Are you wondering what ignites that spark of owning the Fiero?
It was 1978, Pontiac was looking to create a car that will meet the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. Remember it was the late 70’s after the gas crisis and they were looking to compliment their existing line-up with a fuel efficient and very marketable product. Pontiac’s planning manager Dennis O’Donnel and his staff pitched a 2 seater sports car to the Pontiac’s Future Product Conference.
Dennis O’Donnel and his staff pitched the commuter car idea, “these cars didn’t have to be the fastest things in the world but they needed to get good gas mileage, because everyone assumed the price of gasoline was going to $5 a gallon shortly.” It was described as the “small, sporty, 2-passenger commuter.”
It was Pontiac’s senior project engineer Hulki Aldikacti that had the most influance on the p-car. Not only was his team designing a car, they were also designing a new manufacturing process for the p-car. They took over the “Fisher Body” plant which had created car bodies before shipping them onto the main assembly plant. Hulki was a firm believer of being a firm interface between all aspects of the fiero, manufacturing, engineering, sales, marketing, etc.
Hulki and Ed Falardau, his head assistant engineer, formulated the car’s main structure. A strong steel space frame that would have outer plastic skins. All the frames consisted of the mill and drill technique. This allows Pontiac to use the same frame and change the look or style of the plastic skin panels (known as enduraflex panels). This was a new technology for the time and was a standard for the up and comming Saturn’s.
Between 1980 and 1982 there were several pushes to stop the production of the p-car (also known as the fiero) but it was Hulki that did not stop, he kept his team moving forward. It had progressed so far that it was no longer a small project, over 500 people were devoted to the p-car. Pontiac had delayed the manufacturing of the p-car due to a surge in popularity of the G-Car (Grand Prix/Bonneville). Production was to begin in fall 1983 for a 1984 release.
The p-car needed a name. The pegasus was one of the names of consideration, but it was Fiero an italian word that translates as Very Proud. It was the pegasus name which gave birth to the Pegasus logo. They liked the pegasus logo so much they decided to use it even though it wasn’t the given name.
In 1984, with the start of production, only 2 colors were available, red and white. Later in 1984, black and light gray metallic were added to the lineup. One of the ways Pontiac was to market this new arrival was to have it pace the Indianapolis 500. Pontiac Motorsports had 3 event pace cars. They were enhanced with a larger super duty 4 cyl engine. Although a new nosepiece had to be created to handle the air intake.
This is now known as the aero nose and was made available in the SE and GT models. There were 2000 Indy Pace car replicas available to the dealerships in 1985. Also in 1985, was the first year of the Fiero GT, which looked similar to the Indy Car and available in your colors of black, red, and white.
The productions numbers astounded Pontiac, calendar sales in 1983 were 22,591 and increased greatly to 93,485 in 1984. The strong marketing plan and Hulki’s dedication into design and manufacuring is attributed to the success of the fiero.
The Fiero carried the flag for rust-free, damage-resistant plastic bodies into new design and technology territories. The 2,400-lb, mid-engine twoseater used SMC for its horizontal panels made by three different molders: hood, roof, upper rear quarter panels and decklid. The front fenders, door skins and lower rear quarter panels were reinforced RRIM polyurethane stiffened with 20% glass flake. Front and rear bumper fascia were molded in 15% milled-glass and unfilled RIM, respectively. Project engineers said the program was tooled for plastics at 20% of what a metal body would cost.
Many technologies contributed the production of top quality SMC panels. Among them: computer-controlled presses; computer layout of mold-cooling lines; in-mold coating; and advanced low -profile and low-shrink formulations. Advanced quality assurance systems involving everything from incoming materials testing to computerized process monitoring were developed by the parts suppliers in according with Pontiac’s plans to eliminate receiving inspection and use incoming parts right out of the box.
As one of its innovations, the Fiero borrowed the “space frame” concept from racing car construction and applied to passenger car design. In this approach, a fabricated steel cage provides the structural rigidity of the vehicle. The body panels are fastened to the frame and, unlike traditional construction, are not relied on for structural strength.
To maintain uniform spacing between panels and avoid continual adjustments on the assembly line, before the space frame went into body assembly, Pontiac machined all the panel-mounting pads on the frame with a specially built mill-and-drill machine. The concept of independently mounted panels on a structural frame was hailed as a new tool for niche marketing. Enthusiasts said new models could be created quickly and with relatively low capital investment by designing different combinations of panels for the same space frame.
It is the space frame with mounted panels that have made it so interesting to automotive enthusiasts. The fiero has become one of the most popular bases for a large variety of kit cars from the 1980’s until today. The fiero has become one of the most sought after cars that can be customized, or kept as pontiac built, and enjoyed.