Why was the Geo Metro only 1600 lbs?

[Madison320]

The Tercel was about 2,000 lbs. I'll bet that was a lot closer to the size of the Mirage then the Metro. The Yaris is 2,300 lbs and I think it's probably real close to the dimensions of the Tercel. A 300 lb increase sounds reasonable due to the extra features. I think what I didn't realize was that the Metro was more of an anomaly, much smaller and lighter than most other US cars.

[91cavgt]

The difference in fuel economy from the Metro to the Mirage are for a few reasons. Weight is one of those factors, but it primarily comes into play with city fuel mileage. In the 90's the manufactures were not very concerned about NOX emissions. So, they could program a car to run leaner and run with more ignition timing advance so the cars naturally got better fuel economy. The 1.0L Suzuki powered cars (Firefly, Sprint, Metro, and Swift) ran so lean and with so much ignition advance that if the EGR stopped working for any reason, the #3 exhaust valve would burn up.