MILLVILLE, Utah — Alan Gebert, a resident of Millville, remembers buying his favorite car vividly.
“Normally when you go to a dealership, they're like, ‘Well, what are you looking for today?’ And so I went in there and said, "I'm really wanting to buy a Geo Metro,” Alan recalled. “There was a little look of disappointment on the dealership guy, when he's like, ‘Oh Geo Metro, well, we're not going to make much on this guy.’”
FOX 13 News learned about Alan and his Geo Metro through a viral social media videothat his wife Jill Gebert had posted marking his recent retirement and his aging, but reliable car.
“I've poked fun of it for years,” said Jill. “I played jokes on him and put a parking ticket on it that looked official, that he was cited for having the ugliest car in the city.”
The video got more than 400,000 likes.
“I like making [Instagram] Reels, and I knew that that story was pretty unique to have somebody drive the same car through their whole career,” Jill said. “I didn't expect it to go that popular.”
Alan said he was a bit perplexed at first as to why his Geo Metro was getting so much attention online.
“Why on earth would anyone care about the little Geo, you know? So it kind of was a big surprise,” Alan said.
According to Jill, many of the comments on her video related to cherishing an old car that still worked.
“A lot of people thought it was cool that Alan was able to just keep the car so long and not have to replace it all the time, and to just be content with an old car,” Jill said.
Produced from 1989 to 2001 as a collaboration between General Motors and Suzuki, the Geo offered cheap, reliable transportation — a car for everyday people. Its simple charms have earned the compact car a loyal following to this day.
Alan bought the car in 1991 from Rick Hendrick Motors in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I bought it off the lot. Just a little over $7,000,” he said.
Despite being an older car, his Geo has only racked up 207,000 miles, as it was used on a short commute to and from work. These days, his Geo doesn’t even go on the highway.
“It's only got three cylinders. It's a one-liter engine. In other words, it's about the size of a Harley,” Alan explained. “So it's just as bare bones of a car as you can get now, with no radio, and the heater doesn't really work very good either.”
Usually, Alan is the Geo’s only companion, but every once in a while for special occasions, Jill makes an exception.
“We drove the Geo Metro to his favorite restaurant, Taco Bell,” Jill said. “And I did that just for pure love.”
Alan says he wants to keep the car for a few more years. He just put new 12-inch tires on it, which aren’t made anymore. He had to order the tires internationally, making the tires more expensive than the actual car itself.
Jill has some other ideas.
“The funny thing is, Alan grows giant pumpkins, and so one of the things that we said was that when Alan grows a pumpkin and bigger than the Geo, we were gonna smash the Geo with a pumpkin,” she said.
That scenario sounds like a heroic end to a car that Alan and his family will remember forever.
“I just needed something to get them to get me to work and back, because that's all it was,” Alan said. “It's a means of transportation. It wasn't anything else. It's not comfortable. But, oh well.”
