The Birth and Death of the Pontiac Fiero > Ate Up With Motor. Launched in 1. 98. Pontiac Fiero promised to be a good- looking, affordable mid- engine sports car introducing exciting new techniques in production and design. Alas, it became one of GM’s great disasters: overweight and underpowered, tarnished by alarming reports of reliability problems and engine fires. By 1. 98. 8, more power, better looks, and a $3. Fiero closer to its original promise — just in time for the corporation to bring down the ax. This week, we look at the origins and history of the Fiero and the reasons for its sad fate. WAIL OF THE BANSHEEThere was a discussion on The Truth About Cars recently about why General Motors always seems to kill its most interesting models just after it finally gets them right. The pattern is familiar: The company rolls out a new, exciting product to great fanfare, only to have said product turn out to be seriously flawed. After the company finally fixes most or all of the flaws, it decides to cancel the product anyway, leaving aggrieved fans and puzzled observers scratching their heads. There are many examples of this sad tendency, notably including the Chevrolet Corvair and Cadillac Allanté, but the poster child is the Pontiac Fiero. The Fiero had an extraordinarily long gestation period. The idea of a cheap, plastic- bodied Pontiac sports car goes back 2. XP- 8. 33, later known as the Pontiac Banshee. The Banshee was the brainchild of E. M. (Pete) Estes, then Pontiac’s general manager, and John Z. De. Lorean, then the division’s chief engineer. Both Estes and De. Lorean had joined Pontiac back in 1. Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen. They had spent the ensuing eight years reinventing Pontiac as GM’s excitement division with considerable success. By 1. 96. 4, however, they were faced with a dilemma. Although Pontiac had some fast, good- looking products, particularly the GTO, even its sportiest models were big, five- and six- passenger cars. Pontiac had nothing resembling Chevrolet’s Corvette Sting Ray or, more significantly, the new Ford Mustang. The Mustang was then beginning a concerted assault on the youth market that Pontiac had so assiduously cultivated and represented a serious threat.
In response, De. Lorean ordered Bill Collins, then assistant chief engineer for chassis engineering, to develop a compact sports car as a potential Mustang rival. To keep costs down, it was to use a fiberglass body and share about 8. Pontiac models. The resultant XP- 8. Banshee looked something like a scaled- down Corvette or the later Opel GT, an aggressive little two- seater powered by Pontiac’s new overhead- cam six. The Banshee was intended to have a reasonable starting price of around $2,5. V8 Mustang. Although De. Lorean and Estes made a strong case for producing the Banshee, GM’s senior management, which had to approve all new models, said no. The corporation’s leadership had little enthusiasm for sporty cars and even less for two- seaters, which they thought too limited in appeal to justify the investment. Even the Corvette, then was selling better than ever, was a distinctly marginal item as far as the corporation was concerned. GM leadership had no interest in building another plastic- bodied sports car, which they assumed — probably not unreasonably — would only cannibalize sales of the more expensive Sting Ray. The Banshee project ultimately came to nothing. Suwannee Salvage handles all foreign and domestic car and truck parts. We specialize in GM parts. We are constantly updating our inventory in a continuing effort to. Estes was promoted to run Chevrolet and De. Lorean, who succeeded Estes as head of Pontiac, had to content himself with the midsize GTO and the F- body Firebird, based on Chevrolet’s new Camaro. By early 1. 96. 9, De. Lorean had followed Estes and Knudsen to Chevrolet and the image they built for Pontiac began to wither. As we discussed in our recent article on the GTO, Knudsen, Estes, and De. Lorean’s willingness to play fast and loose with GM’s conservative corporate policy was the root of Pontiac’s success in the sixties. By contrast, their successors, Jim Mc. Donald and Martin Caserio, were more concerned with cost controls, internal politics, and complying with new federal regulations. Alex Mair, who replaced Caserio in October 1. Can Am, but most were not successful. Pontiac quickly slipped back toward its pre- Knudsen obscurity. THE COMMUTER SPORTS CARIn 1. Pontiac’s Advanced Engineering group, headed by Turkish- born Hulki Aldikacti, again proposed an inexpensive plastic- bodied sports car, analogous to the long- defunct Banshee concept. The proposal added a new wrinkle: a mid- engine drivetrain, something that was becoming virtually de rigueur for serious sports cars. New general manager Robert Stempel and chief engineer Robert Dorn, an ex- racer, both liked the idea, but they were not confident about its prospects. The corporation had previously rejected proposals for a mid- engine Corvette and with ever- increasing federal emissions and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, new sports cars were not on the menu. Bob Dorn pointed out, however, that if the two- seater could be built cheaply with a fuel- efficient four- cylinder engine, it could help Pontiac meet its CAFE targets. Late that year, Stempel and Dorn presented the idea to senior management, presenting the mid- engined model not as a sports car, but as a cheap, two- seat commuter vehicle capable of returning up to 5. L/1. 00 km). The stratagem worked and the project, known as the P- car, received preliminary approval — ironically, from Pete Estes, who had become president of General Motors in September 1. Bob Dorn assigned Hulki Aldikacti as the P- car’s project manager and chief engineer and told him to proceed. THE ART OF COMPROMISEEffective as it was, the sleight of hand involved in the P- car’s approval was something of a devil’s bargain. The total budget for the program was set at only $4. With such a limited budget, Aldikacti decided his best bet was to sequester the P- car from the normal Pontiac organization. Most of the engineering development was done at an outside firm, Engineering Technology Ltd. ENTECH) of Troy, Michigan. The design of the P- car, meanwhile, went not to John Schinella’s Pontiac Two studio, but to the Advanced Design Three studio, then run by Ron Hill. Keeping the P- car out of the normal development channels allowed Aldikacti to control costs and limit bureaucratic delays and interference. Less happily, it also reflected the project’s marginal status within the division. The budget quickly squelched any ambitions Aldikacti had of making the P- car America’s answer to the Ferrari Dino. Developing a unique engine, for example, would have exceeded the project’s total budget as well as pushing the P- car over its target price. Aldikacti had little choice but to use existing components drawn from GM’s parts bin. The corporation’s principal objection to mid- engine design was that it required a rear transaxle and independent rear suspension, both of which were expensive. In 1. 97. 8, however, GM was readying a new crop of low- cost, front- wheel- drive X- cars (the Chevy Citation/Pontiac Phoenix, et al) for the 1. Aldikacti and the engineers at ENTECH realized that they could use the Mac. Pherson strut front suspension and transaxle from the X- cars in the rear of the P- car with fairly minor modifications. The P- car’s front suspension, meanwhile, was borrowed from the subcompact Chevrolet Chevette. This kludge of existing pieces was cheap, if far from ideal. Aldikacti had dreams of a high- revving, all- aluminum V6, but the budget and the ambitious fuel economy target made that impossible. Early on, the P- car was intended to have a 1. L (1. 12 cu. in.) four, probably the GM 1. J- cars (Chevrolet Cavalier/Cadillac Cimarron/et al). Later, when the project budget shrank even further, the fuel economy target was relaxed and the 1. L was replaced by the familiar 2,4. Iron Duke, a rather rustic pushrod four derived from Pontiac’s venerable V8. The Iron Duke was slow- revving, heavy, noisy, and underpowered, but, like the parts- bin suspension, it was cheap and available. The 1. 98. 7- 8. 8 Pontiac Fiero’s Iron Duke engine got extensive modifications, boosting power from 9. W). Despite the cooling vents atop the engine cover, the radiator is in front. The long coolant lines are vulnerable to air bubbles and the system needs to be bled properly any time coolant is added or changed. The idea of recycling familiar components was not necessarily a bad one, but GM’s parts bin at the time was not exactly cutting edge.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2017
Categories |