Driving in LA traffic isn’t so bad. Once you surrender your existence to spending most of your drive time in traffic and make peace with the stop-and-go crawl, you can open your third eye and see some truly remarkable machinery. I’ve seen brand-new Suzuki Jimnys, Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0s, and even a Koenigsegg CCX-R way back when. While those are cool, none were as cool as this: A yellow Geo Storm GSi.
- Car: Geo Storm GSi
- Location: Interstate 5 North at SR-2 Interchange
- Photog: Chris Rosales (me; @chrishasacamera on IG)
- Camera: iPhone 11 Pro Max
Yes, I know. Calling a Suzuki Jimny less cool than a Geo Storm deserves some form of capital punishment. Hear me out. I may put off sports car snob vibes but my heart truly lies with well-engineered shitboxes with hearts of gold. The Geo Storm is that, and it is also one of my first automotive fascinations.
My uncle had three of them when I was growing up. More than half of the time, I would get home from school in the back of a Geo Storm. Well, maybe less than half, but the drives were certainly more memorable than the Honda Pilot my dad had at the time. I loved each of his Storms, especially the yellow GSi he had as his last one.
There was one time I was in the back seat of his other Storm, a facelifted white car. My uncle was a mild speed demon with not a lot of power, so he carried speed and was flat out everywhere on these random LA city streets. There is an intersection in the city of South Gate that has a large yump. Not wanting to lift off, my uncle was committed and hit the yump at a speed that turned it into a jump. I bumped my head into the glass of the hatchback from the jump, we landed firmly and we were on our way. Legendary moment.
As big as we could get it:
