Minneapolis Street Sighting: Pontiac Fiero 2M4

For a company known for driving excitement, many of their post-modern offerings were far from such; the Sunfire was no sports car, ditto the Grand Am and Grand Prix; to their credit, all of three of these nameplates did have sporting models, but a sports car? Nosirree. For that, you'd have to set your clocks back to 1984.

The idea of a mid-engine sports car produced by an American company was unheard of; the only companies doing the whole mid-engine thing in the mid 1980s were exotic makers, most notably Ferrari. In 1984 as well, Toyota introduced its mid-engined sports car, the MR2. Unlike the Fiero, the MR2 remains a hit with import tuners and car fanatics alike, whereas the Fiero is only liked in certain circles of enthusiasts. Both cars were derived from an idea to create a car that was fun, but retained decent fuel economy. Unfortunately for GM, that meant using a truck engine. The first Fieros were equipped the 2.5L four cylinder found in many of the auto giant's cars, but also under the hood of the newly launched S-10 and S-15 trucks.

Performance wasn't up to the car's sporting looks, and an uneven weight balance meant putting them on lifts to get serviced often resulted in the cars falling over ass-first, totaling them out.  Despite this little "glitch", the Fiero remained in production until 1988, when it received a fastback model that bore the GT nomenclature. Sadly, all these changes cam far too late, and the plug was pulled midway through 1988.

What we have here is a 2M4 model, which designates the four cylinder engine; likely not very fast, especially by today's standards, it still looks pretty good--especially for a near 30 year old car. I do admit the color is fairly drab, but remember, red meant "performance" in the 1980s--and still does today apparently. I can't really comment on the trim, since there really isn't much of it to begin with.

I do really like these wheels; I always have, to be honest. They were used on the Firebirds and Trans Ams, too, and a front-wheel drive version of this wheel was used on Grand Ams, and Sunbird models as well. I think they look great here, and on almost any stock application. To me, this wheel symbolizes the 1980s almost as much as Lincoln turbine wheels and the TRX wheels used on Ford products. It really can't get any better than this.

I've always loved Fieros, and one of my favorite aspects of the vehicle was the color-and-wheel combination. Apart from the obvious black or silver with this wheel, the red works too. And I'm not ashamed to say so.