A Rolling Fire Trap

Anyone who has seen any news over the past couple of years is fully aware of the problems that General Motors and Toyota have had with safety issues. But they were not the first to experience this type of bad press. While the Chevrolet Corvair underwent enough bad publicity to get it shut down, it was the Ford Pinto that probably garnered the most bad press.

The Pinto was designed as a subcompact to compete with the Chevy Vega and the AMC Gremlin. Ford also wanted it to take on imports by Volkswagen, Toyota and Datsun, as it was known in the USA at the time. The idea behind the car was something "under 2000." Lee Iacoca, who at the time was president at Ford, wanted a car that weighed less than 2000 pounds and cost under $2000. In 1971 Ford introduced that car, the Pinto.

Available in various body styles from two door coup and station wagon to three door hatchback, the Pinto was originally powered by a 1.6 L inline four cylinder engine that grew over the life of the car. By the end of its life the four cylinder engine had grown to 2.3 L and buyers could even get an optional 2.6 L V 6. There was never much power with the Pinto as even the V 6 topped out at 103 horse power.

Buyers flocked to the Pinto quickly making it the number one selling subcompact on the market. Not everyone loved it though. Road and Track  found fault with the drum brakes and the suspension. It did, however, praise that first engine as being solid. Consumer Reports parked it in the middle of the domestic subcompacts; below the Gremlin but ahead of the Vega.

It was in 1977 though when the real criticism came. Criticism that the fuel tank filler neck could break off was soon followed by allegations that the fuel tank could be punctured and explode due to a rear end collision. Later that year an article in Mother Jones News claimed that Ford knew of these problems and did nothing to fix them. Various documents were uncovered which looked very bad for For and, in particular, Iacoca. There had been an analysis done that indicated that it would be more expensive to fix the gas tank problems through redesign than the estimated costs of wrongful death lawsuits. Iacoca allegedly penned a memo against spending the $11 per car to fix the potentially deadly problem.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration instructed Ford to recall the cars and develop a fix. The recall started in 1978.

While all of this wasn't fatal for the Pinto the damage was done. By 1978, the year of the recall, sales fell below 200,000. They wouldn't top that number for any of the final three years of its production run. 1980 saw the Pinto's final model year but in its time it sold over 3.1 million cars.

There have been a variety of studies and reports about the Pinto since its demise when several claiming that the car was not as unsafe as it was reputed to have been. One study claimed that only 27 known fatalities existed and that the cost to benefits analysis cited by Mother Jones was never used internally to make decisions regarding the car.

Still, the Pinto will be remembered as a "rolling fire trap." While that may be so, the Pinto along with the Gremlin and the Vega proved that American auto manufacturers could compete with the small imports that were flooding the shores.