80's Cars That Should Have Never Been Canceled (Page 3/4)
Raydar JAN 25, 08:42 AM
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the F-body cars were due to become FWD, largely plastic bodied cars, built on a space frame. (Truly ugly cars. I remember the pics.)
As the story goes, they were going to be built in the same plant as the Fiero.
When that program was scrapped, the Fiero remained the only car to be built at that plant. Just another reason to kill it.
hyperv6 JAN 25, 07:03 PM

quote
Originally posted by Raydar:

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the F-body cars were due to become FWD, largely plastic bodied cars, built on a space frame. (Truly ugly cars. I remember the pics.)
As the story goes, they were going to be built in the same plant as the Fiero.
When that program was scrapped, the Fiero remained the only car to be built at that plant. Just another reason to kill it.



That was the GM 80 platform and it was the linchpin for the demise.

Pontiac took the risk over selling the Fiero to buy time to add the GM 80 to the plant. Once canceled there were no cars that could easily be built on the same line. The plant Capacity was 250k a year and the Fiero at Just over 30k.

This is what armed Chevy with what they needed to kill the car. No GM 80 and too few cars for the plant.

The power of Chevy won.

The 90 GT styling is now moved to the next gen F body and the Corvette was canceled and brought back due to one brave guy at Chevy.

Amount this time money was already tight as GM was already going down slowly by the bow.

This era was riddled with short cuts, lack of development and major cost cutting that created many issues with GM cars.
Skybax JAN 25, 07:04 PM

quote
Originally posted by Raydar:

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that the F-body cars were due to become FWD, largely plastic bodied cars, built on a space frame. (Truly ugly cars. I remember the pics.)
As the story goes, they were going to be built in the same plant as the Fiero.
When that program was scrapped, the Fiero remained the only car to be built at that plant. Just another reason to kill it.



I don't recall ever seeing those F-body concept photos your referring to, if you ever come across them in your internet travels post them here.

[This message has been edited by Skybax (edited 01-25-2022).]

Skybax JAN 25, 07:07 PM

quote
Originally posted by hyperv6:


That was the GM 80 platform and it was the linchpin for the demise.

Pontiac took the risk over selling the Fiero to buy time to add the GM 80 to the plant. Once canceled there were no cars that could easily be built on the same line. The plant Capacity was 250k a year and the Fiero at Just over 30k.

This is what armed Chevy with what they needed to kill the car. No GM 80 and too few cars for the plant.

The power of Chevy won.

The 90 GT styling is now moved to the next gen F body and the Corvette was canceled and brought back due to one brave guy at Chevy.

Amount this time money was already tight as GM was already going down slowly by the bow.

This era was riddled with short cuts, lack of development and major cost cutting that created many issues with GM cars.



I'm surprised Saturn didn't do anything with the Fiero plant, considering the space-frame with composite panels.
hyperv6 JAN 25, 08:12 PM

quote
Originally posted by Skybax:


I'm surprised Saturn didn't do anything with the Fiero plant, considering the space-frame with composite panels.



They had talked about the dust buster vans and Saturn dos not go into production till July 1990 too late to help the Fiero they also wanted to keep them separate from GM in the beginning.


I will see I have a GM 80 photo handy.


Something else that never gets brought up. If the Fiero has survived it would not have been smooth sailing.

The Quad 4 was going in the coupe and they suffered a lot of development issues. They had major head gasket issues. Another 4 cylinder flawed 4 cylinder would have been an issue.

Then the 24 valve V6 was also not a very good engine. GM had many issues in the first years and later discontinued it due to issues and expense.

One thing I also ponder is the coupe styling was a bit odd in the green house I don’t think it would have held up well.

The GT now was great looking but with all the trouble we see with GT quarter windows and tail lamps the 90 GT transparent quarter pillars would have been an issue. Even today the ones on the GM prototype broke and had to be repaired and painted so they are no longer transparent.

These are just known issues that were likely.

[This message has been edited by hyperv6 (edited 01-25-2022).]

hyperv6 JAN 25, 08:22 PM
[


The car was based on the two door Buick Le Sabre.

There were plans only for a V6 with FWD and a AWD high end model.

Ford was going to use the Probe as the new Mustang so GM was going to go FWD too. Then Ford Fox body sales took off and they took the FWD Mustang and made it the Probe.

Chevy engineers ran up cost and got their way to keep the FBody RWD and then John Schinella adopted the canceled GT styling to it because as he said it was too good to waste.

[This message has been edited by hyperv6 (edited 01-25-2022).]

David Hambleton JAN 28, 07:34 PM
I know, I keep singing the same old song, so here's a name that tune, lol!

Imagine there's no Chevy; it's easy if you try.
Fiero still would vanish; the sales show you why.

1984: 136840
1985: 76371
1986: 83974
1987: 46581
1988: 26402

Are cancellation decisions typically made by a group vote or by an individual?
At what level in the hierarchy are the final decisions usually made?
Skybax JAN 28, 08:31 PM
Re-posting production numbers and dismissing what was covered above is similar to taking things out of context and missing the totality of it all.

Looking at different sports car production numbers you are going to see patterns over time, a few examples, low/falling numbers didn't cancel the Miata...

C4
1984: 51,547
1985: 39,729
1986: 35,109
1987: 30,632
1988: 22,789
1989: 26,412
1990: 23,646
1991: 20,639
1992: 20,479

RX7
1984: 55,696
1985: 53,810
1986: 56,203
1987: 38,345
1988: 27,814
1989: 16,249
1990: 9,743
1991: 6,986
1992: 6,006
1993: 5,062
1994: 2,210
1995: 1,399

Miata
1990: 51,636
1991: 38,287
1992: 26,636
1993: 21,482
1994: 20,110
1995: 19,590
1996: 18,408
1997: 17,218
1998: 19,845
1999: 33,370
2000: 15,972
2001: 18,147
2002: 13,780
2003: 12,672
2004: 9,356
2005: 9,801
2006 16,897
2007: 15,075
2008: 10,977
2009: 7,917
2010: 6,370
2011: 5,674
2012: 6,305
2013: 5,780
2014: 4,745
2015: 8,591
2016: 9,465
2017: 11,294
2018: 8,971
2019: 7,753
2020: 8,807

The Fiero was cancelled for 9 different reasons (see posts above) and sales numbers was the least of their obstacles.

One could argue that if the Fiero had continued, the 1992-1994 era performance gains would have seen an increase in sales.

[This message has been edited by Skybax (edited 01-28-2022).]

formulaWA FEB 21, 09:37 AM
GM talked about the Fiero specifically and 2 seaters in general being unprofitable and then as the Fiero sails off into the sunset they launch the Reatta which never had a hope of even recouping it's development costs let alone making a profit.

During it's entire 4 year production run GM never sold as many Reattas in total as Fiero sold in it's worst sales year.....

hyperv6 FEB 23, 06:20 PM

quote
Originally posted by David Hambleton:

I know, I keep singing the same old song, so here's a name that tune, lol!

Imagine there's no Chevy; it's easy if you try.
Fiero still would vanish; the sales show you why.

1984: 136840
1985: 76371
1986: 83974
1987: 46581
1988: 26402

Are cancellation decisions typically made by a group vote or by an individual?
At what level in the hierarchy are the final decisions usually made?



David the truth is the Fiero was expected to settle to 20k units per year which is actually high for most 2 seat cars. Pontiac had to over sell the car to keep the plant viable.

The extra volume was going to be taken up by the GM 80 but it was canceled.

This was a group decision. GM killed it but Chevy was the driving force to kill the car.

Politics with in GM were horrible. It was so bad it even dictated how many spokes a division got in their wheels at one point.

As John Schinella the head of the Fiero design “Chevy sells more cars so Chevy gets more say about what happens”

The truth is the Fiero may have lived on 4-5 more years but like most two seat cars they last about 10 years in many cases. Just look at the history of two seat sports cars and most only last a short while. The Corvette and Miata are the exceptions.

There are a limited number of buyers for two seat cars. Most are weekend cars so the markets get filled fast and sales decline.

The truth is this was a complex story but even as it was the Fiero did exactly what Pontiac wanted and brought people into the show rooms where they bought a ton of Grand Am’s. This saved Pontiac from closing as they were targeted before olds but the increased sales saved them till 2008.

The problem today is most companies have 2 car divisions at best because of cost today. Also Pontiac was really gutted as it just was a restyled Chevy for the most part.

The last true Pontiac was an 88 4 cylinder Fiero. It was the last Pontiac only model and actually had a Pontiac engine. Everything after that was corporate platforms and engines that just was a styling exercise.

Cool cars for sure but not true Pontiac. Many who thought those were Pontiacs never drove a real Pontiac. The engines were the true Pontiac heart and the tech tricks they offered in many cars were their soul. That was all gone after the Fiero.

Pontiac had a rebel engineering sprit and many of those engineers retired soon after the Fiero.