It was a full-on freak-out moment when I saw this 1985 Pontiac Fiero GT in traffic while walking to work from the Red Line last Tuesday. To say that I swooned would be an understatement. Seeing this childhood dream car was more potent than a shot of espresso. Before that day, I think it had been literally decades since I had seen any Fiero moving in the wild. Decades. The Fiero will always be tied in my mind to that time in my elementary school education where our class had grown so large that it had split into two separate classrooms (albeit connected) with two teachers.
So much seemed to have happened here in the United States during the previous school year which I had spent abroad in Liberia, my father’s country of origin. There were the movies and music (Prince’s Purple Rain movie and soundtrack), new choices in footwear (remember Kangaroos with their pockets?), and oh, the cars. A shiny, new example of one of Chrysler Corporation’s G-body twins, the Chrysler Laser and Dodge Daytona, had left me gobsmacked when I had seen one on the road at night after departing Detroit Metro on that first night back on U.S. soil. And then there was the Fiero. At first glance, it looked like Firebird’s wicked little sibling, and I mean that in a good way. I’ll always love the Fiero, full stop.
The inaugural ’84 models were not good. They were underdeveloped, underpowered by their Iron Duke 2.5 liter engines with 92 horsepower (the cars weighed about 2,500 pounds to start), and some even tended to catch fire. According to my Encyclopedia Of American Cars from the editors of Consumer Guide, something like one fifth of the first-year cars were prone to engine fires of some sort. The ’84 sold exceptionally well, to the tune of 136,800 units, but sales had fallen to just 76,400 (by 44%) by the next year, of which this GT was one of 22,500 originally produced for ’85. On paper, the GT had started to make good some of the promise of the car’s great looks, adding primarily a 125-hp 2.8L V6, a Muncie four-speed manual transmission, and some body addenda for a base price of just under $11,800 (about $35,500 in 2025). This was at a premium of $3,300 over the base car and $1,800 more than the SE that was one tier down.
I did like the Ferrari-lite fastback profile of the restyled ’86 GT, but I have grown to really appreciate the original styling shown here on this ’85 GT. I’m sure part of it is nostalgia, as this was the basic look of the original cars with which I had been so smitten during that exciting time in grade school. The Fiero graced Pontiac showrooms for only five model years. Five years to a kid seems like an eternity compared to in adulthood. Five years ago, the COVID pandemic had been underway for over half a year. Even so and today, 2020 seems like such a long time ago.
Still, the Fiero’s tenure seems to have been so ethereal before it vanished after the ’88 models. Those cars had finally been given their own suspension and other components to finally make the Fiero more of a competitive sports car. This echoes how on the day that I spotted this example, it had appeared out of nowhere while making a left turn onto eastbound Monroe, making me scramble to get my lens cap off. By the time I was able to capture just one usable frame, this Fiero was gone.
Downtown, The Loop, Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025.
You can read more about the Fiero in articles by Paul Niedermeyer (a “Deadly Sin” feature) and yours truly. The 1985 Pontiac Fiero GT brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
It was really a shame that the Fiero was conceived and designed during GM’s worst years in the doldrums, released half-baked and denied what its concept called for. Pontiac was GM’s “Excitement Division” but the dull grey suits could not understand, so treated it as though it were just another compact appliance.
Milquetoast corporate leadership squelched Pontiac’s intentions. GM is really no better today, with its weak-willed, politically selected C-suite from the to down.
Aaron Severson’s article on the Fiero from the 2000s at his other site (Ate Up With Motor) is, for me, the definitive Fiero story. In that piece and without looking at it now on my train commute home from work, I remember reading about how the Fiero’s initial concept had been progressively watered down from a legit sports car and successor to Pontiac’s original, unrealized Banshee two-seater project from the ’60s to what became a “commuter car” with parts bin engineering just to get the thing built.
I still covet an ’88 model and find nothing wrong with stylist Hulki Aldikacti’s work here.
Wow! A way back trip in my mind!
I was in college when a professor came in to teach. Instead, he talked about having gone to test drive a Fiero. He said that the Pontiac dealer had a white one on display and they would drop a bowling ball on the front “to demonstrate the plastic panels!” Needless to say, he was unimpressed and didn’t buy.
Then at the end of 84, Mrs Chip and I married. I became friends with my soon to be brother in law (her sister) and both his sister and brother had new 1985 fireos. Both caught fire under warranty!
Yet another example of GM coming out of the gate terribly bad and trying to perfect the product before killing it.
Chip, thanks for backing up the engine fire thing – in your extended family’s experience, it was (sadly) two for two!
I don’t know that I would have been as brave as the salesman doing the bowling ball demonstration. That took guts.
Love. When these things were thick on the ground – typically 2M4 models driven by college girls – I didn’t take much interest outside of the final GT models. Now, I find them compelling and would love to have one in my garage as a perfect counterpart to my Trans Am. My best friend had one just like the one in the picture up until about 10 years ago, and I really came to love it. These were very cool cars once they put a proper drivetrain in it.
And not only did Pontiac finally nearly perfect the drivetrain for ’88, they had expanded the exterior color choices.
I have seen pictures of the next-gen Fiero prototypes and given the extra (corrective) work that had finally gone into the Fiero by ’88, it’s especially sad that this model didn’t live to see another generation.
“Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.” – Stinger, a.k.a. Commander, Air Group (CAG) to “Maverick” in “Top Gun” (1986). My sentiments exactly regarding GM and the Fiero. The Fiero’s sexy styling was writing checks that the econobox mechanicals couldn’t cash, because GM’s management really never wanted the car, and the people who really believed in the car had to move heaven and earth just to get the car built at all! GM somehow managed to fail, despite having lots of smart and talented people who were trying their best to build products that would help it succeed. GM was constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, with the Fiero as “Exhibit A” at the coroner’s inquest!
I love a great movie reference! I must be, however, in the ten percent or so of people in my peer group who have never seen Top Gun. I feel like I should. I only saw Footloose all the way through only last year, believe it or not!
Both you and G. Poon (above) seem to allude to a certain lack of investment in the success of the Fiero by GM, and the sense I get is that some involved in the project had the same sense of apathy as engineers had had with the Vega project – where GM had basically handed that car to Chevrolet already done.
I wonder what factors, outside of budget, might have contributed to the initial Fiero’s shortcomings. Actually, I don’t have to wonder because both Paul and Aaron have written great reference material on the Fiero. It doesn’t change that I feel a real sense of pathos a when I look at this example of what fundamentally was a very, very cool car.
Well, in that case, Think of the Fiero as being Kevin Bacon, but instead of “winning the day” and Having a Dance off, he got put in jail at the end of the movie. Or maybe he just left town, defeated.
[Option 2]:
Or how about we keep the plot as is, and Fiero was the Girl’s Father, the Preacher Guy, and “loses” in the end? (Just like the Fiero.. or were Fiero BUYERS the Preacher guy?).
Of course, nobody in Footloose ever caught on fire, from what I remember.
Nice spotting Dennis! I was so excited when these came out but quickly disappointed after a test drive. Dealership was on the eastbound side of Route 46 in Wayne NJ at the bottom of long up hill run. Salesman brought around a red SE with automatic and the Iron Duke. I floored it as I entered highway traffic only to have the bahgeezes scared out of both of us. Zero scoot but lots of revs. Next summer while delivering parts for Patterson’s Auto Supply to Maxon Pontiac in Union, it seemed like half the service bays had a disemboweled Fiero present. I still love em…make mine a final year GT, black on tan with a stick, an the stereo with the speakers in the headrests.
“Zero scoot but lots of revs” – that’s brutal. As is the description of the service bays at Maxon Pontiac. 136,800 cars amounts to a lot of disappointed customers. I’m sure some first-year buyers loved theirs, which is legit. But if that 20% engine fire thing that I read and had referenced was true, my goodness.
Dennis, thanks for reading and responding! A quick jump over to BaT reinforced my affection for these little buggers.
“The inaugural ’84 models were not good. They were underdeveloped, underpowered by their Iron Duke 2.5 liter engines with 92 horsepower (the cars weighed about 2,500 pounds to start), and some even tended to catch fire.”
Noteworthy. The last Fiero I saw (a few months Back) was a Yellow one, not sure of the year, but I AM sure it was on FIRE. Literally.
I had to double-check, but I knew that yellow was added as a factory color (along with blue) toward the end of the Fiero’s run. Turn out that yellow was added for ’88 – right when the car was as good as it got before getting the axe.