I now understand that Rick’s not talking about actual Fieros, but what could have been if they went with a complete redesign in 1989, new car, new engine, etc. Yes, they could have built a ‘Fiero’ that could have competed with a Corvette. But the cost? Why do it if the existing plant was way under capacity, leading to huge overhead costs per unit. Price it like a Corvette? Very few sales. Undercut the Corvette? Lose money and also hurt GM’s pride and joy. And who knows how good, overall, it really would have been?
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Yes, much like in my life i was talking about what could have been, not what actually was.
@Old-Days-Rick ‘s Fiero needs to have leaf springs, drum brakes all around and a 1barrel carburetor
And not transverse leaf springs
Longitudinal leaf springs, like in a truck
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Or a proper 70s car. What about a nice monoleaf suspension? Unlike saggy coil springs
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I’ve seen comments about how GM’s monoleaf springs were prone to sag.
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… and to being deformed in other ways. Surely I can’t be the only forum member who saw a LOT of mid-late '60s Chevy Novas that were crab-walking after a few years because of their deformed monoleaf rear springs. There are multi-leaf replacements available.
Warning, this ended up wayyyy longer than I had planned, but it tells kinda the story…
This was back in 2001 and I saw the writing on the walls, I got out quick once I saw everything that was happening (I left after 9 months), not to much after I left U-Haul corp came in to our Madison branch, the main center for middle TN and cleaned house, I think they did in the Hendersonville (main body shop in TN), fired every manager and restructured everything, including moving the body shop to the Madison location, and turning the H’ville center into a huge storage center… It wasn’t long before something went down and they got in trouble or something and the parent company or whoever filled for bankruptcy… Anyway, it was a big mess to say the least…
I would say I needed a push rod and rocker arm for their F/E 350 diesel engine and a new valve cover cause it would break a rocker arm and shove the pushrod through the valve cover, so they would order a complete new head, I would use what I needed and take the brand new head back to the parts department, they said just throw it in the dumpster, wouldn’t send it back to be rebuilt by the company, back then anyway, U-Haul bought just a cab and chassis (running truck) and would build everything else in house, lots of U-Haul only designs and parts, I remember one of the older trucks designs had a custom U-Haul only built starter that not even the dealer could get, and they would assembly heads fully loaded and drum brakes at least on the medium duty truck, where built backing plate out, all 16" wheels/tires would interchange as well as the 19.5’ wheels/tires, Goodyear had the contract, if a tire went low for any reason, they gave you a wheel w/new tire already mounted to put on, I only remember them at the time having 1 16" size and 1 19.5" size that fit all the trucks, with maybe the Toyota 1 ton box trucks having their own wheel/tire, they were totally different, the Toyota trucks didn’t have the ramp…
Remember the Ford V10’s blowing out spark plugs, us engine guys got brand new head(s) to put on, and you threw the old one in the dumpster, all they needed was thread inserts… lol…
The reason they had so many break downs back then was because when a truck came in, the center had to have that truck ready to go in a week or something, or be fined $100.00 a day it sat there until repaired, lot normally had around 100 trucks on the lot, I always had 10-20 trucks waiting in line for something, sometimes more cause I was the only one that could repair steering columns at the time, and all though I was ONLY hired in to do engine work, they soon found out I did it all, so I always had my bays full, I was also the only one that had more than one bay, I had 2 full time bays, and 1 extra if needed… The PM guys had 2 to 4 guys per bay and the brake guys shared a bay and 2 worked on a truck at a time, but I never got help… I “stole” the forklift one time cause I had to put a rear-end in the big diesel manual shift truck (biggest they had) with no help… Anyway, so if a truck that was broke down or whatever sat to long waiting to be repaired, they would get it running long enough to rent it out, the truck wouldn’t make it that far most of the time and they would put the customer in a different truck and tow it back and the timer started all over again, I remember that went on for a few months on a Toyota that would no start randomly, long story but I finally fixed it once they gave up and asked me to look at it… lol
Of course, no money every changed hands, it was all paperwork to show what was being done or not done…
But the company would just cost themselves money for stu-pid stuff… It was crazy… Now they keep all new(er) nice trucks… but back about 25 years ago, most of the trucks were old out dated and junk… A lot of the work I did was because the PM guys screwed something up, left something loose (like lug nuts, spark plugs etc), or whatever…
I used to say, if renting local, rent a U-Haul, if not local or one way, rent anything else… I think our on the road repair guys could go 200 miles or something like that, I think we only had 4 and they had their own sections , we handled multiple states for any major repairs back then… I don’t have a clue how they operate now a days…
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