Overview & Reviews

As the market for import automotive brands became dramatically larger in the late 1980s, the Detroit automobile companies created their own import-style sales divisions. In 1989 General Motors introduced its Geo division, which became the most successful of these attempts before the division was discontinued in 1998.

Geo re-badged various GM cars made for world markets. Its most notable success came with the Geo Prizm, a version of the Toyota Corolla then being built cooperatively in a California assembly plant by Toyota and GM. The Geo Metro compact car began life as the Suzuki Swift, while the Geo Tracker sport-utility vehicle was derived from the Suzuki Sidekick. The Geo Spectrum sedan was an Isuzu I-Mark and the Geo Storm coupe was an Isuzu Impulse.

The experiment ended because the Geo division was unable to establish a stronger identity than the brands from which its products were taken. Moreover, GM quickly realized that Geo was simply funneling its brand loyalists into the import brands of other companies.

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