AutoBlog: Gordon Murray, F1-driven production and .. the Pontiac Fiero

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Filed under: Motorsports,McLaren,Mercedes-Benz,Pontiac,Automotive History,Coupe,Performance,Racing

Hulki Aldikacti and his team on the Pontiac Fiero created what might have been an engineering approach well ahead of its time.

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Gordon Murray, F1-driven production and .. the Pontiac Fiero originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[Frosty]

In the summer of 1982, I was a summer intern working at AC Spark Division. The division set up a tour of the Pontiac Fiero plant for all of us interns prior to us departing back to our respective colleges.

I particularly remember the "drill and mill" machine. The space frame of the Fiero would go into this massive cage. Automated drills, from all directions, would rise and drill holes into specific pads all over the space frame.

The resulting holes would be the screw holes for the plastic bodies panels. I recall the tour guide explaining that these pads and the drill holes were based on the "uncertainty principle", which at the time, was a novel thing to be using in the manufacturing process. Essentially that meant the probably of the hole would be 99.9% somewhere within the area of the pad, but you were uncertain exactly where until the hole was drilled.