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Soon after the Ford Motor Company introduced the Pinto to the public in 1970, the inexpensive subcompact model became one of the most popular cars in the United States. However, by the end of the decade, the Pinto had earned a reputation as a "firetrap." The car's fuel tank could explode if the car was involved in a rear-end collision - a danger that Ford engineers were aware of but failed to address.
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In 1970, the Ford Motor Company unveiled their first ever subcompact sedan, the Pinto
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Consumers loved the Pinto. There was just one small problem. Even the tiniest of fender benders could ignite the car into a fiery blaze
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Buckle up, because today we are exploring the weird history of the completely preventable disaster of the exploding Ford Pinto
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Be sure to fasten your seatbelt for this little explosive car story
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Out of the 11 Pintos crash tested before its release, eight of them were found to have ruptured fuel tanks in crashes of at least 25 miles per hour
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The three Pintos without ruptured fuel tanks were spared due to incredibly cheap but extremely
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efficient structural alterations like placing a plastic baffle between the tank and the
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differential housing, keeping the bolts on the housing from puncturing the tank
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To clarify, Ford was eight for eight when it came to unaltered Pintos rupturing their fuel
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tanks in any crash above 25 miles an hour. This was concerning to Ford executives
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who quickly ordered the structural alterations before its release. 910. That's the number of quality inspections
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that are made during the assembly of Ford's new Pinto. Ha, no, not at all
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They released the cars anyway. they skipped the $11 per car fix because, well, nobody wanted to displease the boss
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Lee Iacocca was a fast-rising executive within the Ford Motor Company. As an assistant sales manager, he found nationwide recognition for his 56 for 56 initiative
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offering loans on 1956 model year cars with a 20% down payment and $56 in monthly payments for
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three years. It was just that kind of out-of-the-box thinking that would soon elevate
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Lee to president of Ford. Even before his rise to president, Lee was greatly concerned about the
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rise of foreign compact cars. Japanese and German cars, like the Volkswagen Beetle
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were giving Americans an alternative to the big and bulky vehicles made by domestic manufacturers
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Lee was determined to make a subcompact American car, one that would explode onto the scene, and he would do it all in record time
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The average amount of time between a new car's initial conception to its final product is about 43 months But Lee wanted his subcompact sedan in showrooms by the fall of 1970 That left just 25 months to develop and release the Ford Pinto
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This is thought to be the fastest turnaround for the development and release of a new car
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in automotive history. They did it with hard work, ingenuity, and cutting every possible corner
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When designing an automobile, the tooling process is the crucial period in which engineers develop
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fine-tune, and finalize each one of the approximately 500,000 parts that go into
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making the car. Once the company knows which parts are needed, they hand their orders over
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to a tooling company that designs and develops the tools necessary to create the needed parts
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Now, usually the tooling company doesn't begin making those parts until each part has been
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finalized, and the engineers are certain all of the parts will all fit together. But as we will
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come to see, the production of the Pinto was anything but usual. The tooling process, which typically takes about 18 months
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happened simultaneously with the development of the Pinto. That means engineers were figuring out which parts were needed
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and how to make those parts all at the same time. If you were to buy a LEGO set, you'd open the box
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and find prepackaged LEGO bricks along with an instruction manual for how to piece them together
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But imagine opening the box for Bowser's Castle and finding a picture of the castle with a small note saying
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Step one, make some Legos and figure out how to turn them into this castle
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Step two, enjoy. That's basically what the Pinto engineers were forced to work with
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That's why it's no wonder the defective fuel tank wasn't noticed until well into production
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And when it was finally discovered, nobody at the company had the nerve to tell the boss
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As one former engineer told Mother Jones, that person who would have warned Iacocca would have
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been fired. Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days
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With Lee, it was taboo. Whenever a problem was raised that meant a delay on the Pinto
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Lee would chomp on a cigar, look out the window, and say, read the product objectives and get back to work
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Those objectives were twofold. One, Iacocca insisted that the Pinto could not
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weigh more than 2,000 pounds. And two, it could not cost more than $2,000
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Just like with his 56-56 campaign, Lee Iacocca had a hankering for number symmetry
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The so-called limits of 2000 meant that even an $11 per car fix was completely out of the question
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Hindsight is 2020 but for Lee Iacocca foresight was simply 2000 Ford Pinto is priced like a small economy import but it frisky Early marketing for the
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Ford Pinto announced it as the little carefree car. Advertisements told customers that by buying
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a Ford Pinto, they could leave their cares about high prices, maintenance, and value at the door
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Easy repairs, inexpensive parts, or you can change bumpers or fenders quicker than those other cars
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again. Unfortunately, there was a small subset of the population who also cared about not being
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burned alive. And those customers really should have been directed towards a Pontiac. The Ford
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Pinto went on sale in mid-September of 1970. By late October, the company was forced to recall
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26,000 vehicles due to a design flaw in which the accelerator would tend to stick when the throttle
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was opened up more than halfway. This was the first Pinto recall, but it wouldn't be the last
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One of the Ford Pinto's many design flaws allowed gas and fumes to accumulate underneath the car's
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hood, where an electrical spark would eventually trigger an explosion. After receiving reports of
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over 100 such explosions, Ford reluctantly pulled the trigger and issued its second Pinto recall
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within five months. Ford claimed that there were no injuries in these explosions
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but that was a line of defense that they would not be able to hold onto for very long
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Dennis Joya was the head of Ford's recall division back in 1973
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when the first reports of crash-related explosions started rolling in. In 2016, Joya told corporate crime reporter
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I'm used to getting 25 to 50 reports before I act to recommend a recall of a car
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The Pinto file never got more than five reports. Regardless, Joya claims to have expressed a desire to recall the Pinto
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after seeing the burnt-out remains of a crashed Pinto firsthand. Citing a lack of evidence, the recall office decided not to pursue a recall of Lee Iacocco's
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pet project. But once Joya and others saw a copy of the infamous Pinto memo, the recall office switched
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their gears. The memo clearly stated that engineers had discovered the dangerous and potentially fatal
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fuel tank flaw while running crash tests three years earlier, before the car's initial release
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This was a game changer. But even with this damning evidence, Joya was told to hold off from issuing a recall
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or worse, going to the press. He was assured by his higher that the company was undergoing rigorous testing of the car in question making sure it was safe if not safer than its competitors And he was told to wait for the results
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When Ford came back and said that the car was indeed safe, Mr. Gioia took them at their word
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despite knowing that they had lied about their safety testing just three years earlier
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Pinto, it may be the best small car buy in America. At your Ford dealer
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While the official total is 27, other estimates, not by Ford, put the death toll anywhere from 180 to 500
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also not known as how many other people were injured or killed when the Ford Pintos suddenly burst into flames
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What is clear is that Ford knew about the deadly defect in their engines and sat on the information
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hoping they could settle lawsuits out of court and without having to issue an expensive recall
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When investigative outlet Mother Jones obtained a copy of the rumored Pinto memo in 1977
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they published an article they called Pinto Madness, which showed the world what Ford
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executives had been hiding all along. Ford released the Pinto knowing it was defective
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because an $11 per car fix would have cost the company $121 million, since they already had 11
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million fiery death traps ready to go. In contrast, it would cost Ford just $50 million
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to settle lawsuits out of court. It's pretty straightforward math, if math is all you care about
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Up until the Mother Jones expose, the first rule of the Pinto memo was
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you don't talk about the Pinto memo. But once the article dropped, everyone was talking
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Less than 24 hours after the release of Pinto Madness, the Center for Auto Safety filled a petition
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with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to have the Pinto recall
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The NHTSA launched the investigation on August 11, 1977. It took them over nine months to determine what Ford and the world at that point had already known
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The Pintos fuel system was defective. A public hearing was scheduled to investigate Ford's culpability and their deception
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But surprisingly, before the hearing could take place, Ford opted for a voluntary recall of 1.5 million Pintos
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According to the company's own estimates, this recall cost them less than $45 million
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far less than it would have cost to fix every car in the first place. So it looks like Ford still won in the end, just like Ford versus Ferrari
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It's a happy story, except, of course, for those 27 to 500 innocent people
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