Supercharged 3800: 1988 Pontiac Fiero GT
Many years ago I hiked to the top of a very tall mountain. In a small hut at the peak lived a small hermit who could answer one question to those who hiked the summit. Of course, I asked him, “What is the best engine ever made?” and he answered, “The Buick Fireball V6”. It took me some time to realized why he said what he said, but the Buick V6 (aka the 3800) was built from 1961 through 2008 and put into over 25 million automobiles. The design was upgraded over the years with fancier fuel injection and superchargers, but the core was basically the same cast iron block and cast iron two-valve cylinder heads. Today we’ve got a supercharged version in a Fiero for some fun. Find this 1988 Pontiac Fiero offered for $6,500 in SF Bay Area, CA via craigslist. Tip from Rock On!
From the seller:
1988 PONTIAC FIERO
fuel: gas
odometer: 2,000,000
title status: clean
transmission: manual
Last of it’s year. Best of it’s year.
1988 Pontiac Fiero with 1999 3800 Series II Super Charged.
Manual 5speed.Clean Title.
Registration is current.
Car is driving and insured.Coilovers and Big Brake Kit.
Any specific question, please ask.
Happy Fieroing….
See a better way to drive something blue? tips@dailyturismo.com
Wow, I did not expect the paint color in that last photo. What a terrific looking car. Maybe a Lotus Esprit that runs?
I would be super interested to hear from anybody who has driven a Fiero and an Esprit. As a Fiero owner I would be amazed if the Esprit didn’t handle significantly better.
Agree 100% on the color. I would love to get a set of those wheels they look perfect and would open up tire availability. Mine is still on OEM wheels and the tire selection is slim pickings :(
These 3800 swaps are also really normal, the only issue is those front side spark plugs are a bear to access. That is half the reason I went with a Honda K20 swap, it likely will not break, but if it does access is amazing.
Being an ’88, this does at least have the final-year revised steering, brakes and suspension, which some have observed bears a striking resemblance to Lotus designs, tho’ apparently it was what Pontiac engineers had intended for the Fiero all along from the outset, before they had to cheap-out by adapting existing T- and X-platfiorm components to get production green-lit at all.
As to why GM would approve such major upgrades for one year only, they didn’t, at least not intentionally. The second-generation Fiero was then late in development, mostly a rebody of the existing spaceframe incorporating the suspension/brakes/steering revisions, which were already finalized and tooled-up, and thus readily transferable to Gen1 Fiero production.
They decided to roll out those updates as a preview of better things to come, hoping to goose sales and build hype for the pending Gen2 Fiero. Alas, sales volume for ’88 actually continued to plummet, so GM pulled the plug on launch of the Gen2 Fiero in the eleventh hour.
Are we just going to gloss right over the fact that it has TWO MILLION miles on it? 😳😅😅
I mean that makes it MORE valuable, right?!?
Supercharged stick shift my wife would be trying to use that extra pedal on the passenger side as a brake pedal
I know that song, except that the question was “what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart” and never references an engine. Or does it?
This Fiero is the bomb.
https://youtu.be/cUfIKX5ReKQ