Javillac
The 80's were a golden age for Ferrari in popular culture, with cars of this brand with leading roles in successful television series such as Corruption in Miami o Magnum PI, appearing in the latter Tom Selleck at the wheel of a 308 GTS.
This time coincided with the presentation of the Pontiac Fiero, one of the most peculiar products of General Motors to date. It was a two-seater sports car introduced for the 1984 season that had a rear-wheel drive, mid-engine configuration.
We are talking about a vehicle that was offered with 4-liter inline 2,5-cylinder mechanics and a 6-liter V2,8, thus positioning itself as a cheaper alternative to the Chevrolet Corvette. The strategy worked and the result was 370.000 units manufactured between 1983 and 1988.
PONTIAC FIERO: BASE FOR EXOTIC REPLICAS
Since its launch, and thanks to its particular mid-engine configuration, together with an affordable and reasonable price, the Pontiac Fiero became the ideal car to make replicas of exotic sports cars like Ferrari and Lamborghini, continuing this practice even to this day.
With the arrival in 1985 of the most prestacional Pontiac Fiero GT with a 6-horsepower V140 engine, Bob Bracey, owner of a company called Corporate Concepts, decides to make a copy of some flashy Fiero-based sports car. After searching for candidates for what would be the ideal car to replicate, they finally opted for the popular Ferrari 308.
It took two years and several clay designs for the first converted car to arrive. He Pontiac Mere, which is how the Corporate Concepts product would be named, It would have a fiberglass body and would arrive in 1987.. In that first year alone, approximately 88 cars were transformed. The Mera of that year used the same wheels as the Fiero GT, but painted in the same color as the body.
In 1988, Pontiac begins to offer a new variant of the Fiero, the Formula. This car offered many of the features of the Fiero GT in a coupé body, including the V6 engine, but at a cheaper price. For this reason from that year the Mera would be assembled on the basis of the new Pontiac Fiero Formula.
For the 1988 Mera it would be offered as an extra some aluminum wheels that had been manufactured by the Italians of Cromodora. These were also the suppliers of Ferrari wheels, which only increased the resemblance between Pontiac and Ferrari.
THE PONTIAC THAT ANGRY FERARI
Although the Meras were built by an outside company, they were officially sold at Pontiac dealerships only as a new car. The price was not cheap at all, ranging between 24.000 and 28.000 dollars, depending on the options, which made a Mera end up costing almost the same as a Corvette, but it would be much cheaper than a Ferrari 308.
As soon as the existence of this car reached the ears of Ferrari, they did their best to cease its manufacture. The aesthetics of the 308 and the Mera were practically identical, so from Maranello filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Port Huron, Michigan (USA). Ferrari denounced the resemblance, not only to the 308, but also to the newer 328.
The courts agreed with the Italian brand, so the production of the Mera had to stop. In any case, the trial took place in 1988, the same year in which production of the Pontiac Fiero ceased, a fact that definitively forced to end the replica.
Ultimately, it is estimated that another 159 cars were built on the basis of the Fiero Formula, raising production to a total of 247 Mera, although the total figures are not entirely clear. Thus ended the story of this peculiar Pontiac based on the Fiero, which could well have been called ""Fierari."
