I'm just west of Milwaukee.
The Metro I bought this spring had a pretty rust-free body on it, yet it STILL had the the rusted out control arm mount, similar to the photo a couple of posts above.
I paid $500, with a bad clutch, (later found out the transmission had a bad bearing too) but a good engine. The interior also looked pretty nice.
A 1996 is a good car in that it has OBDII, so you can use a Scanguage or similar device with it.
Also, what do you want to do with the car? Fix it and just drive it as an efficient car? Convert it to electric? Put a different engine in there?
What you want to do with it will decide what's important to look for in a car.
Take a look at my
Electro-Metro build thread for lots of photos of a Milwaukee area Geo Metro.