cylinder index question

[Tom Nas]

At 00:52 31-1-04, cobram at juno.com wrote:
>That sure looked like a Suzuki 3 cyl. engine under the hood of the Opel
>Corsa to me, but that was almost 2 years ago.  The Chevy Corsa (made in
>Brazil) is manufactured in house, but most of it was under license from
>Suzuki when they started production in the early 1990's.

Opel does use some 3-cyl engines in the Corsa and they have a co-op effort 
with Suzuki (the diminutive Wagon R+ alias Opel Agila) but I think the 
engine is their own effort. They just lopped one cylinder off the regular 
Corsa engine. The Corsa platform is a development of the model they've been 
producing since 1983 and it's just slightly larger than the Suzuki 
Swift/Geo Metro.
A 3-cylinder isn't all that unccommon in Europe, VAG have a 3-cyl TDI and 
we get some 3-cyl Daihatsus here, too.

>I exported a few of the 1995 Geo Metros when they were new (mostly as
>container filler), and the biggest complaint from the customers who
>bought them was that the things would run out of gas.  Those things were
>so economical owners would forget that the tank needed filling once in a
>while.

Hahahaha! When you drive it flat out all the time like I did with my Swift 
(lotsa fun!) it isn't economical at all... I would get about the same 
mileage with the 1.0 as I do with my 2.3 90q. :-)

Regards, Tom