The history of how what was marketed as the “little carefree car” that was built to be as “indestructible as a Model T" became known as one of the most dangerous cars ever built deserves to be remembered.
VIDEO HERE (18 minutes)
The history of how what was marketed as the “little carefree car” that was built to be as “indestructible as a Model T" became known as one of the most dangerous cars ever built deserves to be remembered.
VIDEO HERE (18 minutes)
The Chevy Vega was equally bad, except that it wouldn't blow up. But, didn't (NBC?) place a blasting cap in the gas tank? Vega had steel pistons in an aluminum alloy block.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the Edsel.
Our family had 4 of them over the years and a Monza. The real problem with the pre-76 vegas was the undersized radiator. The serpentine belt wasn’t strong enough either, and there was no spring tensioner on the alternator or any of the pulleys. So it would overheat and go out if valve timing, and the heat caused the cylinder lining to flake off. Oops, your engine is done.
DeleteDrew458
my mom had a vega. the hood latch was a death trap..that sucker would pop up as you're going down the road
DeleteVegas had a rear opening hood. Hinged at front so death trap from hood unlatching is unlikely. Surprising sure but hardly a leading cause of crashing.
Deletei couldn't get rear ended because i drove it like i stole it, wide open. the chassis and motor in mine were indescribable. they only problem i had was you couldn't get laid in it. i finally traded it out for a 70 chevell and things picked up.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't get laid in it? I'm guessing you didn't have a hatchback with the folding rear seat.
DeleteI know a guy who was in the backseat of a Pinto which lost control (too much speed) and hit a telephone pole going backwards. He got out with massive burns, but his friend who was also in the back seat did not survive the fire.
ReplyDeleteThe first new car I ever bought was a 1972 Pinto. I believe it was less than 2000 bucks out the door. I put over 200,000 miles on that thing and never had a problem with it.
ReplyDeleteThe narrator's ignorance of car design starts when he states that placing the fuel tank behind the rear axle was a pre-planned design failure
ReplyDeleteThat placement was common for most all cars up into the 80's,
The Pinto fuel tank design --where it was also the floor of the trunk --was common amongst many unibody construction vehicles -- including the Vega, AND the revered 65 (and up) Mustang.
It's also clear the narrator wasn't around (or old enough) to firsthand understand the history of that era,
Because of the economic recessions of 1957 and 1961 -- (and almost one in 1964 that was prevented by entering the Vietnam war), small cars were being demanded by the public.
It's misleading to say that small cars were a new phenomen in 1970.
"Detroit" started making them in 1960 with the Falcon, Corvair, and Dart.
The recession of 1970-71, and late 74-75 just cemented the existence of small cars.
"Jaded journalism" isn't just a recent occurrence -- they were irresponsible way back then.
Small cars were in vogue during and after WWII. Willy's and Nash both produced excellent, fuel efficient (in comparison to other cars) and well built small cars that performed quite well.
DeleteInteresting how one thinks one knows something perfectly well and, as the video shows right there at the end, the whole "Pinto is a deathtrap" is nothing but a myth. All the hype and outrage was manufactured by ignorant idiots in the media and propagated on down history by the same lame non-investigating non-journalists who brought us all the other myths that most people believe.
ReplyDeleteNow you've done it.
ReplyDeleteIn 1972 I had saved enough for a new car. ($2000.00!) My father and I walked up to McCoy Ford in Anaheim to look at cars. I so wanted the 1968? Plymouth GTX 440 green with low miles and even the double red striped wide oval tires and 4-speed. It was listed at an astronomical $4000.00. In a rare moment of Dad mode, he said I didn't need that much HP and would not let me buy it. We drove off with a new 1972 Pinto 4-speed manual 2.0 (crossflow SOHC) Hatchback in Ivy Glow green ($40.00 option btw.) $26,000.00. I finally had FRONT DISC BRAKES! Over time I modded the engine with header, intake, etc, etc, and also the suspension for handling since I was close to Ortega Hwy. Some said it had Falcon running gear. Fun car. Gave some 914's and 240's fits up there. Had an Austin 3000 pass me like I was in reverse once. Took that car everywhere, camping, skiing, Death Valley, couldn't kill it. At 110.00 miles I Decided to do a V-8 conversion and sold the engine to a guy who was building a sand rail. Sold it when I moved up heah with my future and present bride.
I remember my driver door would not close when I jacked the car up the car to change a tire, hmm, and that McCoy Ford had what I think was the #0000001 Pantera for sale for $15,000.00. That was 2/3 of my house. Good times.
Bumper sticker of that era "Caution: Unexploded Pinto"...
ReplyDeleteI think it's a miracle of marketing that a design that had been used for years on all sorts of car models and manufacturers, got mysteriously blamed on only ONE model of car.
ReplyDeleteIt was cited as an example of "these guys can't tell the truth, even when it would help them." They could have pointed that out in court and gotten in thrown out, but instead choose to accept the "blame" and pretend it was only a flaw in that particular model of car. Guy who wrote it was an executive with them for decades. Wish I could remember the title or his name, but...
Unsafe at any speed. Ralph Nader
DeleteI believe that was the GM Corvair, had problems with the transaxle.
DeleteEdit $2600.00.
ReplyDeleteRollin BBQ.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhh, a much simpler time.
The 1978 Chevy Monza had a plastic gas tank. I bought one new. The expansion and contraction of the tank from ambient temp caused the plastic to fatigue and to leak within two years of ownership (new car). We never hear about that death trap. New car sitting in my driveway dripping gas. Traded that hunk o chit on a Dodge/Mitsubishi Colt that's probably still running.
ReplyDeleteI had a 1990 Colt. Got 40 mpg with the 1.5 engine. I was playing music then, and put 80,000 miles on it in 2 years.
DeleteI also had a 1978 Pinto hatchback. Nice enough car, but a drunk driver ran off the road and hit it in my driveway and totalled it.
He also hit and totalled my 1973 Ford Gran Torino, that was a real nice car. I was not a happy person that night.
Pinto with firestone 500's. Ultimate bad luck.
ReplyDeleteHad a 76 Pinto hatchback. Wife was stopped waiting on traffic so she could turn left when she was rearended by a pickup. Her first thought was " Pintos explode!" The door was jammed. She rolled down the window, climbed out, then rescued our daughters from the back seat.
ReplyDeleteThe truck that hit her was totaled and not drivable.
She did the dukes of Hazard and drove home. It took me about two hours to get the doors open. After a little fiddling they worked but wouldn't seal. It became my work car for the next three years.
It was a fun car to drive. That 2.3 would scoot. Got more speeding tickets in it than any other vehicle I've owned.
In '73 or so, enjoyed going to Martinsville, Virginia to watch 427 CI Pinto's run in modified class.
ReplyDeleteThe 1972 Pinto was my first car it was a hand me down from my parents. Pass my road test early Nov´77 received the Pinto not to long after that.
ReplyDeleteMy father work at the Mawah NJ Ford assembly plant. He being an employee was able to purchase the car for just $200 over manufacturing costs. I think he paid around $1800 for it brand new. The car had a 2000 cc engine in it. 4 speed on the floor. By the time I received it had already been plowed into in the rear when parked out on the street by a hit and run. No explosion of the gas tank. The tank was not even punctured the car not being total either so was it repaired.
I had that car for about another two years or so and I thought it was a blast. Could catch 3rd gear doing the tightest donuts. I treated that car and drove that car like a go-cart.
It was the hatchback runabout and the backseat folded down forward and yes and I got laid countless times in the back or the car. Had a steady girlfriend at the time so went to a lot drive-in movies.
Freaking Memories this brings back!!!
Hiker Mike
Aw man, my first car! Sort of. My first car (1984) was a 1976 Mercury Bobcat, the Mercury version of a Pinto. Found pieces of the cylinders in the oil pan once but that thing kept me moving for 3 years.
ReplyDeleteTom from East Tennessee
My understanding of the problem is that the Pinto's gas tank was not the bent potato-chip shape of many other models but was almost cube-shaped.
ReplyDeleteIf you run a bent potato-chip into a utility pole (for instance) it does not lose volume because it is so inefficient to start with. If you run a cube-shaped or a sphere-shaped tank into an obstacle then it splits because those shapes are very efficient to start with and any change reduces that efficiency.
If you are inclined to experimentation, you can fill a rubber glove with water and fold it and do the same with a balloon. See which stretches more.
The problem with the gas tank was that it was mounted over the rear axle, which had u-bolts with the ends pointing up. If rear-ended, it was likely that a larger car (and 90% were larger) would ride over the back of the Pinto and push the tank down into those bolts, puncturing the tank in 4 or 8 places. Ford understood the danger and decided to save $5 per car by not adding metal blocks to prevent the tank from coming down far enough to be punctured, and their memos discussing this decision and how defending lawsuits from fuel tank fires would cost less than the metal blocks were found by plaintiffs' lawyers. After that discovery, the jury awards were huge, and IMHO Ford deserved it.
DeleteBut I've never seen statistics showing that gas tank fires were actually much more common in Pintos.
There are only 4 places to put the fuel tank in a conventionally designed car:
1. Ahead of the rear axle, under the rear seat. It's well protected, but the worst location if the tank does go.
2. Above the rear axle. For $5 more (or in a car of average height), this would have been a reasonably well-protected location.
3. Behind the axle, just ahead of the rear bumper. I think the 1964 Pontiac that I replaced with a used 1972 Pinto wagon had a gas tank there. If a rear-end collision doesn't rupture that fuel tank, they just didn't hit hard enough. Then again, if you got hit that hard in those old cars without head rests, your neck was broken and you probably died before you burned - but I remember a 1980's full-sized rental car where I finally found the gas cap by pulling up the license plate, so they were still putting gas tanks there.
4. Side saddle tanks. Well protected if rear-ended, but hazardous if T-boned. OTOH, in a rather famous case of journalistic malpractice, network news had to hide pyrotechnics in the spout to get pickup truck side saddle tanks to catch fire when hit.
When my beloved Toyota Hilux PU got T boned by a 16 year old dipshit chick in a Chevy Vega, they gave me a rental car. A Pinto. I managed to get a Toyota Land Cruiser out of the deal. Unfortunately I lost the Land Cruiser some years later.
ReplyDeleteIn 1971 I drove for a private mail company. Relatives of the owners had a Chevy dealership and they got all their cars there. They bought some Vegas and not one lasted 20k miles. Ironically an ex-father in law worked in the engineering department at Chevrolet and had something to do with the Vega engine. Good thing he was on the verge of retirement.
ReplyDeleteWent out with a babe who had a '72 Pinto hatchback and it never once torched.
ReplyDeleteI had a buddy that had the Mercury Bobcat version of the Pinto. It had all the options as standard equipment. At 190k miles I helped him swap out his dead motor with a Junkyard engine that had 80k on it. The seats were replaced and the interior redone at least 2 times and he kept everything working. He traded it after driving it for 25 years with 50k showing on the odometer but the odometer had been rolled 3 times.
ReplyDeleteSeveral people in my extended family and friends had Pintos in the 70s and 80s. They were actually pretty good little cars for the time. The interior basically fell apart over time but that was typical of the quality of cars of that time period. They were reliable daily drivers.
ReplyDeleteThe engines were bullet proof. You had to change the drive belt every 60,000 miles as part of scheduled maintenance or it might just suddenly fail as you were driving. If it did fail it wouldn't damage the engine, as it freewheeled. You just line up the cam and crank and put the new belt on. I did it on the side of the road a couple of times.
The local dirt track had a class that used Pinto engines and people would put them in swamp buggies.
Foto of cherry Pinto, Manhattan. Winter '22
ReplyDeletehttps://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e810761e923603f70ff9633d53667e243858ab309b5363083cc6201c513d1808.jpg
Actually an eye-pleaser, but more a sewing machine than an automobile.
Very cool video. Mahalo Ken for the memories as my mom had one but her 'Bobcat' never blew up...
ReplyDeleteAccording to my auto mechanic brother in law, the Vega engine lasted just fine if you religiously checked the oil and coolant, and changed the oil and filter on schedule. But it had little spare capacity for oil and coolant, and the aluminum engine would instantly self-destruct if either ran low.
ReplyDelete