Regarding collecting cars, some enthusiasts subscribe to the notion that you should aspire to own either the earliest or the latest versions of a certain model. The earlier models are almost prototype-like in their design, with some features that only lasted a year before the R&D folks quickly made improvements. Final-year models are often the best version of a car, with all the bugs worked out. This 1984 Pontiac Fiero 2M4 listed here on Facebook Marketplace is a first-year model of the Fiero and has just under 40,000 miles on the clock, likely making it one of the most original examples left. Thanks to Barn Finds reader Fournier for the find.
When the Pontiac Fiero came out, I suspect there was a bit of fervor behind the car’s introduction. After all, this was a significant model in GM’s history and certainly had all the trappings of being a bit of an item: striking design, mid-engine configuration, years of planning, and untold millions in development costs. It seemed like a car that GM was banking on being a winner and also revolutionizing the small, economical car market by producing a fuel-efficient and stylish model. Say what you want about the Fiero, but it was a good-looking car.
The Fiero 2M4 is a short form for a two-seater, mid-engined, and four-cylinder. Intending to provide consumers with a sporty, attractive car for commuting purposes during the fuel crisis, the Fiero seemed like a home run. However, upon releasing the 2M4, the feedback was that it was underpowered and had spotty reliability. It’s a shame because the packaging was nice for an economy car, with nicely bolstered sports seats and driver-focused controls. and a standard manual gearbox. The seller’s car looks extra sporty with the accessory spoiler mounted on the rear end, but it’s let down slightly by the white-wall radials.
Though we all tend to rave about the final editions of the Fieros that came with sharper handling thanks to some thoughtful suspension improvements and a more powerful V6 engine, the original Fiero could be considered novel for another reason: fuel efficiency. The “Iron Duke” four-cylinder was capable of achieving upwards of 50 miles per gallon on the highway, which to me is incredible considering how rarely the Fiero is mentioned as a fuel economy champion, unlike the Honda CRX of the same time period which is often lauded for similar MPG feats. This Fiero may not be the most desirable spec out there, but it may be among the most original. Would you consider buying a 2M4 Fiero?
Nope. Amazing that it took several years for GM to get it right, just to kill it.
MR2 came out the same year. Better package right from the start, without the teething pain excuses. Glad dad bought one instead of this.
Maybe some hyper-miler can get 50 mpg out of an ’84 Fiero but usually they got in the low 30’s. The ’84 CRX HF gets 50 highway all day long and hyper-milers over 70. The Honda engines were way more efficient back then. Honda engines were scaled up from motorcycle engines while the Iron Duke was scaled down from V8. Not even close in efficiency. The Iron Duke was crass, and mounted a foot behind your ears in the Fiero. They didn’t have sound deadening and fluid engines mounts back then either. This car is a head turner but that’s about the extent of the joy
Had a 78 monza with an iron duke and a Doug Nash 5 speed. I could surprise a lot of v-8 cars on the hi-way in the early 80’s back in the ‘I can’t drive 55’ days with a downshift to third soon followed by a shift to fourth. I drive an I-Pace now. So what is the opposite of a hyper-miler?
Us? People who drive sports cars and classics. That’s why the topic is kind of ridiculous anyway. I just chimed to in to make the point about 50 mpg in a Fiero. But I think if you’re worried about gas mileage you should drive a Prius, not a sports car or a Barn Find classic. An old economy car from the 80’s will never compete with something from the 2000’s in MPG for the same used car price
The Fiero In general has become a niche car & yeah the iron Duke has its faults and can’t forget its chevette parts and ironic recall due to some catching on fire. Love it or hate it these are getting more rare by the day since many were driven hard and others became kit car replicas of Ferraris or Lamborghinis. Someone should save this and take it to radwood events or car shows.
My buddy bought one back in the day, 2.5L noisy thrashing machine dog engine with an automatic to boot! Thing was a sorry slug. Can’t imagine anyone buying that combo after a test drive.
I had a friend who bought a new ’84 too. Red and grey i think with the wide tires and aluminum rims. Don’t recall if it was manual or auto. It looked good but it was pretty much a slug. They got better in ’85 with the GT and the 2.8 V-6. But it was still a Chevette at least in the front end. Was never a fan.
Another almost great eighties GM car. Just a Segway from almost great seventies GM cars. This was probably great in concept. Auto publications of the day predicted it would revive the GTO. Bean counters controlled the outcome of too many of GM’s products and small vehicles got the short shrift. Mediocrity pulled from the jaws of greatness.
I actually find the white walls mounted on Steelie rims charming on this car since I remember many looking that way back in the 80’s and 90’s.
Bought an ‘85 new with the V6 and 4-speed. It wasn’t the GT so it didn’t have the extra body kit and spoilers, which looked better IMO. It was quick with the V6 and a lot of fun to drive. As a single guy and it being my only car it wasn’t really practical, especially being a golfer and stuffing the golf bag into the tiny trunk. Didn’t keep it long, traded in ‘86 for a BMW 325.
Great looking little car. Except for that derpy looking spoiler on the back
Jeff, the Fiero was sold to GM management as an economy car, but it was never marketed that way, and it never got anywhere close to 50MPG. GM management was reluctant to approve the Fiero due to cost concerns and fear that it would impinge on the Corvette. Costs were kept low by using Chevette front suspension and an X-car front suspension at the rear, with the steering rods bolted to the chassis. Fears that it would hurt the Corvette were addressed by telling the GM brass that it was a “commuter” car, not a sports car. The compromises that the Pontiac team made just to get the car into production are ultimately what doomed it.
True, but I never understood GM’s marketing paranoia around the Fiero. I mean really, who in their right mind would cross-shop a Fiero against a Vette? They were aimed at two (2) different buyers, albeit both sports car buyers like me. Potential Fiero buyers, like me, were entry level buyers, with neither the financial resources nor the interest in the much bigger, heavier and more expensive Corvette. We were primarily looking at foreign cars (Honda & Toyota) against the Fiero, not Chevy versus Pontiac. We were cross-shopping the Fiero against the MR2, Honda CRX and later, the Del Sol or S2000, or the various Nissan Z-Car offerings.
John Z. DeLorean understood this implicitly, in the 1960’s, when he tried to position the original Firebird concept as a lightweight, compact two-seater, to compete against the British (MG & Triumph) and Italian (Fiat & Alpha Romeo) competition, but his bosses at GM didn’t get it and shot him down. They forced the Firebird to be Camaro clone instead, as a second pony-car competitor to the Mustang instead.
Bob Lutz tried again, with the Pontiac Solstice and its siblings, the Opel GT and Saturn Sky, but once again, poor execution of a promising idea doomed the cars against their primary Asian competition, the Mazda Miata and Honda S2000. The more things change, the more they stay the same!
The Fiero is another in a long list of either like them or hate them. Seems like a lot of those come through here. Why? It’s unusual and unusual cars have a limited following, someone is bound to have a nice one. I happen to really like the Fiero. When looking for my daughters 1st car, we looked at a red ’84, with a 4 cylinder. Naturally, she loved it, I think he wanted $700 bucks. It seemed to run okay, had a rear wheel bearing making noise, but I was just about to say we’ll take it, when I glanced at the coolant tank, looked a bit dark, took the cap off, it was full of oil. We passed on the car, and I got her a Dodge Shadow( for $500) that was a much better car for her. It’s clear, someone loved their Fiero, and I don’t blame them. Took a pretty good swing at the mid-engined exotics, even though, it was made in PONTIAC, MICHIGAN,,,so sad to me, a shred of a town compared to it’s automotive heyday. Cool cars, fact is, Aztec aside, I can’t remember a poor Pontiac.
I like them. There. I’ve said it! Despite all of their many shortcomings, I like them. I didn’t buy one because, quite frankly, it was clearly inferior to the MR2, but I was desparately hoping that GM would get its act together, fix what was wrong with the Fiero, and I could buy one as my next new car, but we all know what happened next. GM killed it, because by the time GM fixed all its mistakes, the car was basically unsaleable, due to its poor reputation. The stillborn 1990 version is the car I would have wanted, but in hindsight, given the quality issues with the Quad 4 engine that would have replaced the Iron Duke as the base power plant, perhaps I was better off. All I know is that GM screwed up, and probably left me as a customer of foreign cars for the rest of my life.
The cottage industry that grew up around the Fiero actually produced a swap kit for the Quad for at one point. I drove one and it was a little weird because the peaky quality of the Quad Four actually worked with the Fiero,….
I remember these new…POS’s then…and still now. I’ve seen more on the side of the road up in 🔥 than actually on the road….except when “Shawna” was driving one in Ferris Bueller’s Day off. 😉
Salesman needed to recommend a 🧯 when purchasing the car.
Jeannie: [thinking to herself] “Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe Ferris isn’t such a bad guy. After all, I got a car, he got a computer. But still, why should he get to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants? Why should everything work out for him? What makes him so goddamn special?”
[spoken]
Jeannie: “Screw him.”
I worked for a Pontiac dealer and drove one from Kansas City to Hutchinson, Ks when they were released at the “marketing event”. The description of “POD” is understated in all respects except looks.
I went to my local Pontiac Dealer and test drove one. It handled well when the drive was over the salesman asked what I thought. I told him it was so slow it couldn’t get out of it’s own way. He told me to wait for the next model year it would have a V6. I didn’t I bought a 70 Corvette LT1
You couldn’t pass a Pontiac dealer without seeing one in almost every bay with the transaxle removed.
As I understand it Corvette killed it because it was viewed as competition. Decent and sharp looking car but it has bad p.r. they called it the ditch witch as well as the barbeque on wheels because earlier models were prone to combust.
That’s what a lot of folks say, that Chevy killed it to kill a Corvette competitor. I disagree, for reasons I’ve stated in a previous post in this forum. No, the Fiero died because GM was incompetent, case closed. The Asian competition continues to eat GM’s lunch forty (40) years later because GM’s quality, while much improved, is still inferior to the Asian brands. How else do you explain the fact that the American Big Three (actually the Big Two and a Half), no longer build or sell a sedan of any kind, while the Asian brands still sell sub-compact, compact and midsize sedans successfully? The Toyota Camry (Crown) is the best-selling car in the world, so don’t tell me that you can’t sell Americans cars anymore, that all they want are SUV’s and Crossovers! Detroit has given up, and conceded the sedan market to the Asians and VW, and it’s unlikely that they’ll ever get it back.
I ordered a new Fiero in 84 as soon as they came out as it was a sweet looking car with speakers in the headrests and other cool features. However after waiting 7 months gave up and bought an 84 Pontiac STE which ended up being a great car. Glad I missed buying the Fiero after they proved to Not being exciting to drive.
Always wanted one to play with, I almost bought a Pace Car replica, then later bought a 1984, threw the fan belt on the way home, and there it sits. Has about 70k miles, and came with the aluminum wheels.
A potentially great car doomed by poor execution. The saddest thing to me is that even with the compromises the Engineers had to make to get it made at all, it could have been so much better with the right engine in the engine bay. Two (2) possible alternates for the base four-cylinder would have been either the so-called “Brazilian Family Two” 2.0L motor that was the base engine in the Pontiac J-Body cars, or later the “Quad 4” from Oldsmobile. Either one would have made for a much better entry-level motor (despite their own well-known shortcomings) than the Iron-Duke. The stillborn 1990 edition was shown with a Quad 4 under the “hood” for the base edition. As usual, GM used their customers as the development engineers, and by the time they finally got all of the bugs worked out, both the cars reputation and sales were in the toilet, and GM had to pull the plug. The fact that the MR2 was an infinitely superior competitor to the Fiero, just hastened its demise.
One final note. Two-seat sports cars are a tough sell under the best circumstances. Low volumes on a dedicated production line that can’t be configured to build anything else are a difficult business case even under perfect conditions, when everything goes right. The Miata is the world’s best selling sports car because Mazda nailed the formula right out of the gate. A small, lightweight, agile car, with peppy, high-revving engine, and near bulletproof reliability, Mazda hit a home run with the Miata. Despite this, the Miata is in constant danger of execution, because it is so expensive to make, for all of the reasons I’ve cited. Mazda tried to increase the volumes, in an attempt to improve the bottom line, by making a version for Fiat, but the attempt fell flat.
Sports cars are niche products in a niche market, which can saturate rapidly, which is why all of the entry-level competitors (Honda Del Sol & S2000, Toyota MR2) are gone, except the Miata. The Subarota Twins, F86 and BRZ, don’t even offer a sunroof, let alone a drop top, and the Nissan Z-Car is back after a ten (10) year hiatus, so we’ll see how things go, but GM failed when they couldn’t afford to fail, so they’re gone also. Could GM try again? Sure, but I’m not holding my breath waiting, LOL!