[Gasoline Fumes]

Underbody rust is a major issue. The front control arm mounts rot away. They're good cars if you can find a good one. Reliable and easy to work on. Parts are cheap and still readily available. Nothing special about their maintenance requirements or cost.

A Toyota Echo/Yaris/xA/xB is probably a little more reliable. You can't really beat Toyota reliability. But a 3-cyl Metro with a manual trans will get better mileage. An automatic Metro isn't really worth considering, in my opinion.