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?
Supposedly, the Quicksilver was the result of Zimmer realizing that Baby Boomers weren’t really buying neoclassics like their parents and grandparents did, so the brief neoclassic fad of the 1970s and ’80s that made their Golden Spirit possible wasn’t going to be sustainable for much longer as their customer base edged out. It was an attempt at a somewhat more modern looking car that still had some traditional styling cues without trying to look like it came from before WWII
Like all Zimmers, at least the interior upgrades were legitimately nice, and exterior of the car was outside your field of view when sitting in the driver’s seat
They recovered all the cheap GM plastic parts on the dash, console, and door panels with leather and burled walnut, switched the steering wheel for a wood Nardi one, recovered the seats in leather, and redid the floor in thick wool pile carpeting, not sure if they added any extra sound deadening, but all of that was a major improvement over the stock Fiero’s insides, even if the exterior isn’t the most tasteful
Similar to what they did to the insides of Mustangs and Town Cars when making Golden Spirits, except I believe the Quicksilver kept the stock Pontiac seat frames instead of switching to Recaro units, and also didn’t get any crystal bud vases
I always thought of a Quicksilver as what a two seat Eldorado should have been – visually at least.
Ferrari really should have allowed accurate replica kits as long as they were paid a reasonable license fee.
Because the mutant kits like that F50, wearing the emblems but looking awful, probably in an attempt to avoid legal action, didn’t do Ferrari any favors.
It’s not like actual Ferrari customers would settle for the kits or be fooled, so Ferrari wouldn’t lose any sales but would get a bit of revenue.
It’d be like big Matchbox versions of Ferraris.
I mean, you could buy Shelby Corba kits all day long and it didn’t affect the value of a real one. But, I will say that even when a see a real Porsche Speedster I just assume that it’s a kit.
As a Fiero owner I would love a body kit that improved the looks from a designer who accepted the size of the actual car. All the current kits take larger cars and try to shrink the design, it never works.
Platform wise they are begging for someone to design 2 tube subframes that use modern parts to improve the handling. Mine has a K20 powering it, but it still has the terrible 80′ GM handling. Since both the front and rear subframes are from the GM front wheel drive catalog they both suck. It feels like some 90’s or early 00’s stuff from Japan being used for knuckles and suspension would be ideal. Find something that would work front and back to limit the number of unique parts needed and design it to actually corner and stop really well and you could create a really capable car.
Yeah, I think PISA came the closest, and gets props for actually doing original designs, but clearly could have still benefited from keeping more of an awareness of proportions
I actually like the original nose of the Fiero better than the later rounded one on the GT which chopped off the black trim that went all the way around the original car; they just terminate it in ‘spears” that look unfinished.
Also, the rear windows that are outside of the car seemed like a poor solution. I’ve seen kits where they leave it open and I actually like it better.
I recall being fooled more than once by a Mera at first glance from afar in olden times. They actually looked pretty good, especially with knock off Ferrari five star wheels. . If you weren’t aware of the cars they were attempting to emulate the Fierossa and Artero don’t loo bad either, and the Zimmer works proportionally in the context of a small mid-engined pimpmobile. The Pisa is a bit clunky but interesting, but the rest look like cell splicing attempts gone horribly wrong. Out of all of these the only one I would admit under my crowded carport is the Zimmer however.
You’d look good in one of those, Carlos. Like a pimp with an eye towards contemporary style.
In defense of the Aldino, overwrought aero was the rage at the time.
Hmmm. If you wanted to go replica along with off-roady, seems like a Lancia Stratos would fit OK with the Fiero’s size. Surprisingly, a really quick search did not turn up any Fiertos kits.
I thought the same thing. The chopped-off kamm tail? The proportions seem like they’d be spot-on.
I’m on my 3rd ’88 GT 5-speed (not all at the same time). I’ve always thought it would be funny to take a Ferrari 308 and put a Fiero body kit on it 🙂
I’d want to at least put the 3-liter V8 from the Ferrari into it.
I wonder if you could put a Ferrari V12 racing engine in a Fiero. One of the small V12s like a 1.5-2.0L.
The Quicksilver looks far, *far* better than it has any right to. The rear end is a little odd but it’s so well done that I could buy it being some smuggled design study that GM was thinking about for Cadillac. Until you look inside you don’t see the Fiero in it at all.
I have to admit, I love that all these body kits exist (also, thank you for the roundup). I don’t love the body kits themselves, just the idea that there are people out there willing to make these weird things, and other people willing to buy them.
It really is the dream of the modular car come true. Had the Fiero survived, I could see more of them.
Of course, it runs counter to most auto maker’s interests in that you could update the look of your car instead of buying a new one.
I kind of wondered why the Panther didn’t develop the same sort of kit car ecosystem that the VW Beetle did- they were built for over 30 years, the chassis changed some, but the body mounts all stayed the same throughout the run, body on frame is easier to rebody than a monocoque, and they sold like 10 million of them, which mostly depreciated pretty steeply
I guess they’re too big for the sorts of sports car style kits most people want, but the size also would have leant itself well to sort of retro 1940s and 50s designs.
The Beetle didn’t become the universal kit car donor because it was a perfect analog for an MGTD or 1920s Bugatti, it became that because it was cheap, available, and easy to rebody, all three are also true for the Crown Vic and Grand Marquis
I’d have gone for Lotus Europa or Esprit clones. The scale and proportions work better, I think.
I was JUST about to add an Esprit-inspire one from Quebec that I saw; sadly, it wasn’t much better than the others.
SHUT UP ABOUT THE QUICKSILVER! I want one to turn into a cool-ass Cyberpunk Anime ride XD, lowered on some turbofan wheels and a hot 3800SC with a 5 speed.
GETTHEHELLOUTTAMYHEAD!!!
Sigh. Gonna have to change the locks again.
Surprised there’s not a kit to make it look like a gokart
I love them all. No notes. I would like to see a body kit to make it look like a Miata, though.
This raises the question of whether anyone tried making body kits for any of GM’s other base unit vehicles? The “dustbuster” minivans, the Saturn S series, L Series, and first generation Vue all had the same bolt on body panels. Imagine a Chevy Lumina or Olds Silhouette given a full on Japanese space van treatment
I think the white Wraith wanna be is actually supposed to be a 80s Pontiac Banshee replica.
It does look a lot like that, but I was focusing on the lights and the vent details on the hood. Probably a mix of a few cars there!
I wonder how much it would cost to make the bishops design a reality…
That poorly-designed yellow racecar one reminds me very much of a Consulier GTP.
Consulier looks much better. There’s a statement I never, ever thought I’d make about abut a Consulier.
Having said that, if the creator actually has the experience he states then this thing likely is structurally stiffer than the original car, so hopefully it has that going for it.
It says ‘tube frame’ but the pictures don’t really show how much of it is tube-framed. I’m assuming the entire rear clip is a fabricated tube frame. He would have to do a bit of stretching to fit a 6.0 V8 the long way within the wheelbase.
I love the Consulier, but I do not think it’s a good-looking car.
I like the Sriracha! Don’t have use for a dune buggy, but it’d be a good use for a Fiero.
It’s inspired by the Chevy “Beast” form SEMA a few years back. That was based on a pickup and went nowhere, but you could very easily make a Fiero kit like this.
I’m so glad the C4 body kit was mentioned, because it is by far the dumbest one I have seen in real life. It looks goofy as heck, and it isn’t like a C4 Vette is hard or expensive to obtain, so the kit seems pointless even when it was new.
I swear there was a Sriracha-like Fiero on Roadkill, wasn’t there?!
I know that others have tried it, at least based on some of the Facebook posts I see.
It was from thr Roadkill nights episode where they kept trading cars, and it doesn’t look as much like your Sriracha as I remembered. https://www.reddit.com/r/Battlecars/comments/bzzawm/the_roadkill_guys_just_traded_their_jeep_truck/
I like where you went with your buggy design, but if it were my Fiero; I’d lean into KITT which your front end kind of reminds me of. Keep most of the major surfaces and just tweak the front and rear ends a bit, add a Larson Scanner, and lots of modern tech to the interior like and Android Auto head unit, and a tablet where the not-glovebox lives.
Powerwise I’d dump in a superchagred 3800 from a Regal GS, and handle computing duties with a Haltech plus their entire sensor suite, wheel speed for launch mode, traction control and cruise, ride height sensors for active torque managmeent, of course full engine vitals. Their digital dash would replace the old GM cruft. Full upgrade of all the suspension and brakes. Modern recreation of the bowling ball wheels by that guy in Canda that makes custom wheels.
You know for
1525 grand and some fiberglass it could be a very cool car…It’s like VW Beetles. Eventually they became too expensive to chop up, and soon Fieros might be the same.
If I won the lottery, I would buy a Zimmer Quicksilver. For me it skipped bad, skipped ironically cool and became something I would own.
The Quicksilver is by far the most attractive version of a kit Fiero. Which is kind of scary.
The last generation Fiero GT was a good looking car, all these kits just make it look like a cheap imitation of whatever it’s trying to imitate.
Since JT didn’t chime in with an editor’s note on this, I’ll point out that Ferrari used real Pontiac Fiero parts!
US-spec F40s had Fiero sidemarker lights, front and rear.
So THEY stole from Pontiac! Or maybe those were a peace offering for not having to crush the MERAs already sold.
Those were trophies, taken by the Ferraris after they killed Fieros, and worn to as a warning to others
The front end of the lizardo isn’t that bad imho. If they changed the back end I would rock it.
I would need a custom plate that says EMILIO (or WHORFIN)