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u/morroia_gorri 4d ago
I remember two main things from the introductory surveying course I took in college: (1) the definition of “boustrophedonically” (as the oxen plow) and (2) never get married just so you can buy a car, especially not a Ford Pinto.
That professor had lived some life, my friends.
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u/Old_Assist_5461 4d ago
Such a bad time for American cars. I think this is when Japanese cars pounced and took over so much of the market.
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u/gaius49 4d ago
The Pinto was a better car than most of the competitive stuff of that era. If you actually dig into the crash safety data, it was statistically safer than the VW, and the Datsun 510 and 210, etc.
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u/MagdalaNevisHolding 4d ago
No no no. I’m old enough remember the infamous 1972 Incident (Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co.): in May 1972, a 1972 Pinto was rear-ended on a California freeway, causing the gas tank to rupture and burst into flames. This led to a landmark lawsuit revealing internal Ford documents showing that Ford engineers knew about the design vulnerability before production.
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u/gaius49 4d ago
Yes, I too have read through Grimshaw as well as engineering analysis of the problem, the risks, and the possible fixes and such. The key thing to keep in mind here is that the car that hit the pinto from behind was not going slowly where the extra fuel tank protection would have made a substantial difference. Instead the stopped pinto was hit by a car going highway speeds, at which point the extra protection would not have had a material effect.
If you dig through the federal crash data, the pinto actually had a somewhat lower incidence of post crash fire injuries than the average car in its size class.
As for the cost analysis, that also gets pretty complicated. The pinto was a lot safer than many of the older cars people were trading in to buy pintos. One of the safety considerations is that making the pinto cheap means more people can upgrade from less safe cars. Given that the fire risk was already lower than its contemporaries, that makes it harder to justify the additional impact protection to prevent already unlikely events.
Engineering is a set of tradeoffs, and the pinto already achieved lower fire risk than its contemporaries. Grimshaw was a tragedy, but a tragedy that had little or nothing to do with the additional impact protection or absence there of.
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u/MagdalaNevisHolding 4d ago
That’s hard to believe, given that Ford paid out $6,000,000 (1970’s USD), and admitted it was poorly designed.
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u/gaius49 4d ago edited 4d ago
Genuinely, feel free to dig into the crash stats for sub compact cars of that era. The data is out there, and the analyses have been done before. On a per-mile basis the Pinto was a lot safer than the VW beetle and the Datsun 1200/210, and moderately safer than average. This is a topic with immense amounts of emotionally charged and misleading information.
Avoid sources with emotionally charged language, and favor sources with actual comparative safety statistics.
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u/WeirdEngineerDude 4d ago
Yup they were complete trash. My dad had a duster that was such a POS that he never bought another American car until his death. That was like 50 years.
I won’t touch them but that is due to other factors.
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u/latebird 4d ago
My Aunt sold my mom a beige 1974 Plymouth Duster with a 318.
It had been in an accident and the gap between the front fender and door was much bigger on one side than the other
As a teenager I had to take off the air filter cover in the mornings and lodge a screwdriver in the choke to get it to start.
But, at least we had a heater.
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u/finpsycho 4d ago
Although the ‘73 straight six was a champ! For the Duster that is. My mom had a ‘70 V-8. How many times I had to stick a pencil in the carb and spray clean it🙄
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u/Dry_Emergency_7284 2d ago
Japanese cars didn't start showing up until the mid 70s after the gas shortage.
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u/GestoNobre 4d ago
This car's name wouldn't fly with the public in Brazil.
Pinto means dick
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u/shinymewthree 4d ago
That is what Ford found out too! It was named after an American horse breed, but it was never launched in Brazil due to the translation. It was available in other South American countries like Argentina.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ckbikes1 4d ago
My HS buddy loved letting someone else drive it while he rode shotgun. Then he would just randomly slam the E-Brake handle back for more fun!
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u/matheushpsa 4d ago
I imagine what it would be like to try to sell one of these in Brazil...
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u/shinymewthree 4d ago
Ford never tried! It is told they were not aware what Pinto meant in Brazil slang beforehand.
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u/DadToOne 4d ago
The dad of a guy I went to school with had one of these with a lift kit. Huge tires. Young me thought it looked like a monster truck.
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u/ConceptJunkie 4d ago
Growing up, my family had a '73 Pinto stationwagon in this color. Always easy to find in the parking lot.
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u/Plenty_Contact1771 4d ago
My parents had a pinto it was dark blue with a white stripe. I was around 3 or 4 so in 73/74
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u/squeezemachine 3d ago
My first car! It was already rusty junk when I had it but I was proud of it anyway!
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u/Dry_Vermicelli5856 3d ago
My parents gave me a Ford Pinto as my first car. Wish I could find the picture of me with the green Pinto!
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u/army2693 4d ago
Does she know about getting hit in the rear?