The Grand Tour: Behind the Scenes of the Pontiac Fiero

The story of how Jeremy Clarkson acquired the Pontiac Fiero begins with a mix-up over ownership. "It doesn't belong to us, it belongs to that guy Dan," Jeremy explained. However, through his connections with Zoe, who's in charge of all the vehicles used on The Grand Tour, Jeremy managed to secure the car for their show.

The crew had done all the hard work on previous cars, including the stunts and car builds. They even made modifications such as washboard mods, flotation devices, and other "half-witted stuff" that had to be made to work. When it came time to film in Morania, Jeremy was excited to see how the car would perform.

From an engineer's perspective, Jeremy was impressed with the Pontiac Fiero's performance. It was a strong contender among the three cars featured on The Grand Tour, and Jeremy attributed its success to its faultless handling throughout the entire filming process. However, Jeremy did mention that the Maserati was his second choice if not for the fact that it had some technical issues.

The car had undergone some modifications before its arrival at The Grand Tour's location. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the tires were chunkier on this particular model than expected, causing a clash with the rear sill. To rectify this issue, the crew used a jigsaw to cut away part of the rear sill. However, further investigation revealed some potential issues, including a strong smell of fuel and what appeared to be a coolant leak.

As Jeremy continued to discuss his acquisition of the Pontiac Fiero, he shared that he had purchased it at a discounted price due to a crew discount. Despite its initial state, Jeremy was confident that with the expertise of his team, they would be able to restore the car to its former glory. The project would likely require some significant work, but Jeremy was undeterred and looked forward to getting started.

To keep fans updated on the progress of the Pontiac Fiero's restoration, Jeremy had set up an Instagram account dedicated to the car. Fans could follow along as the crew worked to bring the car back to its former glory. With Jeremy's involvement and expertise, it was clear that this project would be a labor of love for both him and his team.

In addition to the Pontiac Fiero, Jeremy mentioned that he had plans in place for upcoming episodes of The Grand Tour, including a plan to take on the DB9 again. When asked what Jeremy would do with his other cars, such as the Clarks and F-Type, he left it up to the viewers to speculate in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWe rescued the Aston Martin DB9 from The Grand Tour and thankfully another member of the squad has made it back from the Sahara welcome to Jeremy Clarkson's Jaguar ftype from The Grand Tour arguably the best car out of the three comment down below with what your opinion is of that the question today is is this car in as bad neck as Richard's ason at first glance the Jag doesn't look too bad but later in the video we'll be talking with one of the guys that built this ftype for the show to reveal all the damage and secrets that we haven't found for now let's have a quick walk around and see what's what with this Grand Tour car let's start at the front this car still has its big sump guard Richard didn't have that to give it more air for cooling but the ftype was let's say it it was a bit more reliable than the Aon the front bumper itself you can tell this car's got a body kit on it and there's been lots of cutting this front bumper has been shaved and then the Bonnet it's been hacked into but it's actually not a bad job at all considering how much has gone on these lights these vents here the big intake bulge here it's all started to crack and kind of Expos where all the cuttings been done you'd probably want to fully respray the front of this car if you're a Jaguar purist you're going to look at this and think how many holes have been drilled in this F type all of these arches here all four corners there's even more holes at the back but we'll get to them in a sec have the front arches being cut yes they have and that is quite a crude job in there that is sharp so they've gone in hacked that away to give some clearance for these massive off-roading tires and then whacked these arches on the car looks cool is it the most professional job in the world not really but does it need to be for a grand tour special clearly not in terms of the body kit we've got our arches bolted on and clearly there's supposed to be a side skirt that comes between the two of them but it's just been chopped off again I mean that's barely on that's quite sharp there I'm not sure that would get past any safety laws just like the ason the rear is where most of the damage is there's just so many gouges that's probably the worst one there on the rear not only are there excess holes from Drilling in the body but then there's also these exact same holes drilled into the Arches for the pedalo that was on the ason as well have the rear arches being cut no they look intact but they're just a bit scruffy you can see where these tires have rubbed away at the rear arches but I don't think an angle grinder has been in there so that's one plus with this car let's have a look in the boot aha so one of the big differences between this and Rich was ason is that this is obviously being cleaned here though you can see the remnants of the Sahara there's a decent amount of morania in this boot I imagine we're going to find sand elsewhere in this vehicle that is I mean it's not for me but this badge here the Jag badge I kind of dig it it it almost looks OEM something that is truly unique to the Jag is this well it's an extra rear subframe down here this have been used to winch the Jag down that incredibly steep Cliff right next thing I want to look under the Bonnet of course Jeremy has very good Tas in cars he's literally the best in the business at judging a car for its merits but I would like to give him extra pits for going for the v6s it could have been so easy to default to one of the V8 cars but real ftype afficianados know that the sweet spot of the ftype range is the V6 super charged car it's not all good though because this V6 is actually a V8 block let me explain there are only six cylinders firing that's where the head goes to but if you look down the back you can see that underneath the head is a V8 block there are two cylinders one either side that are blanked off and if you look down they're actually just Gathering water there's an indent for the back two cylinders now Jaguar did that so they could cut cost and just make one engine mold and then just blank off to make it a V6 but how unoptimized is that you're lumping around another two cylinders worth of engine block you know how I said the Bonnet from the outside actually looked okay despite some cracks underneath it looks atrocious it's much worse than the ason the amount of naked wood screws that are just poking through and the sealant that's around these vents with some mortanian staining going on yeah you probably wouldn't want to turn up to a car showing this and leave the Bonnet up too often I don't know what is going on here it's almost like they've wanted to really maximize that vent and I've just kept drilling through the actual Bonnet of the Jag to get as much air in and then this naked fiberglass there for the sort of power bulge yuck down here there's this slab of fiberglass I think that is functional to be fair there is a lot of morania under here almost every single fixing every little corner nuke and cranny is full of sand this bit here I actually didn't know what this was but cameraman Tom there has enlightened me this is an airbag on the vehicle it's for pedestrian safety there's one that hasn't gone off on that side of the car but this one has gone off at some point so I imagine Jeremy was jumping up and down some June and it's triggered this airbag and what it does is it pops the Bonnet to give a pedestrian a bit more cushion as the car is completely wiping them out so there must have been a decent enough hit to trigger that and pop the Bonnet I imagine JC got a bit of a freight when this went off I really like the intakes in fact on Richard's ason as well I think they've been super inventive with the intake systems on these cars to make sure sand isn't getting into the engine this has gone for a kind of reverse entry situation versus richer two pods out the front it's not a K&N that's a shame but it does come from as far back in the engine b as possible and sucks in and backround into that supercharged V6 I'm going to say it the supercharged V6 sounds better than the V8 do not at me and on that note will it start I think so not only do The Grand Tour cars get hammered on these trips but the trio and the crew also get battered a lot down to not getting much sleep and in some pretty severe environments to help the drivve trip team get some rest after a long content trip today's video sponsor Emma has dealt Us in with their original premium pillow bundle this bad boy here there's nothing nothing worse than a hot pillow as a human I run hot just like my cars and this Emma pillow regulates heat to keep you cool at night inside are removable layers that are even cool to the touch they mean you can adjust the firmness and height to whatever is going to give you the best night's sleep you can trial your products for up to 200 nights and return them free of charge if things don't work out also Emma products come with an up to 10 year warranty this bald head of mine radiates heat and this pillow is genuinely cool to lie on it's lovely it's almost like it's refrigerated I can just chill here and look at my terrarium Shrek and Donkey me and gordas with the t33 better night sleep lovely Emma is running a big bank holiday sale with up to 30% off their mattresses duvet Toppers and pillows so use the link in the description below and the discount code Drive tribe to get an additional 5% off your purchase thanks to Emma sleep for sponsoring today's video time for a nap to dream about That Jag we want to be able to hear this F properly so first question does the roof work no low battery please switch engine on okay still sounds awesome well the RO go back night there she goes now that is Jaguar 1 Aston Martin nil because the window didn't smash while taking the roof off let's give this a blip oh the supercharger oh it's not idling too great right now it's settled oh that intake though see the little like suck just as I touch the throttle you hear that it's like a proper kick I'm spitting at the camera right now sorry Tom I want to say it's 2 nil to the Jag because the temperature gauge isn't flying up like it was in the DB9 smells quite a lot of fuel I think there might be a fuel leak which means I don't want to get this car too hot so let's switch all for now that intake though nicely done Grand Tour Engineers inside yet again there's no escaping the desert but it's actually quite clean for a Jeremy Clarks and post Grand Tour vehicle when I was sat in the RS4 for a shoot we did way back in the day I found a used packet of nicotine chewing gum The Man chew CH the gum and then puts it back in each capsule of the packet and it had been left for the production crew lovely it seems the crew clearly went on strike after that so he's not done it again apart from the dust it's okay just nothing really hanging about there's a panel missing behind this seat whether that was something to do with the pedalo system or the roll hoop does something down in there I'm not sure as a car though it's much better put together than the Aon and I will give it that you could probably fix some mechanical stuff and this could be used on the road it's got all of its Electronics going there's no warnings Richard had about 20 warnings in the ason all this says is low battery so really it just needs run get some charge back into it it should be good to go decent car you'd think that JC would have wanted this car back from the show and to his farm but no instead it's ended up here in Herford the smallest Cog is just over there but it doesn't belong to us it belongs to that guy Dan how did you end up with this car so basically with us doing all the work with the grand T I managed to get contact with Zoe who's sort of in charge of all the vehicles and what happens with them after we do the shoots and I managed to pick up this little Pontiac Fiero okay and uh and through that I and doing you know the the shows themselves we got to know all the crew and whatnot and uh and yeah I was after the Jag and she said yeah that's fine deal is a deal well I know that she has to get signed off by Jeremy to actually get these cars out so Jeremy Clarkson has said yes to you having the car so a bit more background you saying you were working on The Grand Tour so you worked on this car it your job to prepare this car yeah so basically on majority of the grand Tours um we've done all the stunts and all the car builds we did all of the washboard mods and when you see in sand job where they've got the pontoons so we did all of the flotation devices basically all the half witted stuff you guys have to make work yeah yeah yeah we make all the dreams okay how was it in morania was it cool yeah oh it was awesome it was so hot though it was like 52° as your average day okay so from the engineers perspective Ive then you know the show showed the cars doing their thing as an engineer which was the best car of the three not just cuz you've bought this one if the Maserati was better I want you to see it I mean I have to go with the Jag okay purely on the fact that I mean it was faultless throughout the whole time we were out there filming there was no issues whatsoever but Maza was a great car doing get me wrong that would have been my close second okay okay but uh yeah Aston didn't do so well yeah I must say having experienced them both the last couple of weeks this is in much better Nick so you definitely ended up with with with less of a project on my hands yes well we've got quite a lot of work to do with Richards what stuff have you found on this car since you've been looking around it that needs done so when we was down at the beach um obviously we're in the middle of nowhere there's no civilization around at all yeah um and when we were putting the outboard paddles around the wheels um the tires were a bit chunkier on this car than we than we'd thought so they were sort of clashing on the back of the rear sill okay so me and Matty had to make a tearful moment of cutting the rear sill with a jigsaw we've had a look at some bits there's definitely some hacking going on back there yeah so I was sort of a bit gutted about do an activist car and I thought well it's not really going to be my problem but uh no definitely is yeah it's come around and got me yeah yeah okay and when we started it up there is a strong smell of fuel yeah is there potentially some leakage okay good good I'm glad we didn't too much so you need to find a fuel leak somewhere there yeah fuel leak and a coolant leak ah okay yes so uh that'll be the next sort of couple of evenings getting around that getting the under trays off and what needs to be done okay and I have seen you started an Instagram for this car I have I have is it GT GT Jag everyone go on Instagram find GT Jag and you will be able to follow the story of this car we're not going to talk numbers I'm guessing you got this for an absolute steal considering the the state it's in cuz no normal person would be able to take this up was it cheap or was it I it didn't I can say I got a crew discount okay but um but still a five figure car okay okay but I think you've ended up with a cracking piece of Kit and knowing your expertise it won't be long until this thing is good yeah yeah and it was it was more of a fact of of coming away with something that I've worked on it's it's just a a memory okay well we'll fix the ason you fix the Jag and then we'll reignite that battle in the rest of 2024 remember that game on game on we have put a plan together for for the DB9 which we will be actioning very soon but what would you do with the Clarks and F Type tell us what you would do in the comments below if you'd like to see the video of us rescuing the DB9 click over there I've been Mike if you like this video give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to drivet tripeWe rescued the Aston Martin DB9 from The Grand Tour and thankfully another member of the squad has made it back from the Sahara welcome to Jeremy Clarkson's Jaguar ftype from The Grand Tour arguably the best car out of the three comment down below with what your opinion is of that the question today is is this car in as bad neck as Richard's ason at first glance the Jag doesn't look too bad but later in the video we'll be talking with one of the guys that built this ftype for the show to reveal all the damage and secrets that we haven't found for now let's have a quick walk around and see what's what with this Grand Tour car let's start at the front this car still has its big sump guard Richard didn't have that to give it more air for cooling but the ftype was let's say it it was a bit more reliable than the Aon the front bumper itself you can tell this car's got a body kit on it and there's been lots of cutting this front bumper has been shaved and then the Bonnet it's been hacked into but it's actually not a bad job at all considering how much has gone on these lights these vents here the big intake bulge here it's all started to crack and kind of Expos where all the cuttings been done you'd probably want to fully respray the front of this car if you're a Jaguar purist you're going to look at this and think how many holes have been drilled in this F type all of these arches here all four corners there's even more holes at the back but we'll get to them in a sec have the front arches being cut yes they have and that is quite a crude job in there that is sharp so they've gone in hacked that away to give some clearance for these massive off-roading tires and then whacked these arches on the car looks cool is it the most professional job in the world not really but does it need to be for a grand tour special clearly not in terms of the body kit we've got our arches bolted on and clearly there's supposed to be a side skirt that comes between the two of them but it's just been chopped off again I mean that's barely on that's quite sharp there I'm not sure that would get past any safety laws just like the ason the rear is where most of the damage is there's just so many gouges that's probably the worst one there on the rear not only are there excess holes from Drilling in the body but then there's also these exact same holes drilled into the Arches for the pedalo that was on the ason as well have the rear arches being cut no they look intact but they're just a bit scruffy you can see where these tires have rubbed away at the rear arches but I don't think an angle grinder has been in there so that's one plus with this car let's have a look in the boot aha so one of the big differences between this and Rich was ason is that this is obviously being cleaned here though you can see the remnants of the Sahara there's a decent amount of morania in this boot I imagine we're going to find sand elsewhere in this vehicle that is I mean it's not for me but this badge here the Jag badge I kind of dig it it it almost looks OEM something that is truly unique to the Jag is this well it's an extra rear subframe down here this have been used to winch the Jag down that incredibly steep Cliff right next thing I want to look under the Bonnet of course Jeremy has very good Tas in cars he's literally the best in the business at judging a car for its merits but I would like to give him extra pits for going for the v6s it could have been so easy to default to one of the V8 cars but real ftype afficianados know that the sweet spot of the ftype range is the V6 super charged car it's not all good though because this V6 is actually a V8 block let me explain there are only six cylinders firing that's where the head goes to but if you look down the back you can see that underneath the head is a V8 block there are two cylinders one either side that are blanked off and if you look down they're actually just Gathering water there's an indent for the back two cylinders now Jaguar did that so they could cut cost and just make one engine mold and then just blank off to make it a V6 but how unoptimized is that you're lumping around another two cylinders worth of engine block you know how I said the Bonnet from the outside actually looked okay despite some cracks underneath it looks atrocious it's much worse than the ason the amount of naked wood screws that are just poking through and the sealant that's around these vents with some mortanian staining going on yeah you probably wouldn't want to turn up to a car showing this and leave the Bonnet up too often I don't know what is going on here it's almost like they've wanted to really maximize that vent and I've just kept drilling through the actual Bonnet of the Jag to get as much air in and then this naked fiberglass there for the sort of power bulge yuck down here there's this slab of fiberglass I think that is functional to be fair there is a lot of morania under here almost every single fixing every little corner nuke and cranny is full of sand this bit here I actually didn't know what this was but cameraman Tom there has enlightened me this is an airbag on the vehicle it's for pedestrian safety there's one that hasn't gone off on that side of the car but this one has gone off at some point so I imagine Jeremy was jumping up and down some June and it's triggered this airbag and what it does is it pops the Bonnet to give a pedestrian a bit more cushion as the car is completely wiping them out so there must have been a decent enough hit to trigger that and pop the Bonnet I imagine JC got a bit of a freight when this went off I really like the intakes in fact on Richard's ason as well I think they've been super inventive with the intake systems on these cars to make sure sand isn't getting into the engine this has gone for a kind of reverse entry situation versus richer two pods out the front it's not a K&N that's a shame but it does come from as far back in the engine b as possible and sucks in and backround into that supercharged V6 I'm going to say it the supercharged V6 sounds better than the V8 do not at me and on that note will it start I think so not only do The Grand Tour cars get hammered on these trips but the trio and the crew also get battered a lot down to not getting much sleep and in some pretty severe environments to help the drivve trip team get some rest after a long content trip today's video sponsor Emma has dealt Us in with their original premium pillow bundle this bad boy here there's nothing nothing worse than a hot pillow as a human I run hot just like my cars and this Emma pillow regulates heat to keep you cool at night inside are removable layers that are even cool to the touch they mean you can adjust the firmness and height to whatever is going to give you the best night's sleep you can trial your products for up to 200 nights and return them free of charge if things don't work out also Emma products come with an up to 10 year warranty this bald head of mine radiates heat and this pillow is genuinely cool to lie on it's lovely it's almost like it's refrigerated I can just chill here and look at my terrarium Shrek and Donkey me and gordas with the t33 better night sleep lovely Emma is running a big bank holiday sale with up to 30% off their mattresses duvet Toppers and pillows so use the link in the description below and the discount code Drive tribe to get an additional 5% off your purchase thanks to Emma sleep for sponsoring today's video time for a nap to dream about That Jag we want to be able to hear this F properly so first question does the roof work no low battery please switch engine on okay still sounds awesome well the RO go back night there she goes now that is Jaguar 1 Aston Martin nil because the window didn't smash while taking the roof off let's give this a blip oh the supercharger oh it's not idling too great right now it's settled oh that intake though see the little like suck just as I touch the throttle you hear that it's like a proper kick I'm spitting at the camera right now sorry Tom I want to say it's 2 nil to the Jag because the temperature gauge isn't flying up like it was in the DB9 smells quite a lot of fuel I think there might be a fuel leak which means I don't want to get this car too hot so let's switch all for now that intake though nicely done Grand Tour Engineers inside yet again there's no escaping the desert but it's actually quite clean for a Jeremy Clarks and post Grand Tour vehicle when I was sat in the RS4 for a shoot we did way back in the day I found a used packet of nicotine chewing gum The Man chew CH the gum and then puts it back in each capsule of the packet and it had been left for the production crew lovely it seems the crew clearly went on strike after that so he's not done it again apart from the dust it's okay just nothing really hanging about there's a panel missing behind this seat whether that was something to do with the pedalo system or the roll hoop does something down in there I'm not sure as a car though it's much better put together than the Aon and I will give it that you could probably fix some mechanical stuff and this could be used on the road it's got all of its Electronics going there's no warnings Richard had about 20 warnings in the ason all this says is low battery so really it just needs run get some charge back into it it should be good to go decent car you'd think that JC would have wanted this car back from the show and to his farm but no instead it's ended up here in Herford the smallest Cog is just over there but it doesn't belong to us it belongs to that guy Dan how did you end up with this car so basically with us doing all the work with the grand T I managed to get contact with Zoe who's sort of in charge of all the vehicles and what happens with them after we do the shoots and I managed to pick up this little Pontiac Fiero okay and uh and through that I and doing you know the the shows themselves we got to know all the crew and whatnot and uh and yeah I was after the Jag and she said yeah that's fine deal is a deal well I know that she has to get signed off by Jeremy to actually get these cars out so Jeremy Clarkson has said yes to you having the car so a bit more background you saying you were working on The Grand Tour so you worked on this car it your job to prepare this car yeah so basically on majority of the grand Tours um we've done all the stunts and all the car builds we did all of the washboard mods and when you see in sand job where they've got the pontoons so we did all of the flotation devices basically all the half witted stuff you guys have to make work yeah yeah yeah we make all the dreams okay how was it in morania was it cool yeah oh it was awesome it was so hot though it was like 52° as your average day okay so from the engineers perspective Ive then you know the show showed the cars doing their thing as an engineer which was the best car of the three not just cuz you've bought this one if the Maserati was better I want you to see it I mean I have to go with the Jag okay purely on the fact that I mean it was faultless throughout the whole time we were out there filming there was no issues whatsoever but Maza was a great car doing get me wrong that would have been my close second okay okay but uh yeah Aston didn't do so well yeah I must say having experienced them both the last couple of weeks this is in much better Nick so you definitely ended up with with with less of a project on my hands yes well we've got quite a lot of work to do with Richards what stuff have you found on this car since you've been looking around it that needs done so when we was down at the beach um obviously we're in the middle of nowhere there's no civilization around at all yeah um and when we were putting the outboard paddles around the wheels um the tires were a bit chunkier on this car than we than we'd thought so they were sort of clashing on the back of the rear sill okay so me and Matty had to make a tearful moment of cutting the rear sill with a jigsaw we've had a look at some bits there's definitely some hacking going on back there yeah so I was sort of a bit gutted about do an activist car and I thought well it's not really going to be my problem but uh no definitely is yeah it's come around and got me yeah yeah okay and when we started it up there is a strong smell of fuel yeah is there potentially some leakage okay good good I'm glad we didn't too much so you need to find a fuel leak somewhere there yeah fuel leak and a coolant leak ah okay yes so uh that'll be the next sort of couple of evenings getting around that getting the under trays off and what needs to be done okay and I have seen you started an Instagram for this car I have I have is it GT GT Jag everyone go on Instagram find GT Jag and you will be able to follow the story of this car we're not going to talk numbers I'm guessing you got this for an absolute steal considering the the state it's in cuz no normal person would be able to take this up was it cheap or was it I it didn't I can say I got a crew discount okay but um but still a five figure car okay okay but I think you've ended up with a cracking piece of Kit and knowing your expertise it won't be long until this thing is good yeah yeah and it was it was more of a fact of of coming away with something that I've worked on it's it's just a a memory okay well we'll fix the ason you fix the Jag and then we'll reignite that battle in the rest of 2024 remember that game on game on we have put a plan together for for the DB9 which we will be actioning very soon but what would you do with the Clarks and F Type tell us what you would do in the comments below if you'd like to see the video of us rescuing the DB9 click over there I've been Mike if you like this video give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to drivet tripe\n"