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

this is a 1987 pontiac fiero gt and it is a mid-engine two-seater sports car from general motors yes that's right general motors manufacturer of suvs and trucks and crossovers and those incredibly annoying real people chevy ads once made a mid engine two-seater sports car and it wasn't some really expensive supercar either they sold 370 000 of these from 1984 to 1988. today i'm going to review this one now i've borrowed this fiero from a viewer here in san diego and it is a tremendously nice example with just 39 000 miles from new back in the 80s the fiero was offered with two engine choices you could get a 2.5 liter 4 cylinder or a 2.8 liter v6 this fiero being the gt has the v6 but don't get too excited the four cylinder made only about 95 horsepower and the v6 was right around 140 horsepower so this was no thrilling overpowered exciting sports car this one also has a three-speed automatic transmission which wasn't exactly the enthusiast's choice then again the fuhrer only weighs something like 26 2700 pounds so it didn't really take all that much power to get it moving and anyway those numbers don't tell the full story the fiera was cool because of what it represented gm was finally shedding its stodgy old big boat cars that came out of the fuel crisis and had dull designs and made no power this was a compact two-seat mid-engine rear wheel drive sports car proof that general motors could do something different if they actually wanted to and it was kind of ahead of its time this car came out six years before the mazda miata and it launched 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 back in the 1980s general motors wasn't really known for their quality and the fiero was scarred by reports of poor reliability and by reports of engine fires in first model year cars consumers were also unsatisfied with the performance of the four-cylinder model which is why pontiac eventually rolled out the v-6 sales were strong initially but they dropped off fast and today plus years after this came out i go months without ever seeing one of these on the road but today i'm going to show you around this one first i'm going to show you all of the quirks and features of pontiac's fun little sports car from the 1980s then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the fiero click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer i'm going to start the quirks and features of the fiero on the outside with probably its most obvious exterior quirk the pop-up headlights because you couldn't have a sports car in the 80s without pop-up headlights you press this little switch to the left of the steering wheel and then the lights pop up and turn on if you turn off the headlights obviously they go right back down into the front compartment which preserves sort of a cleaner look in the front of the car and makes it a little bit 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 side pop-up headlight cover the passenger side cover was blank so there's a little asymmetry going on with the badging of this car in the front and next up speaking of lighting we move around to the back of the fiero there are a couple of interesting items one of my favorite exterior features of this car is this giant light bar that goes across the entire rear and of course you can see the brake lights and tail lights and turn signals on one side but this is a true light bar because the middle part that says pontiac lights up when you have the headlights on this lights off like a tail light illuminating the fact that you are in fact driving a pontiac just to let everybody know i've always liked that glow now one interesting thing with the brake lights the turn signals are these little black lines that go across them this was a pontiac style feature throughout the 80s and 90s i think that they thought that the black lines made the cars look sportier somehow but of course what it actually does is it puts little lines in the place of your brake lights and makes them a little bit less effective but pontiac did these on a lot of vehicles in this era for some reason thinking that these lines through the lights were like a cool hip new fad now next we move on to probably the car's weirdest exterior quirk 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 looks pretty simple but these aren't lug nuts you put your hand to them you can actually loosen them yourself and take them off and when you take them off it reveals the lug nuts underneath it turns out these little black things are just plastic lug nut covers now lug nut covers are not all that unusual they cover up the ugly lug nuts the weird thing here is they made the lug nut covers look like lug nuts so the whole point of a cover is it hides the ugly lug nut on the wheel but then they made the cover look like lug nuts it is a bizarre decision and the owner tells me sometimes you take the car to the mechanic to change the tires they get out a tool and try to remove these things thinking they're the lug nuts but they're not instead they're just the lug nut covers that look just like the lug nuts underneath very strange and next i want to talk about the fiero's general look now the vro came out in 1984 and the original cars look a lot different from the later versions in the middle of the fiero's model run they gave it a different body and it looks more aerodynamic and sleeker now the fiero always had plastic body panels which was a big new thing at the time it was kind of a feat of engineering but the style did change throughout the fiero's production run and one of the most obvious things they added were these back here basically connecting the roof to the rear of the car with the addition of a c-pillar the early fieros had sort of a 90 degree angle back here but this was thought to look sleeker now one of the interesting things about this piece is it has a window in it implying some backseat or cargo area but actually the window goes to nothing it's open on the other side of the window and you have the engine cover back here they just put that window in in this piece for decorative stylistic aerodynamic appearance purposes now next up on the outside of this car i want to move on to a flaw of the fiero one of this car's biggest drawbacks is the fact that all fieros were fixed roof coupes unlike the toyota mr2 which had removable t-tops the mazda miata which came later was a true convertible these little tiny two-seat rear-wheel drive sports cars the fiero could only be ordered with a coupe body style except for a very small production run in the final model year of 1988 in keeping with general motors tradition of refining cars and making them better until the end and then just canceling them but anyway that was a flaw of the fiero you couldn't get the open top driving experience except for like a few hundred cars in the last model year next up another interesting extra item is the fuel door nothing particularly weird about it except for how you open it i poked all around the interior i couldn't figure out how to open it until i discovered there's a little latch that opens it on the inside of the b-pillar behind the driver's seat you'd never know that it was there unless you devoted serious time to it i wonder how many people borrowed their friend's fieros and then got to the gas station and couldn't figure out how to put gas in it because they couldn't find the latch to open the fuel door and speaking of weirdly placed latches the one to open the rear compartment is also unusual in a lot of cars it's a latch in the door jam not in the fiero it's a little button to the right of the steering wheel and you push it and this unlatches strangely enough you push it in the wrong direction because there's a little diagram of a car with its rear lid open if you press that nothing happens you have to push it in the opposite direction and then it will release this rear compartment and then you can open it right up and you can see the fiero's glorious engine the big v6 with 140 horsepower i have to admit i love how this engine looks the red painted engine that says fiero on the top i think this is one of the coolest looking engines in any car that i've ever reviewed and it's a fiero it's ridiculous but it does look really cool in there now you can also see the engine shares this compartment with a luggage space obviously there's a rubber separator between them so your luggage won't get too hot or fluids won't come over there and spill onto your luggage but this is the combo engine and cargo compartment in this car the owner told me that he thinks it is size just big enough that you could 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 next we move on to the front compartment the unlatching of this is also kind of unusual it's not just a latch you pull in the driver's foot well but instead it's mounted on the bottom of the dashboard below the air vent over on the driver's side you pull that then it pops open to this position and then from here you just lift it right up and then you can see what's in the front of the fiero which is not anything particularly exciting or special there's no real storage up here instead you have the temporary tire you have a jack and a couple of mechanical pieces throughout obviously you could throw some storage items up here in a pinch especially if you got rid of the spare tire but obviously that wasn't really what the front of this car was intended for nonetheless this is what you got up front now next up we move into the fiero and the first thing you notice when you climb in here is just how right angled everything is look at all this everything is boxes squares you have a box for the gauge cluster a box for the center control stack everything is 90 degree angles in here the only circle in this entire interior is basically the steering wheel the gauges everything else is just squares and rectangles throughout this was the days before car interiors got all swoopy and stylized like in today's cars it looks so much more modern you can clearly date this car just based on the interior and this wasn't unique to the fiero i've been in a lot of 80s cars that have similar interiors it was just a sign of the times now the next thing you notice when you climb in this car is the fiero logo placed just about everywhere it's like this phoenix rising and i guess they're really proud of that logo because it is on everything in this interior you have it on the door panel next to the door latch on both sides you have it on this little door storage pocket again on both sides you have it on the seats on the seat back stitched into the seats there's the logo again you have it on the dashboard on the passenger side you can see the logo stitched into there again and you have it of course in the center of the steering wheel i counted there are eight total fiero logos just in the interior of this car which is a big number considering this is a pretty small interior but they really wanted to remind you that you were in a fiero another item of excess in this interior is 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 80s there is only one cigarette lighter however it's in the center console and it's over on the driver's side so that the driver didn't have to reach quite as far when going for a smoke other interesting items in the center console of this car one is you can see that this car has an automatic transmission like i said that was a three speed automatic not exactly the track driver's transmission of choice but the thing i like about it is the fact that you have all the gears printed on the side and they're angled just a little bit towards the driver so the driver can see them a little better i also like in the middle you have the controls for the windows driver side and passenger side and the power mirror control is in the middle of it all and it's this nifty little switch you move left right and then you can push this little pad around to actually move the mirror to position it how you want next up moving on to the sun visors the sun visor over here on the passenger side has a visor mirror as you'd probably expect nothing weird about that but however the sun visor on the driver side has instructions for how to start the car you're thinking well why that's because a lot of cars from this era were carbureted but this car was fuel injected and the starting procedure is a little different a carbureted car you have to kind of push the gas while you're starting it in a fuel-injected car you don't really have to do that and so they didn't want people to accidentally do that not realizing was fuel injected and messed something up and so printed on the driver's side sun visor in this car you have instructions for how to turn it on as if it was a child's toy but they were probably important to have there another interesting item this time in the gauge cluster if you look in 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 for the door you have the door open and it says a jar doesn't say door ajar doesn't tell you which door is the jar it simply lights up and says ajar you should know the rest and next up speaking of the doors i want to move on to the door panels let's start with the lock and unlock buttons which are two separate buttons in this car you press them the doors immediately lock or unlock i really like how they feel and of course they are squares below the lock and unlock buttons you have the door pocket where you can store stuff and it's not like a little storage pocket integrated into the molding of the door panel instead it's this little cloth pocket mounted on the door panel you can open it up stick something in there and then close it right up like a little door panel purse now next up in the vicinity of that on the driver side you have the parking brake which is mounted between the driver's seat and the driver's door the parking brake works like it does in a lot of exotic cars which is you can lift it up in order to engage it but then if you have it lifted it would block your path getting in and out of the car so you can put it down meaning that you can actually have the parking brake engaged but the brake itself is down if you want to take the brake off you basically just lift it back up again then you push the little tab and then you push it back down again and that disengages the brake it sounds kind of complicated but you get the hang of it very quickly and it's not really all that difficult to figure out now next up i want to move on to the stereo which of course is in the center control stack you turn it on by pressing this orange power button in the middle and you can see the stereo head unit has a lot of buttons and switches on it my personal favorite are the buttons for the balance and the fader in a lot of cars they're little dials that you can twist in order to focus the sound coming out the stereo speakers if you want it more in the front or in the back or side to side but in this car there are little buttons that you press and there's this tiny little row of lights that lights up to let you know where you have the speaker sound focused as you press the balance and fader buttons haven't seen anything like this before it's actually kind of a cool little look although it's over complicating a relatively simple feature another button i like in this stereo is the one that's marked loud you press it and i don't know i guess it gets louder of course there's also a volume button but if you want even more volume you have loud other interesting items we go back to the gauge cluster and you can see the speedometer is fairly normal but the tachometer is a little bit odd it still turns clockwise like most tachometers but you can see the needle starts in an odd position over on the right as opposed to over on the left like you'll see in a lot of other tachometers now another interesting item in this interior on the passenger side of the dashboard where you typically have the glove box in this vehicle you don't instead you have this little cloth pad and the fiero logo there is this little leather pad in front of it so you could stick some stuff back there but it isn't 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's this little storage compartment you can open it right up and that is where you discover the owner's manual a couple of items i like in this owner's manual one is just the cover look how 80s this is such a rad owner's manual you're not going to see anything like this in a modern car another thing you won't find in the modern car is on page 2 it says the word fiero and then fiero it means very proud this description applies and not only to your new pontiac but to individuals like yourself who have recognized an outstanding value in personal transportation if that isn't the greatest example of 1980s corporate speak i can't think of what is now the rest of the owner's manual is actually fairly normal pretty straightforward i went through it in great detail and i didn't find anything especially weird or interesting but i did like those two details the cover and also the fiero description not only of the car but of you a buyer who has recognized an outstanding value in personal transportation and so that's a look at the quirks and features of the fiero now it's time to get it out on the road and drive it all right driving the fiero first question people are going to ask how do i fit in this car and actually it's not so bad it requires a little work to get your knee under the steering wheel but it's doable and once you're in it's just fine now my first impression getting in this car was uh this isn't so bad you know there's a lot about the fiero there's a lot of lore pro con the history of it um i've never driven one before and just driving it around right now you start to think hey you know this is a little car it's light it's kind of tossable it actually feels kind of fun there's no power steering so the steering is nice and heavy and you have that kind of go-kart feel and this one's been pretty well preserved 39 000 miles so the suspension's not worn now one issue that fiero suffered from it had a reputation for catching on 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 rest assured that this v6 won't catch on fire but in 84 people wanted more power the four-cylinder wasn't enough so pontiac gave him a v6 and pontiac had always talked about oh we'll put a turbo on it we'll put a bigger engine in it and they just never really got around to it by the time it came to cancel the fiero which was a shame um but obviously there are stories people have put 3 800 gm motors in 3.8 v6 uh north star v8s and fieros there are a lot of stories of people getting more powerful and then the firo starts to kind of become the car that it probably should have been back in the day it's a fun little car to kind of toss around and zip around the steering the handling the suspension is not so bad now i'm gonna floor it not terrible actually i'm gonna be known as the guy who likes the fiero it's actually not all that terrible obviously with a manual it would be even better three speed automatic is not not great but it's not as bad as i was expecting it to be and it's a light car so 140 150 horsepower is a fairly acceptable figure in a car like this ride quality is kind of rough as you'd expect from sort of a small 80s uh sports car like this and there are creeks and rattles like you'd expect from an 80s general motors vehicle but not as many um as i was thinking there might be the interior is just so old school it's almost funny how it looks the suspension does have a little bit more play than i would hope when you start the turn you can kind of feel the body sort of squat as you go through a corner which isn't really ideal but you got to remember this is 30 years ago and so when you're looking at it with the lens of that it's actually not so bad you know i've driven ferrari 348 and uh it's not like that was a la ferrari at the time you know the 80s cars were 30 years ago there's a lot of development still to be done to get to the modern era i'm stunned but i must admit i don't hate the fiero um i drive a lot of overpowered cars a lot of over technology cars and this thing is kind of a fun little zippy vehicle you can just move around it uh could it be better yeah if it had a little bit more power if the suspension was more modern but you know it's like it's an 80s car it drives like kind of a fun little 80s car not perfect there are definitely flaws but not as many as i was thinking there would be and so that's the pontiac fiero this was a special and interesting car it turned pontiac into gm's exciting brand and it was proof that general motors could think outside the box it was a small fun little compact two-seat sports car instead of a big gold v8 powered boat like basically everything else general motors was making in the 1970s and in the 1980s it wasn't perfect but nothing gm made in the 1980s was perfect still it was interesting it was unusual and it's impressive to see one in such well-preserved condition and now it's time to give the fiero a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the furo is reasonably nice looking not beautiful but fine and it 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 fun factor is also decent for a 30 year old car with only 140 horsepower it gets a 6 out of 10. finally cool factor and the fiero is only average they made a lot of them so they aren't exactly head turning 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 ok fine for its time but low on equipment by modern standards and it gets a 2 out of 10. comfort is ok and it gets a 5 out of 10. quality is normal for its time period but not so great by today's standards and it gets a 5 out of 10. practicality is normal for a two-seater mid-engine sports car and it gets a 2 out of 10. finally value and these are good values they're cheap but fun and a bit of an icon at least in gm history and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 20 out of 50. added up and the dug score is 42 out of 100. i've never reviewed any other 80s sports cars but here it is against some 80s supercars and some 90s sports cars not surprisingly it doesn't fare too well against more modern and more powerful cars but it does beat out the jaguar xjs v12 although i'm not entirely sure that's something to be proud of golf clubs in here which was probably the design intent when they were creating this but this is the rear compartment of the fiesta [Laughter]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,889,048

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Id: J0crFUxksXg

Length: 22min 58sec (1378 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 29 2019