Some of the later v6 models where bad ass, then they killed it.

The Fiero really was a shame. It could have been totally awesome, but turned out mediocre and half-assed.

Thanks, GM, for turning a great idea into a joke.

So close, yet so far...

@TampaRon:

Exactly right.

My favorite car when I was a kid. I had a kickass R/C V6 Fiero with working flip-up lights and horn. I even wrote a song about it, which was a pretty kickass song about a car from an eight-year-old with kind of square parents.

My father worked for GM from the early '60's through the mid '90's and he ran a couple of Fieros up to Detroit after having put in transmissions at the plant he worked at. According to him, the Fiero we all wanted was out there but GM killed it when it outperformed the Corvette.

I liked the body style on the later ones. But, I have a bais against all GM through personal experience. Also, seeing the plastic body panels crack to pieces didn't do Saturn any favors.

That being said, Frod didn't do a whole helluva lot better with the Capri...which promised to be awesome when previewed as the Ghia, and then turned out to depreciate faster than a Hyundai (for good reason).

Had a friend who had an '86 2M4 (is that right?) that CAUGHT FIRE on him while driving his dream-girl home from school. Had to laugh though. this is the same guy that drove around for months with his high-beams on, arguing taht the blue headlight light was to say that you had your headlights on. guh.

The Fiero could have put up a fantastic fight for the MR2, and had it been what it should have done, could have potentially changed the automotive landscape pretty significantly. Do you think the Miata would have been what it was if everyone was building mid-engined small sports cars? Would it have cannibalized sales from the Firebird/ T/A? Would it have convinced Honda to build a similar-type vehicle (most likely at the expense of the CRX, I would only imagine)?

Just some thoughts of what could have been... Not that I would want to have seen the MX-5 be anything other than it was... but you have to wonder...

I was 10 at the time. My mom knows I love cars, so she'd wait for me before going to the dealership for her car. I'd spend my afternoon looking at the cars in the showroom, talking to the salesmen (no woman as far as I remember). Everybody at that dealership knew me (or at least, of me). Eventually I got close to the sales manager. He taught me a bunch of dealer tricks that have been very useful to me as a customer through the years.

One day, he called me to his office and told me to close the door. In normal circumstances, he was cheerful, made jokes all over the place, constantly laughed and basically acted as everybody's friend. That time, he looked ghastly. Looking back as an adult, he may have been drinking, too. He let his guard down because he needed to talk. I was simply the one person available at that moment.

He'd just been told he needed to take in a bunch of Fieros, in addition to his unsold inventory.

The Fiero story is both exciting and tragic. Pontiac desperately wanted a sporty car but were hamstrung and outgunned at every opportunity until they came up with the Fiero concept. A car that started life with so much promise now seems star-crossed from the very beginning. GM may have needed the car to be a success but Pontiac deserved it, and they didn't get it.

I've got many good memories of them, most involving women. Good times can be had both in and out of a Fiero. Too bad neither GM or I could keep a good thing going.

but I thought that the original purpose of Fiero was to be a low cost, high mileage commuter car. For those goals, it made sense - recycle the T body front suspension and X body drivetrain to keep costs low and use the cash to develop a spaceframe with plastic no-dent panels for urban parking.

Highjacking the project into a sports car was the mistake... well, and not re-developing it when they decided to make it sporty.

Fiero was very much a Corvair redux - an economy car that morphed into a sport-ish car due more to public demand than good reason.

To bastardize a famous sports quote: "The execution of the Fiero development team? I'm all for it."

The high-profile failures of GM during the Roger Smith years still haunt GM today. This should have been a delightful car for recent college grads - something to bring them into the GM fold. But the Fiero's body was writing checks that the engine and suspension just couldn't cover.

I'd say both of the first two choices are accurate. GM blew it, but the Fiero also gets a bad rap.

I first had an '88 Formula. Terrifically fun car. Thought I'd keep it forever, but I ran across a can't-pass-up deal on a Corvette at a moment of weakness. Now I'm caretaking an '86 GT. The handling difference is astounding.

But that '88 gets the bad rap. GM had already all but killed the market, and then when they -- and Lotus -- finally had a product that could compete, they gave up.

I was a toddler back then but my impression of early 80's cars was that they really didn't need to handle, they just needed to meet the esthetic requirements of the times: sharp plastics edges, a swoopy-ish curve and some impression of power. this car seems like a pretty good example of that trend.
But really, you just need the Jalop-approved Hayabusa engine, a proper stick instead ot the dumb 3 speed auto, simple McPhersons for the suspension and you'll be hoonin.

During the mid 80's I had a Fiat X1/9. I only wished I could have had a Fiero. That X1/9 was a HUGE POS.

@CafeRacer1200: So, the Fiero is the Porsche Cayman of the 1980s!

Man I love fieros. I know it's retarded. There's a really nice fiero around the corner from me. It's one of the late model ones and has been painted a candy dark red with black rims. sounds a bit corny but the paint job is really nice and to me it looks cool. When I pointed it out to my girlfriend, she laughs and says "c'mon, you can't feel like a man driving that car. When I see those cars I'm always wondering if a bunch of clowns are going to jump out." Ouch!!!

Another half-assed joke from GM. Before GM increased engine oil capacity they should have been delivered with a fire extinguisher as standard equipment. The company just put a front wheel drive set-up in the car's ass and called it mid-engined. Replacing the clutch was a nightmare. Inexplicably, the Fiero's defenders are a rabid group. I guess it's either that or admit to having been screwed.

@MalFuller: <--- Booksmart.

Oh, don't even get me started.... oops, too late!

GM, circa 1980: "Let's make a sports car with a Chevette front suspension!" "the stupid public will never know the difference."

GM, twenty years later: "Let's make an SUV out of a mini-van!"

"...wait, do WE know what the difference is?"

Q: Is GM kinda like the ex you see on the street that you'd once made great plans with?

Fiero [en.wikipedia.org] Aztec [en.wikipedia.org]

One of my best friends in high school had an '86 for his first car, he also tried to teach me to drive stick in it (he had the five-speed). There were a lot of weird things about that car - you couldn't get out of it gracefully, if you put the handbrake on, you could barely get out at all. Handling was weird too (on a wet day, he managed to spin it on a corner that didn't seem to bother my understeeriffic Intrepid). Still, it looked cool, and it felt fast, and I guess that's gotta count for something.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't want an '88.

I am all for the Fiero being total crap. In theory it is not a half bad attempt. Mid engine 2-seater with an optional 6 cylinder. (If I remember it cranked out a whopping 130ish HP.)
Unfortunatley GM came up with the idea, so it is a total mess.

For what it's worth, the Fiero absolutely bitchslapped the MR2, sales-wise. History may have vindicated the MR2, but at the time the marketplace voted for the Fiero, with their strange-looking old green money.

@abgwin: The benchmark model that GM wanted to emulate wasn't the Corvair, it was the 1964 Ford Mustang (i.e. a sporty-looking car to appeal to college grads, built to a cost using parts from mom's car).

The biggest issue that GM faced was that their parts bin wasn't nearly as good as Ford's was in the early 1960s.

They were fun to drive little cars. They coulda been a lot better. I worked on that POS as much as I drove it.

I wanted one of these so bad back in the day. Even today whenever I see one for sale I'm tempted to buy one.

@PeteJayhawk: Even though I know they're POSes.

No, GM did not just shoot themselves in the foot, reload and shoot themselves in the other foot. It was more like GM shot themselves in the foot while they were stepping on their own dick.

This was a typical move of GM in this era. The 1986 Buick Riviera also comes to mind considering it was manufactured by the Cadillac Motor Car Division with more computing horsepower on board than the Space Shuttle Columbia. Sad part is that GM had no idea how to harness that kind computer power so all it was just a car without any visible radio and HVAC controls and a very annoying digital dash. The turmoil that my parent's experienced with that bad boy of the Buick division has me running like hell every time I sit in a car that has a touch screen instead of a proper radio and heat controls.

And now you know the scars that caused my to purchase a Ford Panther. Roger Smith's GM is to blame for my youthful ass being in the most elderly of car types because of piss poor quality.

And my lovely handling 1994 C4 Convertible with all kinds of electronic gremlins did not help either.

@abgwin: That's true. However, the MR2 was also supposed to be a low-cost commuter car. Which one had better engineering? That's easy.

Unfortunately, GM and Toyota both lost out. Toyota sold 50K MR2s in 1985, but by the late 80s they were selling just a few thousand. The vanilla Celica was flying out the doors. Nobody wanted a mid-engined budget car. It was a malaise solution that failed. Most roads in America are straight and poorly made...who needs handling?

@BSAKat: I'd like to hear that song... /whimsey

I think an early Fiero will be a top 20 need to get car for my Junior Jay Leno collection... once I get it started. Red with those fugly Pontiac wheels, it's an American icon whether we like it or not.

Also, it's pretty money to ask Ferrari drivers "Hey, is that the new Fiero". They love it.

@Maymar: Oh, and speakers in the headrests? *Insert ringing '80's style enddorsement here* (Awesome to the max!). I'm actually a little surprised they haven't caught on a little more in our THX surround sound market.

The Fiero is yet another example of GM introducing a half-baked car, then scrambling to getting it right just in time to pull the plug. The aforementioned Corvair is a perfect example. By the time GM replaced the swing axle suspension made famous in "Unsafe At Any Speed" the plot was already purchased and the hole dug. Same for the Vega and its many iterations.

Once they replaced the Chevette-front and Citation-rear suspensions, the Fiero was a pretty good handling car.

Image a world were a further refined Fiero was offered with one of the high horsepower Quad4 engines...

This car looks so European and fun to drive...alas...

Somewhere, out on the web, there's a recipe for putting a transverse Northstar Caddy engine in these. Haven't seen one in person, but the photos show a real sleeper setup.

I looked for a used 88 GT for months in the early 90s and never was able to find a decent one I could afford at the time. It worked out in the end though, because I found a pair of those awesome seats with the speakers in the headrests at a wrecking yard that found a righteous home in my ElCamino.

I liked it much better as the Toyota MR2... Now THAT was the mid-engine sports car GM should have built!

@Jimal: Many, MANY people have made that a reality. But the supercharged 3800 and Northstars seem to be the favorites.

I kinda like the Ecotec angle at this point.

Great chassis foundation - the entire pan went through a gigantic milling machine that would tune up all the body mounting points simultaneously, so the 10000th Fiero fit together exactly the same as the 1st.

Engine: meh. I drove the Iron Duke in a Citation, and it was OK. That's it. Combine blind-date performance with midmount service access, and you can keep it. Not in my ride.

Tranny: it's in there.

Suspension: it's in there too. I understand the later ones were pretty sharp. If you say so.

Styling: very not GM. When Fiero came out, it was really cutting edge. So much for that.

Pontiac Guy #1: "Let's make an economy commuter car that's small and efficient but stylish and futuristic. It'll create a whole new category."

Pontiac Guy #2: "We really need a sporty, performance compact."

Pontiac Guy #1: "Can't we do be both?"

Pontiac Guy #2: "Well, it will most likely end up being an overpriced commuter and an under-engineered sportscar."

Pontiac Guy #1: "Wouldn't that be a whole new category?"

Pontiac Guy #2: "Not really. It'd just be a new Monza."

Pontiac Guy #1: "What if we gave it a gimmick?"

Pontiac Guy #2: "You mean, like a mid-engine layout?"

Pontiac Guy #1: "Yes! That's it!"

Pontiac Guy #2: "Brilliant!"

Pontiac Guy #1: "Brilliant!"

This thing is the 4-cylinder model, 90 HP, 0-60 in 11 seconds. I had an 84 and used to rev up and use clutch slippage just to eek a bit better acceleration out of it. Once I upgraded to a more powerful car, the clutch told me I was not allowed to use that technique anymore.

@VonPinto: Seriously? I have joked about people thinking that meant the headlights were on, but I didn't really realize anyone actually thought that. My faith in humanity has been eroded slightly more.

So sad...just when the Fiero was getting good with the '88 model, GM pulled the plug. Collectible Automobile magazine once had an article with design proposals for 1989 and beyond - many of the proposals were really striking, and use of the Quad 4 was planned.

When I was shopping for a new car in late '83, I looked at the new-for-'84 Fiero, but compared to the also-new Honda CRX 1.5, it was laughable - 500 lbs. more weight, the manual was a 4-speed, no storage space, it was slower, and it cost a couple thousand dollars more. I ended up getting the CRX and never regretted it.

GM pulled the same stunt with the Cadillac Allante - interesting concept, poor execution, and just after they made it into a serious car for '93 with the Northstar V8, they killed it off.

I really liked the 88 GTs with the almost-flying buttresses. There was an 89 Fiero prototype that looked to be pretty awesome but GM canned it. Knowing the quality of other 1989 GM cars, it probably wasn't a bad decision.

And I bet you anything that the chrome rocker trim is aftermarket.

Murilee, how could you make this post without one reference to Ferris Bueller's sister Jeanie? This is the mirror image of her car from the movie (except the mirror trim, hmm). Ferris makes a point throughout the movie that the car should have been his, but in hindsight he was spared the agony of Fiero ownership.

I can still remember hearing the blurb on the news that they were killing the Fiero. I was 13 at the time and even then I knew GM blew it, thinking they had just gotten it right but gave up. It is decisions like this that haunt GM to this day, undermining their quest to show the quality of their current lineup.

@west-coaster: The Norstar conversion must be a re-hash of the old trick of shoe-horning a Chevy 350 TPI motor (typically, from an IROC Z) into a Fiero GT.

It gave the car the straight-line acceleration the looks deserved, but exaggerated all of the handling flaws already inherent to the cost-cutting engineering methods.

Fiero was my first introduction to the boneheaded product strategy of GM...introduce the car with whatever garbage was hanging around in the corporate parts bin, make incremental improvements to the car that should have been there from day one, then cancel the program right when it starts to gel into a halfway decent product.
Some guy here recently had a stock '86 2m4 (manual windows, 3 speed auto) for sale on Craigslist for...$12,000. I don't think he understands the collectible car market.

Mytdawg's meeting theorem #1 - ANY decision reached by committee will be mediocre at best and the potential quality of that decision will be inversely proportional to the amount of time spent in committee.

I liked the Fiero. I liked the idea anyway. And the last ones were the best ones. But the execution was indeed lacking.