Conclusion chronicles the chain of events leading up to Fiero's demise.

One of Pontiac's engineers knew almost from the start of production
that the Fiero had a disquieting tendency to become, quite literally,
a Hot Rod. On Oct. 6, 1983, less than three months after production
began at the Pontiac plant, a Pontiac engineer wrote an ''urgent"
memo to report that two Fieros had suddenly caught fire during test
drives. The engineer blamed the fires on antifreeze leaking out of
badly installed hoses onto hot exhaust pipes. The man in charge of
the Fiero project, Hulki Aldikacti, saw a Fiero catch fire at GM's
test track.

But Fieros flamed out more than one way. Pontiac engineers fought an
18-month battle to get GM's Saginaw foundry division to stop shipping
batches of defective connecting rods for Fiero engines. The foundry
managers, who got paid on the basis of tons of iron shipped out the
door, had little financial incentive to spend money to fix Pontiac's
warranty problems. After one meeting, a Saginaw foundry manager wrote
that ''. . .60 percent to 90 percent of the rods produced do not
exhibit" defects. Of course, this meant that between one and four of
every 10 rods were defective. Pontiac was still complaining in that
''no permanent solution has been found'' to the problem of hairline
cracks in connecting rods for the Iron Duke. Sure enough, Fieros began
suffering breakdowns caused by broken rods.

A connecting rod that breaks at high speed is like a shrapnel grenade
detonating inside the motor. In Fieros, chunks of broken metal flew with
such force that they ripped through the engine block. Oil would spill
onto the hot exhaust pipes, and often ignite. The Iron Duke engines used
in early Fieros also suffered from a defect in the way their blocks were
cast that, in some cases, caused the engines to leak oil or lose coolant.
Since the Iron Dukes in Fieros ran a quart low to begin with because of
the customized oil pan, losing more oil quickly created big trouble.

GM engineers and Fiero plant workers knew of these problems and many more.
They discovered that some of the engine cooling fans on early Fieros were
wired backward. That meant the fans sucked hot air back into the engine.
Engineers rewired the fans. Pontiac engineers fired off bulletins to
dealers warning about other problems poorly installed radiator hoses,
leaky gaskets and bad wiring.

"If you wouldn't want your family riding in it, recall it.'' company
president Jim McDonald would say when asked about GM's policy toward
recalling cars. In practice, however, GM operatives were reluctant to push
for an expensive recall of a popular new model. When a Fiero burned, GM
often handled the loss as a warranty claim, and paid for repairs as each
case came in. Sometimes, GM and its insurance company quietly worked out
deals to pay off victims of Fiero fires. GM continued this approach even
as complaints about the Fiero's defects began pouring in to Pontiac and to
regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in
Washington. By the end of 1985, GM had reports of 112 Fieros that had
caught fire one for every 1700 sold at the time. By August 1986, the pace
of fire reports had quickened sharply, and Washington's safety enforcers,
the bureaucrats at the traffic safety administration, began to stir.

''This...appears to be a serious problem," wrote Philip W. Davis, NHTSA's
top defect detective, to GM in a letter demanding information on the Fiero's
problems.

This epistle confronted GM with two unpleasant choices. Recall the Fieros to
fix the fire hazard and endure a damaging public relations blow. Or circle
the wagons. GM decided to circle the wagons. Two months after NHTSA's letter
went out, GM's C. Thomas Terry, whose job it was to deal with the feds, wrote
to pooh-pooh the concern. ''Any time an individual experiences a vehicle fire,
it can be a very traumatic experience," Terry wrote. "In the case of the
[Fiero] engine compartment fires, the evidence indicates the actual risk to
motor vehicle safety is minimal."

This serene view of what it was like to have a car engine burst into flame a
foot from one's backside wasn't shared by Fiero owners who had experienced the
phenomenon. And a rapidly growing number of people were.

By the middle of 1987, the fire count for 1984 Fieros hit a rate of about 20
blazes a month. Fieros were blowing up at a rate of one for every 508 cars sold.
No other mass-market car had ever come close to this rate of fires at least, as
far as the federal safety watchdogs knew. If the Fiero fire rate was applied to
all the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, there would be burning hulks
every quarter-mile and hundreds of people running around in panic.

As it was, victims of Fiero fires told hair-raising tales in their complaints to GM
and the government. One 22-year-old woman reported that her Fiero caught fire while
she was driving with a male friend at 4:30 a.m. on the Southern State Parkway on
Long Island. The couple wound up at the emergency room where the man got treated
for burns on hands. A Fiero owner in Missouri complained that she'd taken her car into
the dealership nine times because of electrical problems that caused her dashboard
lights to blink and the engine to sputter when she turned the headlights on Finally,
her Fiero quit running on a back road, and when she pulled over she discovered the car
was on fire. She tried to extinguish the blaze with a pair of blue jeans, but to no
avail. The car burned to the ground. This was no exaggeration. A Fiero in flames was
an amazing sight. When the plastic skin ignited, the result was a brilliant bonfire no
steel-bodied car could match.

Back at Pontiac, however, the fires were overshadowed by a more pressing concern. The
Fiero, was becoming a money loser.

Pontiac chief William Hoglund had shielded the Fiero plant from the wrath of the bean
counters when the plant fell short of its production goals in 1984, just as he had
silenced critics within Pontiac who didn't think managers should go around without
neckties. This had been easy to do, because the Fiero was a certifiable hit. By 1987,
however, things had changed. Sales had plunged from the heady peaks of the first two
years. In the 1986 model year, Fiero sales dropped to 71,283 cars, down 21 percent from
the year before. Production for the year was 21 percent below the budget forecast.
Sales in 1987 were slumping even further behind both the budget and the previous year.

Hoglund, the Fiero's champion, had been promoted to a new job. In his place GM had assigned
J. Michael Losh, an ambitious 38-year-old finance staffer who became GM's youngest vice
president when he took over Pontiac from Hoglund in July 1984. Losh's boyishly casual
public manner belied a tough way with a buck. And the Fiero was losing more bucks than
it was taking in.

The Fiero's troubles became obvious in January 1987, when GM laid off 1200 workers on the
Fiero plant's night shift. The lay off, a response to the sales slump, battered the trust
Hoglund and his staff had nurtured among union leaders. Worse was to come. Federal safety
regulators had backed GM into a corner on the issue of Fiero fires and were demanding
action. In September, GM agreed to recall all the 1984 Fieros and make repairs aimed at
reducing the fire hazard. One was installing an oil filter that gave the engine capacity
for the full four quarts of oil. Another, however, was a sticker that Fiero owners were
instructed to place on the little door that hid the cap to the gas tank. "Check engine oil
at every fuel fill," the sticker read. It was a lawyer's repair, somewhat akin to the
warning labels on the sides of cigarette packs. The sticker effectively transferred
responsibility for the Fiero's oil leaks to the owner. GM staunchly refused to admit there
was anything inherently wrong with the Fiero's design. GM's public relations operatives
knew the recall would batter the company's reputation, and the Fiero's market appeal. In
a clumsy attempt to limit the damage, GM delayed announcing the recall until 4:31 p.m.,
Nov. 25, 1987. This just happened to be the night before Thanksgiving, a time when most
auto reporters would be more interested in roasting their own turkeys instead of GM's.
The stunt didn't work. The Fiero recall generated torrents of bad press and blighted sales.
All that was left was to arrange the funeral.

In addition, GM by now knew how many labor hours it took the workers at NUMMI to assemble
a small car designed by Toyota. The Fiero factory was putting nearly twice as much labor
into its small cars and that was when the robots in the body shop worked properly and the
paint ovens weren't causing acne-like blisters in the plastic body panels. The great
Fiero experiment was now caught in a vicious downward spiral. The more GM raised its price
to cover the bloated costs, the fewer people wanted to buy the car, particularly in the
wake of the recall.

The Fiero plant union leaders fought to save the car. In early 1988, a few weeks after the
recall, a delegation from the Pontiac local tracked Losh down in a room at the Waldorf
Astoria in New York. For more than half an hour, the union men begged Losh to save the Fiero.
They talked up plans to build a hot-looking Fiero convertible. Losh promised to think about
it. In reality, there was only one thing left to say. Shortly after that, Donald Ephlin,
the UAW's top negotiator at GM, walked into a lunch meeting with the labor relations staff
at the Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group headquarters in Warren, Mich. Sitting beside the
labor staffers were Robert Schultz, the vice president in charge of the group, and David
Campbell, the group's manufacturing boss. The two men hadn't been expected. Their presence
spelled trouble. Just hours before, Ephlin had been warned that the Fiero was in jeopardy.
Now, Schultz and Campbell delivered the blow: The Fiero would die at the end of the model
year in the fall.

"Boy," Ephlin snapped. "It went downhill fast. It was sick this morning, and now it's dead."
"When should we tell employees?" one of the CPC men asked. "It's too late," Ephlin said.
"You should have told them long ago."

For Ephlin, this was a tragedy. For four years, he had held the Fiero up as a model of what
cooperative labor relations could achieve. He had staked his reputation and his union career
on labor-management partnership, which he referred to as "jointness." Now, GM was knifing
jointness in the back. But Ephlin was powerless to stop it. On March 1, David Campbell marched
on to a podium in the Fiero factory and delivered the plant's death sentence in a terse
announcement. A murmur of shock rippled through the crowd. A solitary voice boomed: "Boo!"
Then, the workers turned and walked back to their stations.

That wasn't the last word on the Fiero, however. Not by a long shot. In December 1989, GM
recalled every one of the 244,000 four-cylinder Fieros it had built to fix problems that
caused fires. Four months later, GM recalled every single Fiero six cylinder and four
cylinder to make more repairs. Inside GM, the Fiero had been a bright symbol of GM's new wave.
Aldikacti's product team and the people at the Fiero factory had, indeed, been years ahead
of their time. But the failure of their car to survive the compromises demanded by the GM
system turned their success into just another Detroit flop.

The crowning indignity came in 1989, when tiny Mazda Motor Corp. launched a little two-seat
roadster called the Miata. The day the Fiero's death was announced, Mike Losh had insisted
that the Fiero failed not because of quality problems, but because Americans had lost interest
in two-seater cars. Mazda made a mockery of Losh's excuse. With its simple technology and
exterior lines that echoed the British Triumph and MG roadsters of the 1960s, the Miata
became an instant smash hit. At the peak of the Miata frenzy, buyers were offering to pay
$4,000 or more over sticker to get one of the retromobiles. Sighed one gloomy Pontiac
official: "The Fiero could have been a Miata.''

------------------



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Heres alittle more info for you '84 guys & gals.

SUMMARY OF 1984 PONTIAC FIERO OWNERS REPORTS

Total miles driven 863,922

Average miles per gallon
Four-speed manual
in town 24.0
On the highway 31.1
Three-speed auto
In town 23.2
On the highway 29.7

Transmission choices:
Three-speed automatic 50.0%
Four-speed manual 50.0%

Why did you choose the Fiero?
Styling 85.5%
Price 27.5%
Made in America 18.8%
Economy 16.4%
Handling 13.4%

Specific likes:
Styling 84.4%
Handling 63.1%
Economy 25.1%
Comfort 24.7%
Stereo system 23.6%

Specific dislikes:
Not enough trunk space 26.1%
Hard shifting into low
gear 14.1%
Needs more
horsepower 12.0%
Disappointing mileage 7.6%
Hard to park
(Heavy steering) 7.2%

What changes would you like?
More powerfull engine 19.0%
Five-speed
transmission option 15.9%
More luggage capacity 12.4%
No changes 8.5%
Easier shifting 8.5%

How much did you pay?
Average $11,213
Range $8,878-$14,000

Workmanship opinion:
Excellent 56.6%
Good 40.4%
Average 2.6%
Poor 0.4%

Comfort opinion:
Excellent 64.3%
Good 32.3%
Average 3.4%
Poor 0.0%

Had any mechanical trouble?
Yes 54.9%
No 45.1%

What type of trouble?
Electrical 27.8%
Manual shifter 17.9%
Headlamp mechanism 8.6%
Brakes 7.3%
Windshield wipers 7.3%

Dealer service opinion:
Excellent 30.7%
Good 38.1%
Average 19.3%
Poor 11.9%

Number of vehicles owned:
This car only 24.1%
Two cars 34.3%
Three cars 22.6%
Four or more cars 19.0%

Makes of other cars owned:
Chevrolet 43.3%
Pontiac 31.3%
Ford 15.4%
Oldsmobile 13.0%
Buick 12.5%

Would you buy another Fiero?
Yes 69.7%
No 5.5%
Maybe 23.6%

Would you buy another Pontiac?
Yes 73.4%
No 3.0%
Maybe 23.6%

Age distribution of owners:
15-29 years 37.5%
30-49 years 54.0%
50-plus 8.3%

------------------



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Thing is, though, that only the 84's had that combustibility problem. It was the stigma that did it, in the end.

Very interesting article.....were did you get it?

quote Originally posted by My7Fieros: Very interesting article.....were did you get it?

Hehehe.. Give hazey some credit My7Fieros, maybe he wrote it himself .

Ok Hazey..tell us you did now so I don't feel like a total wanker

Motor trend??

I have two road and track magazines one is from 1983 and the other earlier then that.
The very early one has spy photos of a prototype fiero. Gms new car.

in the magazine, it says how gm used off the shelf parts, and the fiero was lucky to be made because GM was having major problems at the time. The guy who had the idea of the fiero was started in 79 i believe.

It says how future plans would be a a six cylinder, and maybe a turbo added on.

Later today, i can quote the magazine if anyone wants. To early now for me to do it. Plus i have couple newspaper articles the previous owner gave me of the fiero recalls and i have the original paper work for the recall. 84 fiero.

Enclosed is a letter from GM in response to a letter from me requesting an explanation for their outrageous decision to kill the Fiero.

All that says is that GM's marketing people didn't know their heads from their ascots. That's pretty easy to believe. The Miata and MR2 proved the market was strong. Even the CRX, and del Sol were a success in the 2 seater market. Pontiac was just stupid. Haze's article reporst the Fiero losing money, but I've also seen reports saying it made a profit every year, even 1988. Maybe the profits were less than expectations? It's hard to validate information after this long, but one thing is for sure - as popular as the Fiero is with enthusiasts now, if Pontiac had fixed the problems and kept with it for 5 more years, it could have evolved into the true replacement to the Corvette and owned the 2 seat sports car market. It could have put an American mfgr. back on top, instead of Japanese ricers.

The article is from:
AUTOWEEK SEPTEMBER 26, 1994

The #'s are from:
PM OWNERS REPORT
PONTIAC FIERO 2M4
Popular Mechanics, May 1984

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[This message has been edited by Haze_Performance (edited 05-06-2001).]

I've seen that article and similar before. Having actually read most of GM's documents concerning the 84 engines...

A large portion of the rod breakage was due to low oil and oir starving the crank. Original 84's are so intolerant of low oil that even 1/2 quart low could cause a berring problem on the crank. This combined with weak rods would be a major problem. Interestingly the 15B recall for 84's, which is very extensive, doesn't mention weak rods.

The 84 Block itself has known problems. Most Notably the tendency to crack across the valve lifter chamber.

All 2.5l cast iron 4 cylinders thru '87 at least are considered to have weak head bolts. 84 was the worst. It is common to have one or more exhaust side bolts break, resulting in coolant and/or oil leaks. 84 was to be upgraded to TTY head bolts any time the head was off or if a bolt broke or as part of recall 15B. 85-87 were to have all exhaust side bolts replaced durring recall. (Of specific interest is the failure of the center exhuast side bolt between the #2 & #3 siamese exhaust port.)

"...it could have evolved into the true replacement to the Corvette..."

I believe that the Fiero was being watched VERY closely by the Chevy guys. GM's philosophy has always been, make a car that is great, as long as its not better than the Vette. The Fiero unfortunately gave GM all the reasons to take out the Vette's only real competition.

After the POS 84 model year they might as well changed the name to something else. Once people associate crap with a certain type of car, its over. No matter what. Many of us still see that today, you could have the best Fiero in the world but if you tell a mechanic or whoever its a "Fiero" they automatically think "crap". Same thing with Hyundai's nowadays. For all I know they could be the best cars for the money, but I would never buy one because of the previous models being junk. I'd rather spend the extra couple thousand on a Japanese model (people did that with the MR2-S/C over the Fiero)

It's just business...

quote Originally posted by Black88GT: "Once people associate crap with a certain type of car, its over. No matter what." , "Same thing with Hyundai's nowadays. For all I know they could be the best cars for the money, but I would never buy one because of the previous models being junk. I'd rather spend the extra couple thousand on a Japanese model"

The Hyundai now does built a good car. The company is slowly changing the peoples perception on the Hyundai.

I agree with part of your statement, that they once built junk. Our Mom bought a '00 Elantra. It does feel like a well built car, and so far has been trouble free.

Their warrenty can't be beat.

It's a little small, but does what it's told.

In the current issue of MotorTrend, they tested the current XG300 model against the Dodge Stratus & Honda Accord.

They said "To us, the XG300 represents a great value." And they selected it over the other two.

Now, of course, this is a Fiero Forum, and I don't want us to get to far off track. Just thought I'd put my two cents in on the Hyundai.

I myself have as a daily a Ford Contour - it's nothing to write home about, but also does what it's told. Best of all, it's paid for !

Now, smile, back to Fieros !

the fiero is coming back ..

Say what.

quote Originally posted by fldevel: the fiero is coming back ..

Hey HEY! when you done with that pipe your supposed to pass it on!

Sound familiar can anyone say Firestone?
GM obviously has no clue of what they are doing period, and I am glad they got rid of the Fiero, just think of what they would have done to it. Look at what they do to the reputations of their cars. 1st back in the day if you had a caddy, you were "the man." Everything had to live up to the mighty Cadillac. So what did GM do to the Caddy, they bring out the Cimarron. Lets take a cavalier give it leather and some gold keys and call it a Caddy. Where did resale value go for ANY Cadillacs right down the dump. The ONLY good thing about them now is that you can get a year old basically new car for HALF of the window sticker. Two, Oldsmobile the first mass produced front wheel drive car ever, now everything is front wheel drive and what did they do with Olds, well we don't need that branch anymore, scratch them. So then everybody says that GM is doing it all for money and profit, OK, understandable, a company is in business to make money right? Well lets take their latest money making idea, I just found this out yesterday. I did 4 speakers in a new Saturn 3 door. The car was brand new, when I took the door panel off I noticed that the speaker which has 4 holes in it like normal, only has two screws in it. There was absolutely no reason why it shouldn't have have the other two screws in there. It had the space, nothing else in the way, you know why they probably did it?!? Yup, to save money, now that they only put in 2 out of 4 screws in each speaker think of how many they are saving on the entire production line. Big money. Now let me ask you, do you want to own a car from a company that only puts half of the things on/in their cars to save money? Just think of what they didn't engineer, and think of what you don't know, hense the 84 flameing Fiero, they do this stuff all the time and nobody wants to fess up to the problems or fix them until they get caught. I personally will never buy from GM, ever again. I could go on and on with at least 100 more reasons why but, I really don't feel like typing all that.
Oh and one more thing, the new for 2001 Class II Data bus, which effects almost every GM car produced, example if you take the radio out of you 2001 Cavalier or Sunfire you will blow you air bags when you turn your ignition on, because it will not complete the in vehicle network. NICE. Well I said my peace.,
Chris

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Check out my site at: www.customdynamix.com
2 '87 GT Projects

oh god dont let my gf read that article!!

how do i tell if my fiero had had that recall repair dont to it???

the Fiero did come back

in 1992

with a rear seat, and the motor upfront

plastic body panels, painted space frame, stainless steel exhaust, hydraulic clutch on the 5 speeds, 90 and 125hp engine options

and with its own separate GM assembly plant

its called the Saturn.

They took all the good things from the Fiero and made a 4 passenger car from it. This time they got the mechanics right.

If you want another 2 passenger rear engine car, dont expect Pontiac to bring the fireo back

But saturn has expanded their line from the compact and the coupe, to include the midsize L series, and an SUV is coming out this fall.

Who knows, maybe there is a 2 passenger Saturn on the drawingboards somewhere. Commuter cars are starting to make inroads, so a 2 passenger, high milage, sporty little car from Saturn is not unthinkable.

In all fairness to Pontiac, look at how much traffic is on this web site for those of us 'mechanically inclinded' spending lots of time keeping our Fieros on the road. You pretty much gotta be a mechanic to own one now, with a good understanding of electronic fuel injection systems too.

Was the fiero a failure? For GM yes. Was it also a stepping stone? Yes! Could there be something like it in GMs future?

We'll have to wait and see.

Great something like it in the future I forgot to add to my above post that I love my Fiero, my point in saying what I said is that the Fiero wouldn't be what it "is" if they wouldn't have canceled it, and that they would have ruined it, just like everything else they do, and tell me I'm wrong, somebody...
Chris

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Check out my site at: www.customdynamix.com
2 '87 GT Projects

[This message has been edited by MoneypitGT (edited 05-07-2001).]

It's a pretty good bet that if you have an 84 Fiero that is still running and hasn't burned down, that the recall work has been done.

Look on the underside of the decklid. There should be a sticker that identifies the "campaign".

Also check Ogre's cave. The link is at the bottom of the page.

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Raydar - aka Steve

88 black Formula
88 soon-to-be-V6 coupe

quote Originally posted by Ken Wittlief: with a rear seat, and the motor upfront plastic body panels, painted space frame, stainless steel exhaust, hydraulic clutch on the 5 speeds, 90 and 125hp engine options and with its own separate GM assembly plant its called the Saturn.

And they kept the fires too!!

quote Originally posted by Steve Normington: And they kept the fires too!!

Only for the first year - maybe it tradition.

I think I will keep a bag of marshmellows in the map pocket of my 85 SE

BTW I do have a fire extinquisher inthe fron trunk of my fiero, but I put them in all my cars. Off all the worst case - coming across an accident scene possibilities, i think see an accident with someone stuck in a burning car is the worst, so I alway pack a drychem extinquisher in all my cars where I can get them quickly. In the fiero it makes more sense to put it up front, just in case its my engine that needs to be put out.

Thanks for the articles

******* *** ***** **** ***** ******* Connecting Rods!!!

The stories of the past make it look like GM turned it's back on the safety of "honest and decent Americans . . ."

The same people who on average change their oil every 10K miles. That's an average, which means for every 3K interval there's a 17K mile oil changer out there. Do you think these oil misers check the oil? Nah, they go to Jiffy lube every election year or so. Between Saginaw's disgust for quality and the average non-mechanically-inclined (or concerned) new car owner are formidable challenges for any car out there.

The Iron Duke engine in 84 Fieros was also used in tons of Celebrities, 6000s, Cieras, and Centuries. No issue with Fires.

The Fiero had a smaller oil pan, and that was where GM blew it (literally). Statistically, the odds of combination of a maintenance-never owner and bad rods were measureable.

But, well maintained Iron Dukes have withstood 20 years and 200,000 miles in those other GM vehicles.

What was the problem? Quality was tested into the product rather than designed in. Put another way, GM reacted to engine problems rather than anticipating them and designing them out. The little Fiero 4cylinder oil pan is clear proof.

Take a look under a Duke Fiero, there's plenty of room for a larger oil pan. What the hell were they thinking? How much sheet metal did they save?

Last question: Why did GM opt not to put an overhead cam on the Duke? They redesigned it with counter balancers and a nifty integral oil pan filter, but OHC? Nah, that would just increase fuel economy and performance.

What about the Quad 4? Could no one at GM see the potential of a Quad 4 5spd Fiero?

People killed the Fiero. . .probably a nasty quilt of company politics over the history of the Fiero project.

Can you imagine if they had the Fiero out in 1980? It would have been the fastest car for the money even with an Iron Duke. Can you imagine a Fiero sitting next to a 1980 Grand Prix in a dealership?

It took GM 5 years to get the Fiero into production. It is a car they should have built 10 years earlier.

Fieros are history because people inside GM and in the press flip flopped from ridiculous praise to ridiculous ridicule without considering a middle position. The cars got too much hype at first and could not withstand the backlash later.

[This message has been edited by Iron Duke Wellingsley (edited 05-08-2001).]

from an engineers perspective, its my experience that a big project, like the fiero car, needs to have one individual with enough experience and understanding of the car as a whole, and manufacturing, and marketing, to be THE person to make it happen,

and to have the vision and the passion to want to make it happen.

The Fiero has designed-by-commitee written all over it - always the kiss of death for any major project.

A good example is the original VW beetle - designed by old-man Porche himself. He put his life into the thing (literally staked his life on it - if he had screwed up Hitler would of had him shot). After the war Dr Porche evolved the basic design into the sports/race cars that bear his name, but look at an aircooled Porche and you can see the VW bug in its design everywhere.

All it takes it one or two major design flaws for a car like the fiero to bite the dust (production wise). The heros of detroit that made the muscle cars happen in the 60s were forgotten by the 80s.

Design teams make projects happen, but only an giften individual can turn a great idea into a vision, and see it though to a successful reality.

What the Fiero was missing was its Engineer/hero/champion/genius/visionary.