“Bob Dorn was the chief engineer of Pontiac , and he called me in September of '83,” Callies said. Dorn told Callies, then-manager of Special Events Engineering at Pontiac , ‘‘We’re going to be the pace car at Indy.”
“The Fiero was definitely on the tail end of the cars being prototype,” Bartemeyer said. “Not too long after that, there started being production cars with very light modifications. Technology progressed enough that we didn't need to modify them too much.”“Everything was going great,” Callies said. “I was up to speed and came off turn four and the transmission broke, engine fell back, but I didn't crash my test car, luckily.
Callies himself led the “Field of 33" to the green flag on May 27, 1984. It was the first time a pace car powered by a four-cylinder engine led the field since Carl Fisher piloted a four-cylinder Stutz in 1912. Bartemeyer says that in 1997, a curator at the GM Heritage Center restored the car to the way it was on race day. Indy Fiero 1 remains in the Heritage Center collection today.
“When PPG was finished with the car, they sent it back to back to the GM fleet and General Motors donated it to the Chicago Science and Industry Museum,” Bartemeyer said.
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