General Motors discontinued the Pontiac brand on Halloween, 2010, a terrible trick with no treat. The Great Recession forced the automaker’s hand, ending the legacy that gave America its first mass-produced mid-engine sports car, the Fiero. Subpar reliability and disappointing performance saw it quickly shelved, but those didn’t limit its popularity. So, it should be no surprise that 30-plus years later, the Fiero still fascinates.
There’ve been some renderings of what a Fiero could look like if Pontiac were still around producing cool cars, and the latest comes from wb.artist20 on Instagram. The original Fiero is quintessentially 80s in its styling, with its pop-up headlights, knife-edged nose, and a copious amount of plastic. It’s a car that only the 80s could have birthed, and translating those features onto a modern vehicle isn’t easy.
The rendering retains much of the Fiero’s original styling, though, keeping the pointed front end, but replacing the pop-up headlights with thin-slit units. The sloping C-pillar remains as does the truncated rear end and spoiler, along with the rear fender garnish behind the door. The greenhouse looks borrowed from the Camaro, but if the Pontiac Fiero were around today, it’d likely borrow from the new C8 Corvette instead.
The red accents in the front of the low, wide grille, along with those on the leading edge of the front splitter, are nice touches, as is the asymmetrical black stripe and red accent strip, which is copied onto the car’s lower door and front fenders. We can see hints of the Chevy Monte Carlo, too.
Pontiac produced nearly 400,000 Fieros between 1984 and 1988, and today the model has a rabid, almost cult-like, following. It’s unlikely we’ll see the Pontiac brand return, which puts any possibility of a Fiero successor squarely in the hands of an alternate universe while we salivate over the possibilities.
