I drove the car for a while as a VW based kit car, Then built a tube frame and made a terrifying 500 Cubic inch V8 monster, now it is time to do something completely different. I am building a Geo Montage, or Manta Metro, whatever you want to call it. When the car was a VW it was easy to work on but had no reliability and was not much fun to drive with the stock VW setup. The 500 in it was much faster and I doubt there is anything on the road that could have beat it but I would have probably ran into a tree at 200mph in it if I would have kept driving it. The car was not really better in this configuration. It had a much safer frame and better brakes but it just wasn’t a nice car to drive. It was also a nightmare of random parts so when something broke it took forever to figure out what car it came from in order to get a replacement. It was usually easier to just redo it with some other random parts.Now my current plan is a bit different than most people who own a kit car like this but that is what makes it good. My goal is to make it as close to 100% mechanically a Geo Metro with all parts not custom made just stock Metro parts. This solves the reliability and ease of repair problems I have had in the past. The Geo engine is not faster than the VW by any significant margin but the Canadian version came with a turbo option and I will be trying to fit that onto my car. And the last thing will be I will try and fix some of the bad design in the car and make it a much more comfortable and fun daily driver. When I get done I want standard features like air conditioning and cruise control, I want to be able to drive it for 6 hours without killing myself, I want to be able to drive it in all weather conditions so a good heater and wipers are needed. I also want to get excellent mileage. The stock Metro with a few mods can easily get 60mpg I am hoping to beat 70mpg with normal driving. Once I add the hybrid drive system I built in a previous car to this one I should be able to get 100mpg daily driving as long as I remember to plug it in at night to recharge.

• Working on cargo area layout
• Start of framing up trunk and rear fenders
• Trunk Hinges
• Trunk Lid Cut Out
• Finished Trunk Lid and Measuring for Cuts
• More Fiberglass Work
• More Fiberglass Work on Trunk Lid
• Started Fiberglassing the Trunk Lid
• Started Reshaping the Back End
• Forming a wing
• Trunk Lid Bolted Down
• Aligning the trunk lid
• Finished Dropped Spindles and Heater Box
• Installing Dropped Spindles
• Wiper Assembly Installed
• Pedals remounted and starting on wipers
• Firewall and pedal mounting started.
• Back half of the floor area built
• Starting on the floor
• Body lifted 1 inch
• Gas tank, floor, and radiator installed
• Shifter installed
• CV axles installed
• Gas tank finished
• Steering installed and started on gas tank
• Rear suspension mounted
• Headlights mounted
• Throttle and clutch cables installed
• Pedals and steering column installed
• Engine installed and front suspension mostly installed.
• Front end completed
• Front suspension mounted
• Front suspension ready to install
• Stripping and updating the front suspension
• Rear done and starting on front suspension
• Rear mostly complete
• Rear suspension located in place
• Drivers side rear lower suspension moved
• Modification to the rear track
• New rims and tires
• Rear frame nearly finished
• Trunk latch made
• Trunk hinges built
• Rear toe bars and removing the test motor
• Strut towers built
• Engine mounts built
• 2 of 3 motor mounts built
• Starting rear subframe
• Rear suspension welded in place
• Redoing the rear suspension
• Rear suspension positioned
• More rear suspension work.
• Building rear suspension
• Round Headlight Conversion Completed
• Round headlight conversion started
• Cut the back half off the car