Designed in the shadow of the 1970s energy crisis, Pontiac selected the Italian word for "proud" when naming the Fiero; a car which became too much of exactly what the GM bureaucracy didn't want, leading to it's cancelation in 1988. During it's brief run, the Fiero challenged the very notion of what an American car was, and it's ensuing cultural influence throughout the years has transcended it into cult classic status.
My favorite Fiero story: Phillip McCall, and his love for his 1983 Pontiac Fiero, in Scott Meyer's "Off To Be The Wizard"; where coders manipulate a hex file that runs all of reality, so Phillip permanently changed the "base rate of decay" variable to zero for his Fiero and "also gave it an unrealistic amount of power, because that's what you'd do. And it never ran out of gas." Pontiac goes on to try and buy the car back so they could tear it apart and figure out what they did right when building it, because it was "the only Fiero in existence that hasn't had to be brought in within the first year for some major repair", but Phillip declined, so a thief was dispatched to steal the car back; that thief then drives it through a brick wall without even scratching the paint after said wall fell on the car.
Watch Jason Cammisa's excellent video below on the history of the Pontiac Fiero for an entertaining ride down memory lane.
