Doh! I'm not very Swift.
So, I realized I should have been searching for Suzuki Swifts all along, instead of mainly looking for Fireflies/Metros.
They were much more common, and 1.3L, 5-speeds are relatively easy to find (especially around Montreal -- these cars were pretty popular in Quebec). Exact same car as the 3-cyl aside from the engine, so mods-swapping will work.
I saw a 2001 Swift advertised last week with ~60k kms (~36k mi.) on it! Drat. OK, next year...
---
Civic cursory speed vs. MPG testing...
I took the car out for a spin this weekend. Observations...
1) Oh man, it's going to spoil me. Makes the Flea feel *very* rudimentary by comparison.
Hedonic adaptation alert!
2) I did a quick set of bi-directional speed vs. MPG runs, and if these numbers can be believed (the Scangauge is uncalibrated), this car is going to do quite nicely:
UPDATE: gauge now calibrated; numbers below have been adjusted to reflect this.
Code:
km/h ... mph ... avg mpg (US) ... L/100 km
70 ..... 44 .... 54.5 .... 4.3
80 ..... 50 .... 51.1 .... 4.6
90 ..... 56 .... 46.2 .... 5.1
100 .... 62 .... 43.3 .... 5.4
Wow? Wow. Hope those numbers are close to reality. Anecdotally, another '07 5-spd Civic owner has told me they don't appear to be too "out there".
I'm not going to graph that until I have some calibration though. It seems too good to be true for a car with a 34 mpg EPA highway rating.
3) This thing coasts! I can really feel the weight in the car vs. the Flea. It's shocking. About 850 lbs more than a Metro -- like carrying another half Metro in the trunk.
Once I aired up the tires, that is. They were hilariously all over the map, from 15 psi to 30.