Folks, I'm the guy that designed the Fiero Suspension Arm dimensional gages back in the day. The company I worked for...and still work for (40 years this May)...built the gages.
Pontiac used Teledyne Monarch in Hartville, Ohio to stamp out the suspension arm parts. And yes, it's true, our early Fiero control arms were derived, originally, from a Chevette lower control arm.
GM was throwing tons of money at trying to produce dimensionally correct suspension arms. No amount of booze, fine dining, strippers, corporate jet flights with donuts and coffee waiting was ever enough. I think I was the most pampered young design engineer in North America!
I had already been admiring the then new Fiero from when I saw the prototypes at the also then new Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. After starting the gaging project I went out and bought a brand new 1985 2M4, which I still have. You can see pictures of it in the "Sat For 20 Years" post I put up in the technical questions sub-forum.
Ask me any questions and I'll try to answer them as best I can, but remember this was back in the days of DOS and when the Pharaoh and I went to school together.
I will scan some of the old Polaroid prints and edit this post to add more pics as I get them ready to post.
Regards, CampyBob
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
... Gm was throwing tons of money at trying produce dimensionally correct suspension arms. No amount of booze, fine dining, strippers, corporate jet flights with donuts and coffee waiting was ever enough. I think I was the most pampered young design engineer in North America!
First pic in the above post is of my old boss and company owner, now deceased. RH arms went on the gages to the right of the readout tower and LH arms went on the gages located to the left side of the tower.
Below, the lowly Chevette control arm. It would get more stamping added to it to become a weldment with two chassis pickup points. Note the use of LVDT's (linear variable displacement transducer) for dimensional input to the Daytronics electronic gaging unit, which is driven by an oh-so-powerful 386 DOS computer. Reports were printed on that Epson FX80 printer.
Three stampings are banged out on the presses...the Chevette arm, the 'Y' arm and a coil spring seat. The three are welded into one assembly on precision welding jigs / fixtures. Then samples were gathered and brought to the metrology lab to be measured.
Notice this assembly is 'blued' up with purple DyKem layout dye.
One of the project engineers posing with the tooling. Everyone was proud of this halo project. Hell, the bazillion gallons of jet fuel we burned up on those corporate flights to Pontiac, Michigan's GM-owned 'Big Beaver' airport alone was reason to be proud. A few of those flights back to Akron's Fulton airport was full of blotto engineers too buzzed to even puke.
Note the shopping cart in the pic. The gage technician used the cart to go round up sample parts from out in the press room to bring them back for measuring. Not so high tech, but I guess we spent that part of the budget tipping the strippers.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
The Daytronics tower contained the LVDT signal conditioning units and an advanced...for that time...color display readout. Note the monochrome CRT monitor on the 386 computer that is also more typical of that era.
The color readout gave the gage operators a quick analysis of whether the part being measured was 'good', 'close enough!' or 'scrap' by scanning the color on the readout.
The readout numbers were expressed as plus or minus from a nominal point in space established by a precision setmaster. We could also switch to an absolute value. The background color behind those readout numbers was: Green = Within part blueprint tolerance. Yellow = Within part control limits...as in women's underwear = diesel fitter. Close enough to ship to Michigan and pray it bolted onto the chassis pickup points. Red = This is a steaming pile o crap. Shred it.
The printer then generated what we were told was boxcar loads of data that got set to Pontiac where it was either burned to keep people warm or hide the evidence. One or the other. No one ever looked at the rain forest we cut down to generate those reports.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
Data. What engineer doesn't love data? Whole railroad cars full of boxes and boxes of data!
After all, GM, Entech, Pontiac and Teledyn Monarch plus my little company were all on a quest to build the most dimensionally perfect suspension arms the world has ever seen. I mean, Enzo, eat your stupid tubular welded pieces of pipe arm! We can haz Chevette parts robbed right from another GM parts bin and no one will ever know...right?
We were also in search of the best booze in Pontiac, Michigan and the joint that had the best looking gals dancing for us.
I was just in Hartville to the hardware. I live in The Clinton area.
There were several ties to the Fiero in the area. The Tires and wheels were tested by Goodyear at the tech center in Akron. The sheet molded parts were designed by Gentec and some were made in Mogadore near your company. Motor Wheel also did some testing on composite wheels that were never used. They were part of Goodyear.
PPG in Strongsville did work on several of the show cars and pace cars.
My friend did the tire design and testing for the Fiero.
Akron had many suppliers in that era.
[This message has been edited by hyperv6 (edited 02-18-2020).]
OK...last pic for the night. Time for bed. I did 21 miles on Zwift before doing this and my butt is dragging. Yeah, the 'Campy' in Campybob comes from the Campagnolo components on my bicycles. 47 years a roadie.
I'll add some more pics tomorrow hopefully. Man, this is bringing back some memories! Can it really have been 35 years ago?!
Here you can see one of the 'Y' arms that turned the lowly little Chevette arm into something magic that turned our Fiero's into cars capable of pulling 2 G's on the skid pad and diving under a Lotus Super 7! At least that's what the GM sales reps with the Platinum cards told the strippers.
Hey...I still have that old document satchel! I should eBay it or maybe put it in the For Sale forum here...Fiero history, baby! Who'll give me a fiddy?
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
I was just in Hartville to the hardware. I live in The Clinton area.
There were several ties to the Fiero in the area. The Tires and wheels were tested by Goodyear at the tech center in Akron. The sheet molded parts were designed by Gentec and some were made in Mogadore near your company. Motor Wheel also did some testing on composite wheels that were never used. They were part of Goodyear.
PPG in Strongsville did work on several of the show cars and pace cars.
My friend did the tire design and testing for the Fiero.
Akron had many suppliers in that era.
Very cool! I'm from Minerva. At the time of the project I was living in Canton and a member of the Stark County Bicycle Club and Sirak Financial racing Team. We trained a lot in the Canal Fulton / Clinton area...Nimi Reservoir, Rogue's Hollow...all that area.
Familiar with both Entech and Gentec. Never heard of Motor Wheel. I'll have to Google them. The Pontiac test track was awesome and there was always new sleds and mules to check out, plus the factory had literally hundreds of Fiero's you could just hop in and drive from point A to point B on the grounds if you were authorized. They had large 3-digit numbers stenciled on the doors and all of them were either red Fiero's or white ones.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
Forgot to add, KIKO Auctions is selling off the old factory in front of the tow motor wheel and tire plant Teledyne use to operate that's now a cement slab...after Trelleborg bought that division. Maybe Cooper was also involved once upon a time. The stamping plant was closer to Hartville on a side road. I think it still stands, but is no longer a Teledyne fascility.
I have an original blueprint that may have been used for those gages.
Give me a bit and I'll see if I can get a good picture.
Do it! I want to see it! Take a close up of the title block...I want to see my initials so I know banging my head on my drawing board (pre-CAD days!) and doing all those calculations in reverse Polish notation on my HP calculator wasn't just a bad dream!
Original drawings should be tech pen / ink on grid line Mylar.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-18-2020).]
Do you happen to know why the front lower control arm bushings are not collinear with each other?
Did Teledyne Monarch deliver control arms with bushings and ball joints pressed in? Could the inspection gages only work with bushings and ball joints installed?
I'm guessing that allowing the customer to press in these parts themselves would lead to them deforming the control arms, failing to assemble them on the car, and then blaming the supplier for their troubles.
Piles of dimensional data are useless... until you have a problem and you need to understand what's going on, or you have a recall to do... Data like this is kind of like an insurance policy.
Since you're implying that the data didn't serve much purpose, I guess you didn't have many problems with these parts!
[This message has been edited by pmbrunelle (edited 02-18-2020).]
Do you happen to know why the front lower control arm bushings are not collinear with each other?
Did Teledyne Monarch deliver control arms with bushings and ball joints pressed in? Could the inspection gages only work with bushings and ball joints installed?
I'm guessing that allowing the customer to press in these parts themselves would lead to them deforming the control arms, failing to assemble them on the car, and then blaming the supplier for their troubles.
Piles of dimensional data are useless... until you have a problem and you need to understand what's going on, or you have a recall to do... Data like this is kind of like an insurance policy.
Since you're implying that the data didn't serve much purpose, I guess you didn't have many problems with these parts!
1. No clue, but assume it had to do with NVH during articulation. Later versions of the arm were coaxial pickup hard points.
2. Arms were shipped with bushings shot in and ball joints installed (with rivets IIRC). Gaging was done with precision ground and hardened steel slip fit and straight wall expanding mandrel arbor type faux bushings. This gave precise hole size measurements on the diameters and hole location. You can see these details in the pictures...sorry about the poor quality. No digital cameras back then. Some of the straight wall (parallel) expanding types had an LVDT that converted linear travel to diameter read. We did measure with actual bushings shot in place on assemblies, but no effort was made to check the pivot hole size or location as the holes had a mile of clearance and measuring location in rubber was not advisable. If it fit on the chassis going down the assembly line...close enough.
3. True, but whenever the buyer could get an assembly that was complete to bolt on the car that was a time and money saver. Outsourced labor was always cheaper.
4.There were lots and lots of problems, including multiple shut-downs of the assembly line. Although data was stored on the tiny hard drive, 5-1/4" floppies (remember those?!) and off-loaded to a main frame in addition the reams and reams of tractor paper that ended up right back in the boxes the black paper was shipped in and stashed away in a storage room until the part ceased production no one ever referred to it. Got a problem? Solve it the quick, cheap and expedient way...alter the die, bend the part, open the hole up, make the hole smaller, slow the press SPM down, change the weld sequence, etc. Old school.
5. Development is always tricky with stampings. Steel doesn't always obey the lines on a paper drawing when it comes out of a prog die running 60 SPM. The part stamping drawings were pencil on vellum. Lots of erasures and re-designs. Literally, the mantra was make it fast, make it cheap, make it work. It's just a banged out piece of sheet metal going on a car that would be in a scrap yard in 10 years. No one ever expected the suspension arms or the cars to have dedicated collectors and internet forums in 1985. The internet wasn't even available back then. And the Fiero was basically an 'economy car'. GM only green lighted production if Pontiac could build it cheaply, using as much already existing GM parts off the shelves as possible. They did a great job considering what they had to work with!
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
Sorry for the ads appearing in your posts (or do they only appear for me?). I had enabled "Automatic Ad Optimization" in Google Adsense but Google placed ads in the weirdest of places - like in the middle of your posts. I have disabled it but (at least on my end) I'm still seeing the ads. Hopefully they'll disappear soon.
Oh and as for the computer, The one on the right looks like a HP-86 to me and I think the one on the left is a generic 286. I don't think 386 CPUs even existed back then.
Sorry for the ads appearing in your posts (or do they only appear for me?). I had enabled "Automatic Ad Optimization" in Google Adsense but Google placed ads in the weirdest of places - like in the middle of your posts. I have disabled it but (at least on my end) I'm still seeing the ads. Hopefully they'll disappear soon.
Good morning. Cliff!
Great forum. I received good advice on my first post, the "Sat For 20 Years" thread in tech questions. The old 2M4 is running well and I will license and insure it for the first time since 1999 (last registration was actually 1996). I'm looking forward to driving it again.
The Fiero suspension arms project was wild. We are primarily an aerospace design & build machine shop with parts on nuclear missles, the now defunct Space Shuttle, many aircraft and weapons delivery systems for the military. We do a lot of work for the various turbine engine manufacturers such as Rolls, Pratt, G.E., Brown-Boveri, Munchen, Garrett, etc. We do tooling for Timken Bearings and this morning I had to run up to Akron, Ohio on another Timken job.
The Fiero project came about when we were recommended for the job by a sales rep that serviced both our company and the Teledyne Monarch stamping facility.
I'm here at the shop and I'll snap a pic of one of the later suspension arems we did gaging for.
I'm sure many forum members will recognize this arm. This particular arm was one of the first of the fully developed (not quite) versions that was approved for production and for tooling procurement. The E-Coat on it still looked like the day it was made once the 35 years of dust was wiped off it.
Oh and as for the computer, The one on the right looks like a HP-86 to me and I think the one on the left is a generic 286. I don't think 386 CPUs even existed back then.
According to wiki the 80386 was launched in October of 1985. I couldn't tell you when we used it on the package, date wise. That was way too many years ago and a bunch of jobs back in the distant past. I'm 67 and I was a youngster when I worked on the Fiero project.
We probably started with a Tandy! The 386 was an upgrade. Our first boxes for CAD here at the shop in late 1988 or early 1989 were 486-33 DX machines. From 5-1/4" floppies to 3-1/2" High Density with QIC tape backups. LOL! My first real home box was a 486-33 DX with a 30 Mb hard drive and I remember adding a second hard drive to double the size. Yeah...the days of 8088 procs were wild.
Originally posted by CampyBob: Do it! I want to see it! Take a close up of the title block...I want to see my initials so I know banging my head on my drawing board (pre-CAD days!) and doing all those calculations in reverse Polish notation on my HP calculator wasn't just a bad dream!
Original drawings should be tech pen / ink on grid line Mylar.
Okay Bob,
Unfortunately I could not find the one for the suspension. I have at least 200 tubes with blueprints rolled up in them, in some cases there could be several in one tube.
I know this isn't what you're after but it is a very early blueprint dated 10/6/80 and revised on 1/20/81. Note, it says it's a 1983 "P" Body. The only reason why this one was easy to shoot is because the wife "stole" it over the holidays and had it matted and framed. Hell of a Christmas gift!
[This message has been edited by Thunderstruck GT (edited 02-19-2020).]
Unfortunately I could not find the one for the suspension. I have at least 200 tubes with blueprints rolled up in them, in some cases there could be several in one tube.
I know this isn't what you're after but it is a very early blueprint dated 10/6/80 and revised on 1/20/81. Note, it says it's a 1983 "P" Body. The only reason why this one was easy to shoot is because the wife "stole" it over the holidays and had it matted and framed. Hell of a Christmas gift!
Beautiful! I thought the design cycle started a couple years prior to 1984. I had no idea it dated to 1980. That's awesome information.
I know exactly what it's like trying to fish out a particular drawing or set of drawings from among hundreds or thousands. Even with a good filing system it's often a needle in a haystack hunt.
I remember hearing that getting the design approved for production was a lengthy process for the Fiero. Initial sales projections were for low volume and there was a lot of arm twisting to keep the production cost low, which for a vehicle with a new mid-engine layout and almost a space frame design was a challenging act to pull off. IIRC, the first year or so of sales exceeded projections, but the negative publicity from the fires and lack of 'real' sports car performance dropped sales levels down. If only the bean counters were talked into letting Pontiac develop the GT version longer...what might have been!
Has anyone else heard or been told about the production line, itself? It sticks in my mind there was some difficulty in tooling it up for the Fiero.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-19-2020).]
Originally posted by CampyBob: Beautiful! I thought the design cycle started a couple years prior to 1984. I had no idea it dated to 1980. That's awesome information.
I know exactly what it's like trying to fish out a particular drawing or set of drawings from among hundreds or thousands. Even with a good filing system it's often a needle in a haystack hunt.
I remember hearing that getting the design approved for production was a lengthy process for the Fiero. Initial sales projections were for low volume and there was a lot of arm twisting to keep the production cost low, which for a vehicle with a new mid-engine layout and almost a space frame design was a challenging act to pull off. IIRC, the first year or so of sales exceeded projections, but the negative publicity from the fires and lack of 'real' sports car performance dropped sales levels down. If only the bean counters were talked into letting Pontiac develop the GT version longer...what might have been!
Has anyone else heard or been told about the production line, itself? It sticks in my mind there was some difficulty in tooling it up for the Fiero.
Filing system??? LOL!
Me????? LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!
I was told by reliable sources that talk began in 1979 and that this particular blueprint is without a doubt, one of the earliest that still exists. Although I'm betting my date can be beat.
The World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennesee was from May 1, 1982 to Oct 31, 1982. It was on the way back to Ohio from there that I and an old girl friend decided to take a side trip to the nearly new Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Posed out on the lawn and walkway into the main visitor entrance were three complete (and what looked to be fully running and functional) prototype Fiero's. I'm guessing that was mid-Summer of 1982. I am pretty sure one of them wore the GT bodywork because I think I remember not liking the nose of it very much. I could be wrong there...that was a long time ago!
I'll bet she still has the prints of the pictures I took of them.
I was immediately taken with the look of the car, its mid-engine layout and the polymer body panels. Sometime in 1984 the suspension gage project got under way and it was probably when the 1985 models were on the showroom floor in the Fall of 1984 that I bought my Fiero.
I have a vaguely related story (also relating to gaging), so I thought I would share.
In the present era, I built an inspection jig for measuring parts. Like with many processes, I was expecting to see a "bell curve" distribution for the measured parts. This data is logged in Excel files. The tail of the bell curve above the upper specification limit would represent the reject parts.
Instead of a bell curve, I saw this:
I figured out that when the parts were just a hair above the USL, operators would keep on re-measuring the same parts over and over until they got a green "Pass" result on the screen, relying on the measurement variability to get a passing result for the largest number of parts.
Ever seen anything like that?
[This message has been edited by pmbrunelle (edited 02-19-2020).]
I have a vaguely related story (also relating to gaging), so I thought I would share.
In the present era, I built an inspection jig for measuring parts. Like with many processes, I was expecting to see a "bell curve" distribution for the measured parts. This data is logged in Excel files. The tail of the bell curve above the upper specification limit would represent the reject parts.
Instead of a bell curve, I saw this:
I figured out that when the parts were just a hair above the USL, operators would keep on re-measuring the same parts over and over until they got a green "Pass" result on the screen, relying on the measurement variability to get a passing result for the largest number of parts.
Ever seen anything like that?
I've seen similar patterns. We call that, "Inspecting a little quality into the part!". Many inspection gages can be forced a little bit and part location in the hard point nest can often vary a little or be varied by the operator. A gage resolution & repeatability study (GR&R) may help to reduce or eliminate some of that variation or fudged readings.
One last pic. This one is of the Daytronic color readout showing various dimensions in all three inspection zones. This part would have been scrapped or reworked.
Originally posted by CampyBob: Very cool! I'm from Minerva. At the time of the project I was living in Canton and a member of the Stark County Bicycle Club and Sirak Financial racing Team. We trained a lot in the Canal Fulton / Clinton area...Nimi Reservoir, Rogue's Hollow...all that area.
Familiar with both Entech and Gentec. Never heard of Motor Wheel. I'll have to Google them. The Pontiac test track was awesome and there was always new sleds and mules to check out, plus the factory had literally hundreds of Fiero's you could just hop in and drive from point A to point B on the grounds if you were authorized. They had large 3-digit numbers stenciled on the doors and all of them were either red Fiero's or white ones.
You have biked right through my area. I am not far from Clinton, Portage Lakes and Rouges Hollow.
I have biked this whole area and even fought traffic at Belden Village .
Originally posted by CampyBob: Beautiful! I thought the design cycle started a couple years prior to 1984. I had no idea it dated to 1980. That's awesome information.
I know exactly what it's like trying to fish out a particular drawing or set of drawings from among hundreds or thousands. Even with a good filing system it's often a needle in a haystack hunt.
I remember hearing that getting the design approved for production was a lengthy process for the Fiero. Initial sales projections were for low volume and there was a lot of arm twisting to keep the production cost low, which for a vehicle with a new mid-engine layout and almost a space frame design was a challenging act to pull off. IIRC, the first year or so of sales exceeded projections, but the negative publicity from the fires and lack of 'real' sports car performance dropped sales levels down. If only the bean counters were talked into letting Pontiac develop the GT version longer...what might have been!
Has anyone else heard or been told about the production line, itself? It sticks in my mind there was some difficulty in tooling it up for the Fiero.
The Fiero started as far back as 1977 78 . GM did not want a sports car so Pk tics sold them on a high volume high fuel mileage car. They had full intent on doing the sports car from the start but had to do the 4 cylinder car first.
The trouble was they went high production on a 2 seat car and sold a ton of them in the first two years. There are only so many people in a segment like that. Note Mazda limits the Miata to less than 20k units a year and GM sold nearly 250k in two years.
The Fire publicity did not help but the truth is much different on what killed the car.
One part is a Pontiac built too many in a short time to keep the plant at capacity. Pontiac was banking on the GM 80 that was a FWD replacement for the F body. The GM80 was canceled so the plant was left building 30k+ cars in a plant that needed 250k units.
This is were Chevy came in as they worried about the zfiero getting more power and under cut Corvettes price. They were seeing declines in sakes and worried it would hurt them even more. This would prevent the C5 business case.
Note the Corvette did get canceled but their manager ignored the order to stop work on the C5 and saved the car.
As stated by John Schinella the Fiero designer Chevy sells more cars so heavy gets more say.
Note the divisions in GM hurt each other more than the outside companies did. It was a very toxic culture.
Anyways there was some more to it but that is the basics of what killed the car. Pontiac had big plans but just could not save the car. One 1990 GT still exist.
The lead time in this era was generally 5 years. I have blue prints of the 1990 emblem dated 1985. My friend who was doing tire testing was working in 85 on the 1990 wheel and tires.
Note too the design on the 1990 was rebased and used on the 4th gen Fbody. They converted it to a larger RWD. If you compare the FBody yo the profile of the 90 GT you can see the share styling. The dash pod was th3 same as what the Fiero was going to use too.
One could easily write a book on the Fiero and much of the unpublished history as GM tried to quash it due to hard feelings at GM and even with the Union over broken promises.
I have been lucky to speak to many involved. Even now msny will not go on record or will step away from the Official GM line.
What is ironic the Mid Engine Idea originated at the advanced design group at the tech center. It was offered to the Corvette group as a V6 in the mid 70’s. They turned it down. The idea remained there till Hulki was looking for a way to lower the cowl of the car. At this point the design team offered him what they had and he made it work.
That came from a Dave McClelland former Corvette engineer in his book.
Funny how what the refused came back to scare them.
You have biked right through my area. I am not far from Clinton, Portage Lakes and Rouges Hollow.
I have biked this whole area and even fought traffic at Belden Village .
I remember biking through the BV area before traffic became a nightmare. I moved to Canton from Minerva back in 1980. I always enjoyed riding up to Rogue's Hollow, long before it became just another suburban road full of new houses. It was actually still pretty freaky back in the early 1980's. Hametown Rd., Edwards, Clinton, Clinton, Comet, Coal Bank, Black Diamond, Warwick, Silver Creek, Silver Springs...loved riding all of those. Riding buddy from Massillon showed us all the quiet back roads in that area.
For the past 25 years I've been on our small farm between Minerva and Carrollton. I do about 4,000 miles a Winter on the trainer riding on the Zwift virtual reality software and about 5,000 miles outdoors. This will mark the start of the 48th year of cycling for me.
The Fiero was never much good for hauling a bike to the races. Even with both wheels off the frame would not go down into the trunk anywhere near deep enough to close the lid. I also owned a 1986 Honda CRX hatchback and I could stuff two bikes in the back of that with both sets of wheels inside and room for our gear bags AND put two more bikes on the roof rack. The mid-engine layout is great for handling, but a poor choice for space utilization! LOL!
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-20-2020).]
The Fiero started as far back as 1977 78 . GM did not want a sports car so Pk tics sold them on a high volume high fuel mileage car. They had full intent on doing the sports car from the start but had to do the 4 cylinder car first.
The trouble was they went high production on a 2 seat car and sold a ton of them in the first two years. There are only so many people in a segment like that. Note Mazda limits the Miata to less than 20k units a year and GM sold nearly 250k in two years.
The Fire publicity did not help but the truth is much different on what killed the car.
One part is a Pontiac built too many in a short time to keep the plant at capacity. Pontiac was banking on the GM 80 that was a FWD replacement for the F body. The GM80 was canceled so the plant was left building 30k+ cars in a plant that needed 250k units.
This is were Chevy came in as they worried about the zfiero getting more power and under cut Corvettes price. They were seeing declines in sakes and worried it would hurt them even more. This would prevent the C5 business case.
Note the Corvette did get canceled but their manager ignored the order to stop work on the C5 and saved the car.
As stated by John Schinella the Fiero designer Chevy sells more cars so heavy gets more say.
Note the divisions in GM hurt each other more than the outside companies did. It was a very toxic culture.
Anyways there was some more to it but that is the basics of what killed the car. Pontiac had big plans but just could not save the car. One 1990 GT still exist.
The lead time in this era was generally 5 years. I have blue prints of the 1990 emblem dated 1985. My friend who was doing tire testing was working in 85 on the 1990 wheel and tires.
Note too the design on the 1990 was rebased and used on the 4th gen Fbody. They converted it to a larger RWD. If you compare the FBody yo the profile of the 90 GT you can see the share styling. The dash pod was th3 same as what the Fiero was going to use too.
One could easily write a book on the Fiero and much of the unpublished history as GM tried to quash it due to hard feelings at GM and even with the Union over broken promises.
I have been lucky to speak to many involved. Even now msny will not go on record or will step away from the Official GM line.
What is ironic the Mid Engine Idea originated at the advanced design group at the tech center. It was offered to the Corvette group as a V6 in the mid 70’s. They turned it down. The idea remained there till Hulki was looking for a way to lower the cowl of the car. At this point the design team offered him what they had and he made it work.
That came from a Dave McClelland former Corvette engineer in his book.
Funny how what the refused came back to scare them.
Wow! Excellent information!
I knew about the internal competition, but never realized it went that far.
Funny how the Vette had mid-engine concepts dating back to the 1960's, but never followed into production. Now...
I remember biking through the BV area before traffic became a nightmare. I moved to Canton from Minerva back in 1980. I always enjoyed riding up to Rogue's Hollow, long before it became just another suburban road full of new houses. It was actually still pretty freaky back in the early 1980's. Hametown Rd., Edwards, Clinton, Clinton, Comet, Coal Bank, Black Diamond, Warwick, Silver Creek, Silver Springs...loved riding all of those. Riding buddy from Massillon showed us all the quiet back roads in that area.
For the past 25 years I've been on our small farm between Minerva and Carrollton. I do about 4,000 miles a Winter on the trainer riding on the Zwift virtual reality software and about 5,000 miles outdoors. This will mark the start of the 48th year of cycling for me.
The Fiero was never much good for hauling a bike to the races. Even with both wheels off the frame would not go down into the trunk anywhere near deep enough to close the lid. I also owned a 1986 Honda CRX hatchback and I could stuff two bikes in the back of that with both sets of wheels inside and room for our gear bags AND put two more bikes on the roof rack. The mid-engine layout is great for handling, but a poor choice for space utilization! LOL!
Now I can hop on the bike trail on the Canal and go all the way to New Philly or north till I get mugged in Akron. It is all flat too so it is like riding the bike trails in LA at the beach up the coast.
I knew about the internal competition, but never realized it went that far.
Funny how the Vette had mid-engine concepts dating back to the 1960's, but never followed into production. Now...
There is a lot more I can cover. It is not just one group and one issue but a number of things that all combined made for a mess. The one guy from Pontiac told me he said that most sports cars last 10 years or less. He said that Pontiac was desperate as they were on the bubble for closure at the time not Olds. With the intro of the Fiero and new TA it brought many people to Pontiac dealers who ended up discovering the Grand Am. . The Grand Am sales saved Pontiac as the Cutlass lost the RWD platform and all their buyers.
So the Fiero in a way really did save Pontiac.
It was so bad in the early 90's that Pontiac was going to display the 1990 model for the first time and GM shut them down. That night at the Silverdome we had our banquette for the Fiero meet and designer John Shinella brought the photo of it to show us for the first time. They then later were leaked out quietly over time. The relations between Pontiac, GM and Chevy were not good and The UAW made many deals for the Fiero plant and they all went south with the Fiero.
So many people would only talk off record or if they were on record often they would just stick to the GM history as it was written not as it happened.
On the mid engine Corvette I have a Motor Trend from the 70's that has a space frame Corvette with a transverse Big Block in the back. the lay out is just like the Fiero ended up. I often wonder if this is what the tech center has been working on as it was never like the mid engine cars the Corvette team did. It may have been part of what was offered to Hulki as a starting point.
It is like the name. Many yet today claim that Fiero means proud in Italian. Well it kind of sort of means that and they claim it was found at random late at night in a meeting in a book. Well the funny thing is the Fiero name was used on a Firebird Aero concept in the late 60's. It was sort for the Fi as in Firebird and ero as in aero concept. GM owned the name and for some reason the Pegasus name was killed at the last moment.. that is why the flying horse is still on the emblem as it was too late to change. It take time to legally register and clear names so they had to have used a name they owned. Now while they have a nice story to tell it just does not add up. I never bought the company line knowing what I know on what it takes to name a car.
The bottom line is what are the odds GM would come up at random with the Fiero name twice in 15 years for a car name?
Now I can hop on the bike trail on the Canal and go all the way to New Philly or north till I get mugged in Akron. It is all flat too so it is like riding the bike trails in LA at the beach up the coast.
Try the Western Reserve Greenway from the Champion trailhead at route 305 up to Ashtabula and back at about 44 miles each direction. Billiard table flat, straight as an arrow and mostly through woods. If you get lucky like I did, you'll catch a 3/4-scale P51 Mustang from Titan Aircraft landing or taking off from the factory grass strip just South of Austinburg.
Grass strip is visible just to the West side of the the Greenway trail, just South of where the gravel driveway road crosses the trail.
Avoid the trail near the Niles/Warren area...thugs...and the urban Ashtabula area is full of meth freaks. Other than that, a beautiful ride! I highly recommend this as the nicest trail I've ridden.
Saw an 86 GT advertised locally for $1000. 100K+ on the clock. Exterior looked good, interior torn up a bit. I think I'll check it out this weekend.
"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."
Several of the meetings I had in Michigan were at Entech facilities in Troy. Big Beaver airport (now defunct, the runways are long gone and commercial buildings occupy the site) was in Troy and this is where we landed and took off from.
The Entech engineers seemed to have little interest in the gaging product other than the schedule and how the ill-fitting suspension arms would be fixed so that the assembly line would not be slowed or stopped. The Pontiac Fiero plant was one of the few back then that workers on the line had the authority to halt production.
[This message has been edited by CampyBob (edited 02-20-2020).]
I'm sure many forum members will recognize this arm. This particular arm was one of the first of the fully developed (not quite) versions that was approved for production and for tooling procurement. The E-Coat on it still looked like the day it was made once the 35 years of dust was wiped off it.
