Here Are Some Of The Craziest Cars Made Out Of A Pontiac Fiero, And Here’s One More That I Just Designed

Dreams can often turn into nightmares.

Take the internet as an example. When techno geeks envisioned the World Wide Web years ago, they imagined an open-sourced platform where everyone could share ideas instantly, and security concerns were nearly nil. Why passcode things and limit people’s ability to freely access everything and build on what had already been learned, free of charge? These early developers never imagined that the whole thing would end in phishing scams, sketchy dating sites and, worst of all, tech bros.

The Pontiac Fiero was, in some ways, another ill-conceived dream. When General Motor’s commuter-concept-turned-sports-car was introduced in late 1983, they probably didn’t realize that they’d made the ultimate modular platform to rather easily allow third parties to completely change the looks of the car in a limited amount of time.

Sure, there were already kits made in the past that let you remove the bodywork from something like a Volkswagen Beetle and make it look like a dune buggy or sports car, but the Fiero didn’t require nearly as much effort. Forget Sawzalls and angle grinders: the body panels just unclipped or unbolted and could be replaced without disturbing any mechanical systems.

We’ve shown this before, but the system was demonstrated on the auto show circuit during 1984 with the “Fiero Triplets” doing an admittedly simplified demonstration of how this worked:

Now, I’m pretty sure that Pontiac’s dream was for easy replacement of the dent-proof body panels in case there was damage or to renew badly weathered pieces; they never intended for anyone to use this process the Triplets demonstrated so well to make the Fiero look like something that wasn’t a Fiero. Personally, I liked virtually all of the different factory Fiero body styles that existing from 1984 up until the bitter end four years later and wouldn’t want to change it.

However, like the internet, that dream of removable body panels got distorted into some rather unfortunate looking creations you’ll be able to view in this post. Was there any way that these outside sources might have changed the styling of Pontiac’s little sports car and not screwed it up? I’m not sure, but we’re going to take a wild journey and look at as many as we can stomach; then we’ll make an even stranger one of our own. Hold on.

Faux-rarri Anyone?

The cottage automotive industry was known for doing things like sticking Rolls-Royce-style grilles on Volkswagen Beetles or putting neoclassic bodies onto Corvettes; making “aspirational” cars that looked like cars well beyond the realm of affordability of the average buyer. Naturally, when some of these firms saw the mid-engined Pontiac, their knee-jerk reaction was like to make it look like the ultimate, iconic status symbol exotic cars of day — a Ferrari.

Possibly the best known of these was called the MERA by Corporate Concepts in Michigan. Oddly enough, these were actually sold by some Pontiac dealers in period. To most casual observers this thing actually did look a fair amount like a Ferrari 308GTS; so much so that the Maranello firm delivered a cease-and-desist letter to the MERA’s creators; I would imagine it was by guys in black suits and sunglasses that quietly but sternly told Corporate Concepts that they should seriously consider doing something else with their lives.

Here’s a real one for comparison:

If you’re an enthusiast with a more refined eye, you’ll pick up telltales like the proportions of the door, the vents that inexplicably flip up with the headlights and the dissimilar bumpers, yet the appearance of this ruse was good enough for most people that many aftermarket companies let the fiberglass fumes muddle their vision and go off the rails and do many, many more.

Let’s take the Aldino, a replica of the larger Ferrari 512BB Berlinetta Boxer. Now you’ve got something that even a vision-impaired individual could see was way off.

Not that you need it (hopefully), but here’s a side-by-side comparison of the original and the ripoff; the Aldino’s creators should have known that this was a bad idea simply by a napkin sketch and tape measure before investing in the tooling. If I need to label which is which below, you should a.) probably go look at another post or b.) go buy one of these kits since you’ll be quite happy with the results of this cut-rate facsimile.

Once other builders saw this “Aldino”, they realized how bad the idea was and didn’t try to make another Boxer out of a squatty little Fiero again. Nah, I’m just kidding! The Corson Motor Company decided to make exactly the same mistake with their own Devito-in-a-Deniro costume replica of this iconic Ferrari. I want to order that brochure, build manual and VHS Video for forty bucks:

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Apparently messing up Fieros was a global thing. Here’s a Testarossa kit by a company in the Midlands of the UK of all places, the rather stumpy looking “Fierossa”:

Another fake Ferrari is a bit of a mishmash of Testarossa with F40 and with a lot of “show biz” added in for good measure by a repeat offender you’ll see in this post. A company PISA was known for making customized Fiero parts and at one point (the website is still active) offered about half a dozen wild rebody kits for the Pontiac P-Car, including this one called the XTC/gt. If you know the aroma of fiberglass, you can just smell this picture:

Here’s an F40 replica by a different firm that comes off a bit like one of those bodies that fit over a lawn mower powered go-cart. You can almost see a kid’s head sticking out of the roof in this thing:

How about the F40’s successor? The sort of shoe-like Ferrari F50? Here’s the original:

You can bet that someone has made a Fiero version of that rare Ferrari as well. This one has the look of those off-brand Matchbox-sized cars you’ll see at drug stores where the details are too rounded and out of place.  If I thought that the F50 looked a bit too much like a shoe, then the replica below looks a lot like a Croc:

Not a true Ferrari tifosi? How about a different Italian exotic?

Fier-borghini

It’s hard to imagine a lower, wider and longer supercar than a Lamborghini; I certainly don’t think “Fiero” when I picture the dimensions of Sant’Agata’s finest. No, something with sizing and proportions of a Fiat X1/9 doesn’t seem like it would translate well to becoming a Diablo, yet that didn’t stop some geniuses from spending countless hours proving how bad that idea is.

The aforementioned Fiero desecrator PISA made a Lamborghini Diablo replica called the Artero where the relative accuracy of the details only goes to accentuate the Shrinky-Dink distortion of the commuted length. Is the prescription off with my glasses? It’s like I’m looking at a Diablo through a thick glass vase.

I’m not sure if the truncated styling of this Gallardo ripoff is the worst thing about it or if it’s the name: the Lizardo. Really.

No, these aren’t fooling anyone.

You Couldn’t Get A Real One?

It’s one thing to try to make an affordable version something that’s financially out of reach, but a few of these providers made Fiero kits to replicate cars that make one seriously question why they didn’t just get the damn thing they were copying in the first place.

Take this yellow monstrosity is ostensibly supposed to be a Porsche 911, but bears a far stronger resemblance to the smaller mid-engined Boxster. Maybe things were different when this kit debuted, but today I’m pretty sure that you can get an actual old Boxster for the same if not less money than a mint Fiero GT that gave its life for this mess.

PISA is at it again! This time it’s something called the ZR-2, a tribute to a much larger car with the motor in a totally different place than the Fiero: the ZR-1 Corvette. Once again, you might not be able to purchase that special edition of Corvette for old Fiero money but you could easily buy nice non-ZR1 C4 ‘Vettes all day long for the same cash. Believe me, I have a friend with a nice condition ’87 Fiero GT that I’ve driven; cool car, but I promise you’ll want a C4 or old Boxster instead.

Now You’re Just Getting Silly

We’ve shown that trying to make a Fiero into a car that it has little in common with is ill advised. What about companies that made unique creations that weren’t supposed to be copies of anything existing? Those should be better, right? Well, not exactly.

Our old friend PISA offered to make your Fiero into a totally unique-looking exotic called the Scorpion. At least, I don’t think it’s supposed to emulate anything out there, though the headlight assemblies from a 1992 Cutlass and 1992 Celica taillights are inescapably identifiable to car anoraks like myself.

Overall, it isn’t as bad as some of the others, but once again it’s a design that was clearly intended for a significantly longer car.

The same is true of this one-off “Fiero Fianle” that someone in England created, which is sort of Ferrari inspired but still unique. From some angles like this, it looks as if the shape is almost going to work:

Ah, but one look at the side and it’s clearly a comically truncated doorstop like a kid’s toy. The door handles also show how glued-on those outer skins are. I also dig the big rectangular yellow logos that look so familiar:

If nothing else, at least it has enough taillights:

I have no clue as to what this “custom” thing below that was for sale some time back is supposed to be, though it looks a bit like a distorted version of the Dodge “Wraith” that Charlie Sheen drove in the movie of the same name. There’s snow on the ground, so this thing looks to be wearing heavy mittens on its mirrors, and possibly they slid into a concrete curb at some point since the telltale cracks on that vulnerable nose has obviously already needed to be Superglued back in place:

Hey, who could forget the Zimmer Quicksilver? This was possibly what people of the eighties thought a “neoclassic” car of the year 2000 would look like. It’s been forty years, and I still have no clue as to what this thing was supposed to be:

Good Lord, what is this thing below? Supposedly a Fiero is under there somewhere. The ad says it was “built by a 30-year GM employee holding the position of Associate Design Engineer and Car Fabricator.” Notice that sentence does not include the word “designer” anywhere in it.

The only way you could make a poor Fiero any stranger would be to turn it into something totally unsuited to a sports car made of parts derived from family sedans. Maybe an off-roader? Are you kidding?

Fier-aptor?

Yes, if you thought PISA couldn’t top the odd FrankenFieros you’ve seen so far, hold on to your lunch because here’s the delightfully named Jalapeno, a Dakar-style Fiero with a Jeep-like face, lift kit, and partial roll cage.

This thing is absurd. How can you not love it? Besides, you know how we’ve complained that essentially all of these kits I’ve presented so far have ignored the Fiero’s tight wheelbase and compact overhangs? The Jalapeno flat out embraces those qualities.

One came up for sale some time back with T-tops, so you can see that they got some use out of the molds by making more than one.

This Jalapeno is so outrageous that it flips the script on the whole rebody thing; it works because, like the Meyers Manx dune buggies, it’s such a departure from the car it started life as and doesn’t try to be anything that already exists.  Could this, in all honestly, be the most successful of all the Fiero rebodies? Maybe we can try another one?

Say Hello To The Sriracha

The automotive scene is not immune to strange and inexplicable trends; it’s hard to find any logical reasoning for things like “donks”, “Carolina squat” trucks or “stanced” vehicles with nearly-horizontal wheels. Another recent one is making “rally inspired” versions of exotic cars and sports machines that would seem to have no business being overlanders. The Porsche Dakar can at least lay claim to having a competition version to relate to, but now we see oddities like the Lamborghini Hurican Sterrato and even concepts of Mustang Raptors sitting lifted on beefy tires.

Oddly enough, then, that funky PISA Jalapeno off-road-sports car was ahead of its time. If you forced me to make a Fiero rebody, I’d lean into the silly and make a contemporary “Dakar” Fiero, the Sriracha. As fun as the Jalapeno is, I’d want to create something that retains far more of its “Fieroness” than the PISA version that looks as if it was made from leftover Wrangler parts.

My Fiero Raptor would use a recent SEMA show concept as inspiration. I could even keep the existing hood and flip up lights from the donor car (if they could be painted). We’d add wild flared fenders to accommodate wide rolling stock, and the new door skins feature recessed areas that simulate the perforated metal pan “net” doors of hard-core off roaders but, in fact, would not be transparent at all (they’d be opaque full door skins to conceal the standard roll up windows, with the stock outside door handle in the same place). A skid plate and tow hooks sit below the new “bumper”, and a fascia panel with LED driving lights and repositioned stock turn signals still has the classic Pontiac “split grille.” A raised roof “targa” bar with lights hides the roll cage structure that’s exposed at the back.

Yes, that’s a Fiero under there, as my animation proves (pay attention to the hood and the glass):

From the back view, you can tell why there are no lights in the middle of that “targa bar” on the Sriracha; that’s an air intake similar to what was used on the 1984 Fiero Pace Car. Stock taillights would live below the rear bodywork, and the factory side marker lights would have cavities in the body panels to be repositioned to.

Too bad it’s only rear drive, but dune buggies were quite capable with only one drive axle. The only other option is to offer a battery pack and motor up front in the old truck area as a hybrid drive system to complement the gasoline-powered rear drivetrain.

The Sriracha makes no more sense than that Sterrato, but if that kind of unholy mashup is your thing the kit here could give you something similar but with its own identity for a fraction of the cost with the mere addition of an old Fiero and around 80 hours of your spare time.

We Have Freedom, But At What Price?

Look, it’s not like the original Pontiac Fiero’s styling is something that couldn’t be improved upon. The problem is that that very few that have taken on the task of bettering it have paid enough attention to the overall dimensions and proportions of the basic car; they need to understand what makes the most sense with these parameters. Far too often, you have people that probably have no business styling a car try squeeze and stretch some well-known dream machine’s aesthetic and plop the panels onto this Pontiac’s bare steel frame. With fewer and fewer Fieros on the road today, it’s a shame to destroy them like this.

Ultimately, the conclusion that we can draw from all of this ill-advised fiberglass work is that the best looking Fiero bodies are the ones that they left the factory with. Imagine that?