Shot in the dark.. looking for a lost fiero - Missouri (Page 1/2)
justin87 APR 24, 06:19 PM
Hello PFF! I have been a long time lurker of these forums and never actually posted. You see, unfortunately I am not actually a current Fiero owner. (well maybe i am technically, but I'll get into that in a second) .
I am reaching out to the best Fiero group in the world as a shot in the dark for some possible help. Here's my story...

Years ago (1998) as a teenager I bought my first ever sports car. It was a, 87 Fiero GT that had around 150k miles on it. As many on this forum would attest... it simply was the greatest car ever made. Go ahead, argue with me on that.. I'll fight ya =). Anyway, as a teenager, there was nothing better in the world than that car. It was custom painted a gorgeous forest green color that, at times, looked blueish in the right light. I owned the car for years and like most, after a while the car began to degrade. I have never been much of a 'car guy' and totally not a mechanic, but I can read a book. Unfortunately back in the early 2000's the internet is not what it is today and I couldnt easily google things. I dont remember exactly what the issue was, but ended up having to tear the engine down, replace a few gaskets and odds and ends, and put it back together with the help of my trusty Haynes manual. After I did that I did something wrong and could not figure out what in the heck it was because the exhaust manifolds would glow red hot after running for a few seconds. Again, without the aid of google, I was stuck with local mechanics who all seemed to be stumped as to what could cause that. So ultimately the car sat for another year or two. Now.. while I am not a very good mechanic, at the time i was a fair webdesigner. So I had a friend that was a good mechanic and I offered to trade services with him to fix my car. I'd build his website for his business and he'd fix my car. So thats how it went, I hauled the car over there and he went to work. It wasnt long till he figured out that I had put the connections to the fuel rail on backwards (I think thats what he said.. its been near 20 years ago now) . Anyway, the car started right up and ran like a dream again... Until a radiator hose blew cause it had been sitting too long or something. Anyway, as a broke kid in college, I couldnt afford the parts and figured it would be fine to sit for a few weeks. A radiator hose I could fix. So fast forward a few weeks and I get a call from his daughter (who I had been dating) that they were being evicted. I wont get into all that here, but needless to say I was more concerned with other things than my car. Everything happened so fast, I didnt even think of the car that didnt run . (You never really know how much you care about something til its been lost a while). To shorten the story a little more, the daughter broke up with me a week or two later and I never saw my car again. I was a dumb kid and had no idea of how to go about recovering my property, and at the time I thought "It was a small price to pay to be rid of them" . Well time changes everything and here we are years later. (this all happened in 2002).

Now that I am an adult and have a kid of my own, I look back on that car with the love and respect that I'm sure everyone here has for their first Fiero. For years I have been planning on getting another one and finally this year it will make sense for me to do so. So I have set aside a project to start that, but as I lurked on Fiero forums researching how much I'll be looking to spend to get anther one, what to look for, etc, it dawned on me... we are in the age of information and I'm pretty good at investigation. (I'm no longer a webdesigner, but I did go the IT path so I'm pretty good with the googles now) . So I started a little side project to see if I could 1) figure out what happened to my car and 2) best case scenario I could actually find the old car and if i was really lucky 3) get a piece of it to share or install on the new one. I would even be happy with a keychain made out of something on the old one.

So to start with I began calling around Rolla Missouri where this all happened and asking questions of the local police as they were present at the time the car was taken. They informed me that they actually wouldnt have touched it and that it would have been the responsibility of either the tenant or land owner to do something with it. I knew the tenant never got it, so that left the land owner. It became my hypothesis that the land owner probably had it hauled off to a junk yard and it is my hope that it would have sat there ever since. So I began calling the junk yards in Rolla and they were really helpful in telling me standard procedures for handling cases like this, but ultimately no one had a record of it or usually even records that extended that far back. Even then it was possible that whatever junk yard got it wasnt even in business anymore. So i was kind of stuck at the moment. The next thing I tried was doing a VIN search on it. I had to start by digging out old paperwork and luckily my mom is a huge pack rat and keeps everything. She happened to have a copy of the original bill of sale from when I bought the car in 1998. So I have the VIN. I did a search and best I can tell my registration was the last entry in it's record. I/e legally speaking, I'm still the owner of it. Now this plays an important clue.. If a junkyard took it, they are supposed to register it as a salvaged property. They did not meaning either A) it never went to a junk yard B) it did and was never 'properly handled' . So again I was kind of stuck. Well Missouri has this great website called CASENET where you can search legal cases from long ago, so I searched out the eviction case. I found the actual name of the landlord and contacted her directly to find out what might have happened.

I told her my whole story and luckily she was very sweet and understanding. Unfortunately she did not remember the specific case as it was 20 years ago and she had done many evictions over the years. (Job hazard I suppose) . What she DID remember is that over the years stuff like this "happened all the time" . and she would have her husband call their buddy 'Paul' to take care of it. Little more research and I found out that "Paul" was actually "Paul Dapron" of Rolla MO and the owner of Midwest Auto Salvage in Rolla MO. Well unfortunately Paul died a few years ago, so I couldnt exactly contact him, but the business IS still in operation. So this is where it gets a little tricky. I have not directly reached out to them because in reality what most likely happened was one buddy called another buddy who sort of illegally took a car to his junk yard and from there, who knows what. What Paul was supposed to do is to verify the owner of the vehicle and fill out some paperwork, which he never did, meaning it could be argued that he totally stole my car. Again, I have no desire to 'go after' anyone or really even recover the car. I would be freaking ecstatic if I could pay them a few bucks for a part of that car, if they had it. This sort of 'good ole boy' activity is rather common in Missouri and it is just as likely that my car is sitting in a cow pasture somewhere or became his grand son's 'shootin car'. OR... maybe.. just maybe.. it found life elsewhere. So I called that particular junkyard and instead of telling them the story above, I simply asked if they had any parts for an 87 fiero. The person running it told me "oh honey no, sorry" . Now hope is not all lost, since it was never legally checked it, it probably isnt in their inventory, so she may not know about the 20 year old car sitting on the back 40. Or it may have been parted out or crushed long ago.

This is where I am now. I think that I'm going to pay a trip in person to the salvage yard, but I am not hopeful. On the other side of things, I'm reaching out to a very knowledgeable base of people that have seen MANY fieros over the years and maybe... just maybe.. someone's seen mine. As I said it was painted a very unique forest green, so maybe that will spark a memory somewhere.

So here are the clues:
1. It was lost in 2002 in Rolla MO from Devonshire Drive
2. It was most likely hauled off by Paul Dapron of Midwest Salvage yard
3. It was an 87 fiero GT with near 200k miles on it in a unique forest green color (unfortunately I do not have a good picture of the actual car.. I'm looking for one, or i'd post it)
4. The VIN # is 1G2PG1196HP208064
5. Some other unique characteristics; I had installed a manual fan switch under the headlight switch, the entire interior lights were replaced with red lights, It may have still had engine trouble, it had a blown radiator hose, it DID NOT have a spoiler or sunroof. The interior was grey / dark. (I think the original color was red as under some of the flaking paint you could see red paint)
So theres my story for now. If anyone can help in any way, it would be much appreciated and i'd love to update this story with a happy ending. Thanks for reading all of this!
-Justin

[This message has been edited by justin87 (edited 04-25-2019).]

anaverin APR 25, 02:35 PM

Go the salvage yard. Continue the search. Ask them if they have a any fieros in the yard. Look at each one and check the vin.
css9450 APR 25, 05:08 PM
By chance did it have a white racing stripe?

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...110502-1-079124.html

Searching for that thread just now was a real eye-opener. That guy bought and sold cars faster than I can go through a loaf of bread.

[This message has been edited by css9450 (edited 04-25-2019).]

fieroguru APR 25, 07:45 PM
This is about the time that "The Fiero Farm" was collecting fieros throughout MO, so maybe it ended up there at some point. You might want to send Todd a PM to his PFF user ID: thefierofarm.com and ask him if he remembers it.
htexans1 APR 25, 09:08 PM
Do a "Carfax" on it. It could say who has it now.
justin87 APR 25, 10:16 PM
Wow! thanks for the support!

So a few replies here; First.. no mine didnt have a racing stripe. It also did not have a spoiler, but that is one pretty green fiero. Mine was actually a bit darker of a green. There was a pic of an electric fiero floating around that had a similar color. Mine also had grey / dark interior (I think its original color was red if that helps).

I am going to reach out to the fierofarm guy as that is a pretty good lead I hadnt tried yet. For the carfax, it MIGHT work however, I've been hesitent to spend the $40 on it. There are other searches I can do similar to theirs; there is a national database where they actually get their info from which I have searched, and according to that it never had another legal owner after me OR has never legally been registered in a junk yard. In other words, I'm about 99% sure the carfax would stop with me as the last owner.

I will say this though, the support here and ideas are hugely welcome. I've done a fairly extensive search on my own so far and any idea is a good one at this point.

As I said, I dont have many pictures that survived from when I had it, however.. when I was rebuilding the engine I did take a couple for some odd reason. This shows the color

*edit* found a couple of pics. The second one is a scan of a bad poloroid so the color is really bad. The first one shows the true color




found another pic of it

[This message has been edited by justin87 (edited 04-26-2019).]

copperhens APR 30, 06:53 AM
I read your post a little bit ago and it’s been in the back of my mind. Is it possible I’ve found your car? I found a picture on Instagram of two Fieros. The one has a green bumper just like your old car and hasdome flaky red paint showing up. Maybe it came off of your old car? The bumper should have a VIN. I can’t attach a picture because I’m on mobile... Here is a link to a better picture of car. https://www.instagram.com/p...igshid=br6tqp44y7e4.
wftb APR 30, 08:29 AM
That is not an 87 GT. Keep looking and good luck. Maybe go back to where you left it and see if it just got pushed in to the backyard.
copperhens APR 30, 09:20 AM

quote
Originally posted by wftb:

That is not an 87 GT. Keep looking and good luck. Maybe go back to where you left it and see if it just got pushed in to the backyard.



I know, but the aero nose could be off his old Fiero.
justin87 APR 30, 11:07 AM
Its funny, the original color of mine WAS red. (i know this, not from the pics I posted, but from other areas where the paint had flaked a bit. Oddly enough it had a similar paint pattern with the white and red like this one. He is correct that this is most likely an aero nose from an 87, although if you look closely it is probably not mine. This one is more blue than the greenish mine was. (like i said, the pics dont do the color justice. It was one of those colors that looked slightly different depending on the light it was in. Completely green in one light, almost blue in another). Also, I would guess that if it were parted out with the paint chipping on this one, it would have the same paint damage on the front drivers bumper.

But dang man.. this is pretty darned close. Stuff like this gives me hope!




actually... on second thought.. was the aero nose all one piece? is it possible that the upper was mine and the bottom gray part was another?
been so long I dont remember. That particular injury on mine came from a wayward curb (hey.. I was a teenager) but I do remember pulling it off and quite literally stepping on the dent to make a 'whomp' - tupperware like sound when the dent popped out. Man, you gotta love that plastic or whatever it was called they used. Maybe I should try to contact this guy and ask nicely if he can check the VIN on the bumper

[This message has been edited by justin87 (edited 04-30-2019).]