 3 cylinder got you going better than you thought it should.

What really shines is the cornering ability, this thing corners like snot and I could take a tight on-ramp, leaving a following vehicle about a block behind as I entered the highway. (Of course, he would then zoom on past me...)

I'll make note that the 92 model I owned prior had venting rear windows, an absolute requirement for a car such as mine with no air conditioning! The 95 and newer models no longer offered this, and the hot air cups in there with no way out on a hot summer day! When driving certain speeds with the windows down, I noticed a loud, low frequency pulsing from the wind cupping in the closed back area, sometimes enough to make my ears pop!

I once got locked out of my car, and the door lock assembly all kinda - fell apart when I attempted to unlock with a piece of wire I found. They are somewhat fragile, as I've made entrance similarly in other vehicles without trouble. I fixed the locks when I got home, took the door panels off and re-attached everything and lubed it all up, nothing was broken, it had just all kinda popped apart easily.

What killed this car was rust. Rust on the front suspension supports. I got almost 2 years out of it, but hard braking for some raccoons playing chicken on a dark back road was the last straw for the body metal. The car made a right turn that it wouldn't pull out of, and the CV shaft pulled out of the tranny and that was that, no more car. Maybe somebody could fix, but I wouldn't trust it.

Watch out for that rust! This car had been parked over a patch of grass by the previous owner, and probably had never been rustproofed. I tried to slow the rust down, I scraped, I painted rust paint, then sprayed DIY rust-check, to no avail.