The Pontiac Fiero Was GM's Mid-Engine 1980s Sports Car

this is a 1987

pontiac

fiero

gt and it's a mid-

engine

d two-seat

sports

car from general motors yes that's right maker of general motors suvs, trucks and crossovers and those incredibly annoying chevy ads from real people that once made a two seater mid

engine

sports

car and it wasn't a really expensive supercar either, they sold 370,000 of these between 1984 and 1988. Today I'm going to review this one. I borrowed this

fiero

from a viewer here in San Diego and it is a A tremendously good example with only 39,000 miles from new back in the '80s, the fiero was offered with two engine options: you could get a 2.5 liter of 4 cylinders or a 2.8 liter v6.

This fiero is the gt and has the v6, but don't get too excited. The four-cylinder made only about 95 horsepower and the V6 had about 140 horsepower, so this was not an exciting, overpowered sports car. This one also has a three-speed automatic transmission, which wasn't exactly the enthusiasts' choice, but then again, the Führer just weighs some. like 26 2700 pounds so it really didn't take that much power to get it moving and anyway those numbers don't tell the whole story, the beast was cool because of what it represented, GM was finally getting rid of their old ones and heavy large ship cars that came out of the fuel crisis and had boring designs and made no power.

This was a mid-engine, rear-wheel drive two-seat compact sports car, proof that General Motors could do something different if it really wanted to and was a little ahead of its At the time, this car came out six years before the Mazda Miata and was released a full year before Toyota released the MR2, which was the Fiero's closest competitor in the

1980s

. Unfortunately, things didn't go so well in the

1980s

. General Motors wasn't really known. Because of its quality and the Fiero was marked by reports of poor reliability and by reports of engine fires in cars from the first model year, consumers were also dissatisfied with the performance of the four-cylinder model, which is why Pontiac finally released the V-6.

They were initially strong, but they quickly faded and today, more years after this came out, I go months without seeing one of these on the road, but today I'll show you this one first. I'll show you all the quirks and features of Pontiac's fun little sports car from the 1980s, then I'll take it out on the road and drive it and then I'll give it an excellent rating and to see more of my thoughts on the fiero, click link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer I'm going to start with the Fiero's quirks and features on the outside, probably with its most obvious exterior quirk, the pop-up headlights, because you couldn't have a sports car in the '80s without pop .

To turn on the headlights, you press this little switch on the left of the steering wheel and then the lights appear and come on if you turn off the headlights, obviously they go back into the front compartment, which keeps sort of a cleaner look to the front. of the car and makes it a little more aerodynamic now, interestingly the pop-up headlights obviously have two covers, one on the passenger side and one on the driver's side, but the word

pontiac

only appears on the driver's side pop-up headlights which They cover the passenger. The side cover was blank so there is a bit of asymmetry with the badges on this car on the front and then speaking of lighting we move to the rear of the fiero there are a couple of interesting elements one of my Favorite exterior features of this one.

The car is this giant light bar that runs all the way around the back and of course you can see the brake lights, the tail lights and the turn signals on one side, but this is a real light bar because the center part that says Pontiac lights up when you have the The headlights on go out like a taillight, illuminating the fact that you're actually driving a Pontiac just to let everyone know that I've always liked that glow. Now, one interesting thing with the brake lights, the turn signals are these little black lines that go. On them, this was a feature of Pontiac styling during the 80s and 90s.

I think they thought the black lines made the cars look sportier in some way, but of course what it really does is put little lines on the place the brake lights and make them a little less effective, but Pontiac did this on many vehicles in this era for some reason thinking that these lines across the lights were like a new modern fad. Now next we move on to probably the strangest exterior quirk of the car and that would be the lug nuts now if you take a look at the wheels you can see there are five lug nuts it seems simple enough but these are not lug nuts you put the hand, you can actually loosen them yourself and take them off, and when you take them off you see the nuts underneath, turns out these little black things are just plastic covers for the nuts.

Now nut covers are not so unusual, they cover the ugly nuts. The strange thing here is that they made the nut covers show. like lug nuts, so the whole point of a cover is that it hides the ugly wheel nut, but then they made the cover look like lug nuts, it's a strange decision and the owner tells me that sometimes you take the car to the mechanic to change it. of the tires, they take out a tool and try to remove these things thinking they are the nuts, but they are not, they are just the nut covers that look like the nuts underneath, very strange and next I want to talk. about the general look of the fiero now the vro came out in 1984 and the original cars look very different from the later versions in the middle of the fiero model they gave it a different bodywork and it looks more aerodynamic and sleeker now than the fiero always had Plastic body panels, which was a big deal at the time, was kind of an engineering feat, but the styling changed throughout the production of the Fiero and one of the most obvious things they added were these ones that basically They connect the roof to the rear. of the car with the addition of a c-pillar, the early fieros had a sort of 90 degree angle back here, but it was thought this would look sleeker now.

One of the interesting things about this piece is that it has a window that implies a back seat or cargo area, but in reality the window is nothing, it is open on the other side of the window and it has the engine cover back here . They simply placed that window in this piece for decorative, stylistic and aerodynamic purposes. Now, next on the exterior of this car. I want to move on to a flaw of the fiero, one of the biggest drawbacks of this car is the fact that all the fiero were fixed roof coupes, unlike the toyota mr2 which had removable t-tops, the mazda miata that came after was a True convertible, these tiny little ones.

The two-seat rear-drive sports car, the Fiero, could only be ordered with a coupe-style body, except for a very small production run in the late 1988 model year, in keeping with General Motors' tradition of refining cars and make them better until the end. and then just cancel them, but anyway that was a defect of the fiero, you couldn't get the open top driving experience except for a few hundred cars in the last model year. The next interesting additional item is the fuel door, nothing particularly strange Except for how you open it, I poked around all over the interior and couldn't figure out how to open it until I discovered that there is a small latch that opens it on the inside of the B-pillar behind the driver's seat.

You would never know. that it was there unless you spent a lot of time on it. I wonder how many people borrowed their friends' Fieros and then got to the gas station and didn't know how to put gas because they couldn't find the latch to open the door. fuel door and speaking of oddly placed latches, the one that opens the rear compartment is also unusual on many cars, it's a latch on the door frame, not the fiero, it's a small button to the right of the steering wheel and you press it and this opens quite strangely, you push it in the wrong direction because there is a little diagram of a car with the tailgate open, if you press nothing happens, you have to push it in the opposite direction and then it will release this compartment rear and then I can open it and you can see the glorious engine of the fiero, the big v6 with 140 horsepower.

I have to admit I love the way this engine looks, the red painted engine that says fiero on top. I think this is one of the most attractive engines in the world. any car I've reviewed and it's a fiero, it's ridiculous, but it looks great there now you can also see that the engine compartment shares this compartment with a luggage space, obviously there's a rubber separator between them so your luggage doesn't fall out . too hot or the liquids won't get there and will spill on your luggage, but this is the combined engine and cargo compartment of this car.

The owner told me he thinks it's sized big enough to fit golf clubs in here, which was probably the design intent when they were creating this, but this is the rear compartment of the Fiero and when you're done, just close it . Now we move on to the front compartment. Unlatching this is also a bit unusual, it's not just a latch. you pull the driver's foot well, but instead it's mounted on the bottom of the dash under the air vent on the driver's side, you pull that out, then it opens in this position and then from here you just lift it up and then you can look at what's on the front of the fiero, which is nothing particularly exciting or special, there's no real storage up here, instead you've got the temporary tire, you've got a jack and a couple of mechanical parts, obviously , you can throw some storage items in here in a pinch, especially if you ditched the spare tire, but obviously that wasn't really what the front of this car was intended for, however, this is what you have in the front of.

Now next we move onto the fiero and the first thing you notice when you come up here is the right angle it has everything look at all of these they are all square boxes you have a box for the gauge cluster a box for the central control stack everything has 90 degree angles here the only circle in this entire interior is basically the steering wheel, the gauges, everything else is just squares and rectangles, this was in the days before car interiors became sleek and stylish like in the cars today, it looks much more modern, you can clearly date this car just based on the interior and this was not unique to the fiero, I have been in many cars from the 80's that have similar interiors, it was just a sign of the times, now The next thing you notice when you get into this car is the Fiero logo placed almost everywhere, it's like this Phoenix. it's going up and I guess they're very proud of that logo because it's on everything in this interior.

You have it on the door panel next to the door latch on both sides. You have it in this little door storage pocket again on both sides. On the seats, on the backrest, sewn to the seats, is the logo again. You have it on the passenger side dashboard. You can see the logo stitched there again and of course you have it in the center of the steering wheel. I counted it. There are eight Fiero logos in total on the interior of this car alone, which is a big number considering it's a pretty small interior, but they really wanted to remind you that you were in a Fiero.

Another element of excess in this interior are the ashtrays. There are two. ashtrays in this car two seats two ashtrays that's what you needed if you were making a sports car in the 80's there's only one lighter however it's in the center console and it's on the driver's side so the driver wouldn't have to reach for it so far when you go to smoke, other interesting elements on the center console of this car, one is that you can see that this car has an automatic transmission, like I said, it was a three-speed automatic, not exactly the transmission of choice for the driver of track, but the What I like about this is the fact that you have all the gears printed on the side and they are angled a little bit towards the driver so the driver can see them a little better.

I also like that in the middle you have the controls for the driver's side and passenger side windows and the power mirror control is in the middle of everything and it's this nifty little switch that you flip from left to right and then you can push this small pad to move the mirror and position it as you want next. Moving on to the visors, the visor here on the passenger side has a visor mirror, as you probably wouldn't expect anything strange about that, but however, the driver's side visor has instructions on how to start the car.

Thinking carefully about why that is because many cars of this era had a carburetor,but this car had fuel injection and the starting procedure is a little different. In a carbureted car, you have to push the accelerator while starting it in a fuel injected car. In the car, you don't really have to do that, so they didn't want people to accidentally do it without realizing that they had injected fuel and messed something up, so they are printed on the driver's side sun visor of this car, you have instructions on how to turn. It's on like a kid's toy, but it was probably important to have another cool item in the gauge cluster this time.

If you look there, you can see the gauges and then in the middle there are two columns of lights, one of those. lights, my favorite is the one on the door. You have the door open and it says a jar. It doesn't say door ajar. It doesn't tell you which door the jar is. It just lights up and says ajar. You should know the rest and the next one. Speaking of the doors, I want to move on to the ones. door panels, let's start with the lock and unlock buttons, which are two separate buttons in this car, you press them, the doors lock or unlock immediately.

I really like how they feel and of course they are square. Underneath the lock and unlock buttons you have the door pocket where you can store things and it's not like a small storage pocket built into the door panel trim, instead it's a small cloth pocket mounted on the door panel. You can open it, put something in there and then close it like a little bag on the door panel. Now, the next one in the vicinity of that. On the driver's side you have the parking brake which is mounted between the driver's seat and the driver's door.

The handbrake works like it does on many exotic cars, meaning you can lift it up to activate it, but then if you have it. raised it would block your way of getting in and out of the car so you can lower it which means you can actually have the handbrake on but the brake itself is depressed, if you want to remove the brake you basically just raise it again . again, then you push the little tab in and then you push it down again and that disengages the brake. It sounds a bit complicated, but you get the hang of it very quickly and it's actually not that difficult to understand.

Now, next, I want to move on to the stereo, which of course is in the center control console. You turn it on by pressing this orange power button in the middle and you can see that the stereo head unit has a lot of buttons and switches. My personal favorites are the buttons. for the balance and attenuator in many cars they are little dials that you can turn to focus the sound coming out of the stereo speakers if you want it more to the front or back or side to side, but in this car, there are little buttons that You press it and there's a little row of lights that light up to let you know where you have the speaker sound focused when you press the balance and the fader buttons haven't seen anything like this before, it's actually kind of an interesting little look, though overcomplicates a relatively simple feature.

Another button I like on this stereo is the one marked high. You press it and I don't know, I guess it gets louder, of course there's a volume button too, but if you want. even more volume, you have other interesting elements out loud. We go back to the gauge cluster and you can see that the speedometer is pretty normal, but the tachometer is a little strange, it still turns clockwise like most tachometers, but you can see that the needle starts oddly . Place it on the right instead of the left, as you'll see on many other tachometers.

Now there is another interesting element in this interior on the passenger side of the dash, where you normally have the glove box in this vehicle. Instead, you have this little cloth pad and the Fiero logo, there's a little leather pad in front so you can stick some stuff back there, but it's not a true opening glove box like in most cars. Instead, in this car you have what is effectively the glove box in the middle between the seats. There is a small storage compartment. You can open it and that's where you discover the owner's manual. A couple of elements I like about this manual.

One is just the cover. Look, 80s. This is such a cool owner's manual, you won't see anything like this in a modern car. Another thing you won't find in a modern car is on page 2. It says the word fierce and then fierce means very proud. This description. It applies not only to your new Pontiac but to people like you who have recognized exceptional value in personal transportation. If that's not the best example of '80s corporate discourse, I can't think of what the rest of the owner's manual is now. actually, quite normal, quite simple, I looked at it in great detail and didn't find anything especially strange or interesting, but I liked those two details, the cover and also the fierce description not only of the car but of you, a buyer who has recognized.

An exceptional value in personal transportation, so let's look at the Fiero's quirks and features. Now is the time to get it out on the road and drive it well. Driving the fierce. The first question people will ask is how do I fit into this? car and it's actually not that bad it requires a little work to get your knee under the steering wheel but it's doable and once you're in it it's fine now my first impression upon getting into this car was uh this isn't that bad, is it? You know? there's a lot about the fiero there's a lot of history to its history um i've never driven one before and just driving it right now you start to think, hey, you know, this is a small car, it's light, you can pull it actually it feels fun , there's no power steering so the steering is nice and heavy and you get that kind of go kart feel and this one has held up pretty well for 39,000 miles so the suspension isn't worn out now that's an issue it suffered Wild. it had a reputation for catching fire um it turns out this only affected some of the 1984 models the first year and only with the four cylinder so we can be sure this v6 won't catch fire but in 84 people wanted more power. four cylinders wasn't enough, so Pontiac gave it a V6 and Pontiac had always talked about oh, we'll put a turbo in it, we'll put a bigger engine in it and they never got around to doing that when it arrived. came to cancel the fiero, which was a shame, um, but obviously there are stories of people who have put 3 800 g engines in 3.8 v6 uh north star v8 and fieros, there are many stories of people who get more powerful and then the firo begins to be more powerful. become the car it probably should have been in the past it's a fun little car to take turns and turn the steering the handling the suspension isn't that bad now I'm going to put my foot down it's not terrible I'm actually going to make it known like the guy who likes the fiero it's actually not that terrible obviously with a manual it would be even better three speed automatic it's not great but it's not as bad as i expected and it's a light car so 140 150 horsepower is a pretty decent figure in a car like this, the ride quality is a little harsh, as you'd expect from a small '80s sports car like this, and there are creeks and rattles like you'd expect from an '80s general motor .vehicle, but not as many as I thought there might be the interior is so old school it's almost funny how it looks the suspension has a little more play than you would expect when you start turning you can feel the body kick in. squat when you go around a corner, which isn't really ideal, but you have to remember that this was 30 years ago and, when you look at it through that lens, it's actually not that bad.

I drove a Ferrari 348 and uh, not that it was a Ferrari at the time, you know, 80's cars were 30 years ago, there's still a lot of development to be done to get to the modern era, I'm stunned, but I have to admit. no I don't hate the fierce um I drive a lot of high powered cars a lot of over tech cars and this thing is a fun little vehicle you can move it uh could it be better yeah if it had a little more power? if the suspension was more modern, but you know, it's like an 80's car, it drives like some kind of small fun car from the 80's, it's not perfect, there are definitely flaws, but not as many as I thought there would be , so that's the Pontiac Fiero. a special and interesting car that made Pontiac GM's exciting brand and was proof that General Motors could think outside the box.

It was a fun little compact two-seat sports car instead of a big gold V8-powered boat like basically everything else from General Motors. It was being made in the 1970s and in the 1980s it wasn't perfect, but nothing GM made in the 1980s was perfect yet it was interesting, it was unusual and it's impressive to see one in such good condition and now is the time to give the fiero a score from Doug starting with the weekend categories and the design of the furo is reasonably nice, it's not pretty but it's okay and gets a 5 out of 10.

Acceleration is mediocre even with the larger engine and It gets a 1 out of 10. Handling is surprisingly sharp and it gets a 5 out of 10, which is excellent for a car like this. The fun factor is also decent for a 30-year-old car with only 140 horsepower. It gets a 6 out of 10. Finally, the cool and fierce factor are just average. a lot of them, so they're not exactly flashy, but it still gets a 5 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 22 out of 50. Next up are the daily categories and features. The furo is good for its time, but it is low. on the equipment by modern standards and gets a 2 out of 10. comfort is good and gets a 5 out of 10. quality is average for its time, but not so good by today's standards and gets a 5 out of 10. practicality is normal for a two seater mid engine sports car and gets a 2 out of 10.

Finally value and these are good values, they are cheap but fun and a bit of an icon at least in GM history and gets a 6 out of 10 for a daily score total of 20 out of 50. Added up and the score obtained is 42 out of 100. I have never reviewed any other sports car from the 80s, but here it is in comparison to some supercars from the 80s and some sports cars from the 90s. Surprisingly, it doesn't It does very well against more modern and powerful cars, but it does beat the Jaguar creating this but this is the back compartment of the party