1996 Geo Prizm Base from North America - Comments

There have been no major mechanical failures. The engine and transmission have never missed a beat.

Two of the air conditioning knobs are broken, but will stay put and work fine and do their job.

The light that illuminates the P-R-N-D-2-L on the shifter has gone out.

I replaced the headlights with better ones because I do a lot of driving at night, in the country, and the stock ones seemed insufficient. They were NOT broken, however.

I think it's worth nothing that when I removed the rear deck speakers to replace them with aftermarket ones, the cone and surround crumbled in my hands. If you like to listen to music in your car, consider replacing these. The front door speakers were fine.

If you want to put in your own stereo, be warned that this car is a pain in butt to do it in. I installed a 300 watt system because the stock Delco system was just insufficient for my tastes.

At 75000, the front rotors were turned and the timing belt replaced (it wasn't broken, but recommended by my mechanic).

It's also worth noting that I drive the hell out of the car (only 20k miles on 50k mile warrantied Goodyear Eagle T/R's), and it's never let me down, except in the acceleration department. This car was given to me by my parents in leu of the sports car I would have killed myself in by now.

The car's handling is best described as "tossable." It can be made to both understeer and oversteer, depending on your control inputs.

The breaking is excellent, even without ABS.

The rear drums will vibrate and make a resonant noise that will fill the car if you break hard from over 100mph.

The puny 105 hp engine is fully capable off pushing the little car to it's 118mph cutoff.

I see about 25mpg in the city and up to 40 on the highway with bosch platinum+4 plugs, 8mm plug wires, and a K&N replacement air filter (all parts made for improved mileage).

There are hardly any performance parts made for this car. The aftermarket hates this engine.

I change my oil with Mobil 1 0w-30 synthetic and fram double guard oil filters. I can say that this oil made a noticable difference the first time I put it into my car. The engine runs better at 79k than when I bought it at 50k.

That's all I can think of to say about it.

Well done Steven!

My Prism has been nothing but reliable. In the 100,004 miles I've driven it, nothing has gone wrong except for a blown rear stereo speaker, and one of the air conditioning knobs has fallen off.

I have one running 117K miles now, and I agree with the previous 2 reviewers, car runs like a top... would've been nice to have a tacometer (non LSI versions don't always have one) and yes the aftermarket does hate this engine!

Worth noting however is that this car is 99.5% Toyota corolla, the.5% difference being the rear lights. Had the alternator go at 115K, a little difficult to replace, but that's for a novice. the headlights really do feel insufficient, I keep checking to see if one is blown, but they are both working great. going to install an aftermarket radio and slight sound system (40watt RMS amp)

aftermarket speakers went in the back with average difficulty.

I used this car for a paper route for 2 months, 100 stops and starts a day, hard driving, (that's when the alt died) but for being 10 years old, its in awesome shape -- the Chevy dealer's mechanic had one thing to say about this car: Those things run for-ever (yes he did pause between syllables)