If he was in the midwest, probably rust killed the frame.
They weren’t good cars, but they were great cars for the money. When you couldn’t afford a Nissan Sentra, a Metro/Swift looked great.
Also, they were so easy to work on, because they were as simple as a lawnmower. One person could realistically pick up the whole engine and transmission, and there was tons of space to work inside the engine compartment. Unlike the old BMW 540i that I had, where you needed to take off the whole front end in order to get the brake master cylinder off (I think it was the master cylinder; might have been the booster or slave cylinder).
Onterrible Canada, salt in the winter lol. And like I said there was 3 people over 300lbs plus the driver.
I don’t know how it lasted as long as it did.
Had a teacher in highschool with a Metro and we would pick the car up and rotate it 90 deg in the spot or take it for a walk down the street