Ol' Blue was found at a garage sale behind the clothes racks. The poor old guy had been sitting in the garage for 4 years, lonely and forgotten by his owner. The guy I bought the car from was the original owner and had used the car as his daily transport and car audio competition platform. After it quit running, the owner pushed the car into the garage and bought another daily driver more suitable to his family needs. Here's what Ol' Blue looked like when I towed him home with another Metro convertible.

I swapped the stock bumpers and rear lights with 1989 Swift GT parts and added the GT side skirts. I also went through the suspension and added the GT's sway bars with polyurethane bushings, new struts, new control arms, 2" drop springs, and Calmini strut tower bars. The improved appearance and handling is obvious. This isn't your mom's grocery getter now.

I replaced the Calmini front and rear upper strut braces with some sweet new Hotbits braces. The mounts, nuts, and bolts were polished and chrome plated to add a little "bling" to the engine bay and boot (although nobody will ever see them in the trunk.)

I traded the 13" steel wheels for some American Racing 14" alloy rims and 195/ 60 series rubber.

Then I found a set of factory Suzuki rims.

The tired little 3 cylinder needed help so I transplanted a Turbo3 engine from a Canadian Pontiac Firefly into the convertible along with all the goodies it takes to support the mill. Whoohoo! That livens things up! I don't get run over on the highway anymore.

I'm starting to add a little chrome here and there. I now have a chrome plated hood support rod and have started to replace the standard fasteners with either polished stainless steel or chrome. If you look really closely, you can see the chromed button head allen bolts on the ignition wire brackets.

You can find 3 cylinder performance parts, plug wires, cams, hi-po head work, etc. at 3 Tech Performance. Contact Mike Cove. http://www.teamswift.net/3tech/

You can also find custom turbo exhaust manifolds, turbo upgrades, and some neat suspension parts at Turbine Tech. Contact Jess. http://www.turbinetech.ca/

Contact Adam at http://www.occracing.com for all kinds of neat performance parts.

Teamswift.net - the premiere web community for Suzuki Swift/ Geo Metro performance cars.

As part of the constant upgrading to the car, I added a 1st gen DSM BOV to the system.

To monitor the Turbo3, I added the customary gauge pod on the A-pillar with Cyberdyne Digital AFR and vacuum/ boost gauges.

To get improved exhaust flow, I run a straight 2" pipe finished of with a 5" diameter, 4" outlet full flow stainlees steel canister.

The interior got a little upgrade with seats from an old Civic, a shortened shifter, knob and gaiter boot, a 1992 Suzuki Swift GT steering wheel, carpeted floor mats, and lots of cleaning and detailing.

To continue the car's legacy of being a competition audio platform, my friend Chuckwagon and I did a quick high power system installation.

The dash is home to Kove KC 4.0 4" mids and Kove KST 1" silk dome tweeters. The Sony AM/ FM/ CD/ MP3 head unit and Sony 6 disc Minidisc changer in the glove box drive the Hart power amp trio installed on a custom amp rack under the convertible top boot. There are 2 HT 1200-II 1200 watt amps to drive the subwoofers running off of a dedicated 4 gauge cable fused at 100 amps. The HT 600-4 600 watt 4 channel amp that drives the main front and rear speakers, Kove KSX 4.2 4" compaxials mounted in the rear cowl is supplied by a dedicated 8 gauge cable fused at 60 amps. The trunk mounted, custom designed ported sub enclosure was built using mdf and fiberglass, tuned to 34 hz, and holds 2 Kove Armageddon 10" K series subwoofers.

The stereo system is history now. Some miscreants stole my car from my driveway the day before Thanksgiving 2005. When the car was recovered 3 months later, the complete sound system was gone along with some little things like my steering wheel, gauge pod, shifter knob, battery, wheels and tires and the like. Everything that makes the car operable has been replaced but it'll take a while to replace $6000 worth of stereo (if I ever do - you can't have anything without some punk robbing you!)