There are two great regrets involved with the Pontiac Fiero. One is how well the car would have done if General Motors hadn’t been so cheap at the beginning of the program. Instead of actually building a small sports car that actually was sporty, GM feared Corvette sales cannibalization and instead tried to sell the Fiero as a small, efficient sports coupe. They also canned the idea of the car having it’s own suspension design, instead raiding other platforms to simply get the car out the door at the lowest cost possible. The second regret is what might have been…as the 1990 prototype Fiero demonstrated, GM was ready to give the car serious credentials and power after giving the car a real suspension in 1988. Everything from the Quad 4 to the Lumina Z34’s V6 was an option, and it was rumored that a Buick V6 with a turbo was tested at one point. 
This 1987 Fiero GT is one year off from the proper suspension, but don’t worry about that, a plethora of good parts were installed. Speaking of good parts installed, there’s the LT-1 V8 that was raided from a 1996 Chevrolet Corvette, mounted in the car via a V8 Archie adapter kit. The transaxle is a worked-over Getrag 282 five-speed unit running a Centerforce clutch and flywheel, and the axles are rated for over 800 horsepower. Add in everything else added on to make the systems work, and you end up with an answer to the Lotus Esprit V8 or the Ferrari 328: rear engine, V8, low and ready to run.
Zora Arkus-Duntov got to see his creation blossom and flourish. Hulki Aldikacti fought to have his sports car be as good as he could design it. He passed on in 2015, but we think he would enjoy this take on his pet project.
I’ve mentioned it here before, but there’s a guy running around in Tulsa that has a Northstar crammed in the back of his Fiero. He drives it, and shows it. It’s a beast.
These V8 Fieros have been around for more than 20 years. I built mine in 2000 with an Archie kit.
Ur showing ur age there bud…
3800 Stage 2 Supercharged is the ideal power to weight ratio/front to rear balance with these cars IMHO. Sad to hear that Hulki passed. I missed that. To one day meet him was on my bucket list. How frustrating it must have been for him to watch GM\’s bread and butter Chevy division stifle his creation\’s full potential. With the mid-engine Corvette getting so much fanfare, the attention bestowed on the Fiero may get a boost.
So many times GM killed Pontiac over fear of moving in on the vette. GM was what slowly killed the brand. They should\’ve sold the division off years ago so it would\’ve thrived
Wooden steering wheels are better suited to boats.
Enzo Ferrari would disagree.
Pontiac built a V8 Fiero and the GM Vette guys sh<t the bed and cancelled it. Pontiac and Oldsmobile were the innovative branches of GM, not Chevy. The Northstar was the precursor to the LS engine. GM manages to squash innovation at he other branches and shoot themselves in the foot. who knows how long they will survive now, gas is 4.00 a gallon in CA, not many Silverados being sold in a gas crunch and the diesels are 70k. In CA any truck over the one ton limit, (F450, Kodiak, ETC) is timed out at ten years by CARB and will not be allowed to be registered in the state.
I drove a 3.8L turbo’ed Buick engine Fiero I was considering buying – but it wasn’t the ’88 with the revised Lotus tuned suspension. Despite being blisteringly fast, the mediocre suspension had me walking away from it. If there was an aftermarket source for revising the earlier Fieros to the 1988 spec, I’d be all over one.
There are LS swapped Fieros roaming the streets out there. The one I saw on the powertour had the all aluminum LS from a impala SS mounted transversely on a Pontiac G6 transaxle. Looked totally stock.