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Junkyard Gem: 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT

If you like affordable, mid-engined two-seaters, the 1980s were your decade. Fiat (and, a bit later, Bertone) offered the X1/9, Toyota sold MR2s, and even General Motors got into the act by creating the Fiero. Available from the 1984 through 1988 model years, the Pontiac Fiero showed plenty of promise but ended up being mostly disappointing, in some ways echoing the career of the Chevy Corvair of a couple of decades earlier. Today's Junkyard Gem is a once-spiffy 1986 Fiero GT, found in a self-service yard near Denver, Colorado. After a long and painful development period stretching all the way back to John DeLorean's XP-833 Banshee (which ended up being a major influence behind the original Opel GT), the Fiero finally debuted in 1983 as a 1984 model. The top-of-the-model-range GT appeared the following year. The Fiero was built as a notchback coupe and as a fastback, with all the GTs being the latter type. I couldn't get the engine lid open, but this car would have left the assembly line (in Pontiac, Michigan) with a 2.8-liter V6 rated at 140 horsepower. This car has a five-speed manual transmission, making it a credible rival for Toyota's MR2.  The 1986 MR2 was less powerful than the Fiero GT (112 horsepower versus 140), but also scaled in significantly lighter (2,459 pounds against the Pontiac's 2,780 pounds). The MR2 also cost less, priced at $11,298 while the Fiero GT cost $12,875 (that's about $30,540 and $34,805, respectively, in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars). Meanwhile, the $6,998 Honda Civic CRX two-seater lured away many potential Fiero buyers despite being a front-engined/front-wheel-drive car, and the $7,186 Ford EXP/Mercury LN7 also put a dent in Fiero sales. I can't find a price for the 1986 Bertone X1/9, but it cost a hard-to-believe $13,990 in 1984. GM still was using five-digit odometers in many vehicles by the middle 1980s, but this Fiero has a six-digit unit and thus we can see that it nearly achieved 150,000 miles during its driving career. The 1984-1987 Fiero suffered from a parts-bin suspension design, with the front suspension borrowed from the Chevrolet Chevette and the entire rear transaxle/suspension assembly lifted from the front end of the Chevrolet Citation. For the 1988 model year, GM finally spent the money to design an improved Fiero-specific suspension … and then promptly put a halt to production.

Rumormill: DeLorean Motor Company considering rescuing Pontiac Solstice?

DeLorean Motor Company Pontiac Solstice renderings - Click above for high-res image gallery
General Motors has made a science out of sharing platforms. So when the company's Kappa platform was introduced for a new rear-drive roadster to be distributed across three different motor divisions, you'd have figured the program was pretty safe, right? Unfortunately for the workers at the Wilmington Assembly Plant which manufactured the Kappa roadsters, those three divisions were Pontiac, Saturn and Opel - three units which the General has either sold or shut down. Which is a shame, because a perfectly good rear-drive roadster platform is a heck of a thing to waste.
In one of the strangest rumors we've heard recently, however, our compatriots over at Jalopnik report that the DeLorean Motor Company (yes, that DeLorean Motor Company) is considering buying the plant and the platform from GM and putting it back into production as a new DMC.

Junkyard Gem: 2007 Pontiac G6 GT Convertible

GM's Pontiac Division sold its first convertibles during the 1927 model year (just a year after the division's creation), then proceeded to offer memorable drop-tops for most of the following 83 years. The best-selling convertible to bear Pontiac badges during our current century was the retractable-hardtop-equipped G6, available from the G6's introduction in 2006 through the second-to-last model year of 2009 (the Sunfire convertible was available just through 2000, while the Firebird convertible vanished with the demise of the slow-selling Firebird itself after 2002). Here's one of those G6 GT convertibles, found in a Denver-region boneyard after a crash ended its driving career. Mashed right front, popped airbags. This sort of damage might have been worth repairing in 2009, but not today. The 2007 G6 was available as a coupe, sedan, or convertible. All the convertibles had the GT trim level and the 3.5-liter V6 and its 224 horsepower. The MSRP on this car was $28,750 (about $42,325 in 2022 dollars), making it the most expensive G6. The power hardtop roof folded up into the trunk, leaving 1.8 cubic feet of trunk storage space with the top down. This Karmann-designed roof system made the interior much quieter than that of a traditional soft-top convertible. All G6s were built at Orion Assembly in Michigan, where Chevy Bolts are born today. The G6 was built through the 2010 model year, making it one of the very last Pontiac models (the Vibe also made it to 2010, though it was really a Toyota Matrix). In hindsight, 2007 turned out to be an ominous year for GM.