The Tale of the Exploding Pinto

In 1971, the Ford Pinto, one of America's first subcompact cars, was launched to compete against 4-cylinder European subcompacts like the VW Beetle and the Toyota Corolla. Although there were other American subcompact models launched around the same time period, the Pinto became the U.S. market leader.

The Design Flaw

Ford began work on designing the Pinto in 1968 under the direction of Lee Iacocca. The model's chief design flaw was its lack of a strong rear bumper or any other type of reinforcing structure between the car's rear panel and the gas tank. This flaw exposed the tank to damage in a rear-end collision; in many cases, causing the fuel tank to explode on impact.

The Exploding Pinto

It was a 1977 "Mother Jones Magazine" article by Mark Dowie that blew the whistle on the Ford Motor Company. The article alleged that Ford executives were aware of this fuel tank design flaw before the model went into production, but had determined that the cost of paying off lawsuits would be cheaper than the cost of redesigning the Pinto and fixing the flaw. "Mother Jones" based their claim on an internal Ford executive memo that they had obtained. The memo, which would later be known as "the Ford Pinto memo", described a "cost-benefit analysis" that balanced minimal model repair against a major lawsuit.

This revelation resulted in a storm of controversy along with major lawsuits and criminal charges filed against the Ford Motor Company and Ford executives.

"The barbecue that seats four"

And there were accidents and fatalities. It was estimated that at least 500 people had died in Pinto rear-end collisions. Higher estimates had claimed 800 fatalities.

"Mother Jones" offered additional internal company documents revealing a series of pre-launch Pinto crash-tests that resulted in ruptured fuel tanks in eight out of eleven tests at speeds averaging 31 mph.

One of the most notable of the cases against Ford was a 28 mph rear-end collision in Minneapolis that killed the driver and severely burned the passenger.

The Center for Auto Safety

In 1978, Ford finally agreed to recall 1.5 million 1971-1976 Pintos as well as 30,000 Mercury Bobcats (a similar design) even though the Center for Auto Safety had petitioned the government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as early as 1974, a full three years before the "Mother Jones" article.

It was the Center for Auto Safety that gave "Mother Jones" reporter Mark Dowie access to the Ford internal documents that he used for his article.

Aftermath

Ford was ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages, and all criminal charges were dropped. 1980 was the last Pinto production year.

In 2007, Ford announced that they would be bringing back the Pinto in 2010.

SOURCES:

"Pinto Madness", Mark Dowie, Mother Jones, URL: (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1977/09/dowie.html)

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/ford12.htm

http://www.autosafety.org/article.php?did=522&scid=8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto