I actually owned one of these in the late early 1980s and got one that didn't have the exploding gas tank.
From a training course on the subject:
With Lee Iacocca as its president, Ford Motor Company initiated a plan to design and manufacture an American subcompact to compete with the new imported subcompacts. His main specifications for the new car, the Pinto, was a “2,000-2,000” mandate, meaning that the Pinto “should not weigh more than 2,000 pounds and should not cost more than 2,000 dollars.” It was clear that “safety” was not in the equation. Iacocca, also an engineer, said in 1972 that “safety doesn’t sell.”
At the time, Ford had a patent on a rubber bladder to be placed inside the gas tanks to keep the liquid gas inside the tank in case of tank rupture. There were also other viable and better solutions, and none cost more than $11 per car (about $75 in 2024 money). But Ford, ignoring safety altogether, instead of correcting this fatal error and saving the lives of its customers, did a financial risk analysis establishing the cost of correcting the fatal error versus doing nothing and paying the fire victims compensation. The financial risk analysis showed that the cost of correcting the design to avoid fatal fires would be $137 million ($11/car), and the cost of doing nothing to save lives and then paying the victims compensation would be $49.5 million. Ford chose to do nothing and sell the unsafe Pinto to an unsuspecting public. Officially, 27 people perished in the Pinto rear-end collision fires, and a similar number were severely injured.
Two takes from this:
1. Lee Iacocca is not the hero that he's proclaimed to be by the media for his "saving" of Chrysler. He was an arrogant scum bag corporate executive from the 70s who didn't give a rip about the people he was charged with serving. This kind of hubris is what made the foreign cars way better than the American cars by the mid 1980s, to which the American auto makers have yet to catch up. He's also a criminal for selling a vehicle for which he knew was dangerous, resulting in the death and injury of many.
2. The next time you ask yourself why a judge gives such generous punitive damages in a product liability case, it's because manufacturers in the past did these kinds of analysis all of the time, putting people's health and safety at risk because "the numbers worked out". With potential punitive damages, you can't do this any more.
There's background risk in everything we do, but when you know something is really dangerous and know how to cheaply fix it, but don't do so to make a few bucks, not telling the public about the risk, it's criminal.
From a training course on the subject:
With Lee Iacocca as its president, Ford Motor Company initiated a plan to design and manufacture an American subcompact to compete with the new imported subcompacts. His main specifications for the new car, the Pinto, was a “2,000-2,000” mandate, meaning that the Pinto “should not weigh more than 2,000 pounds and should not cost more than 2,000 dollars.” It was clear that “safety” was not in the equation. Iacocca, also an engineer, said in 1972 that “safety doesn’t sell.”
At the time, Ford had a patent on a rubber bladder to be placed inside the gas tanks to keep the liquid gas inside the tank in case of tank rupture. There were also other viable and better solutions, and none cost more than $11 per car (about $75 in 2024 money). But Ford, ignoring safety altogether, instead of correcting this fatal error and saving the lives of its customers, did a financial risk analysis establishing the cost of correcting the fatal error versus doing nothing and paying the fire victims compensation. The financial risk analysis showed that the cost of correcting the design to avoid fatal fires would be $137 million ($11/car), and the cost of doing nothing to save lives and then paying the victims compensation would be $49.5 million. Ford chose to do nothing and sell the unsafe Pinto to an unsuspecting public. Officially, 27 people perished in the Pinto rear-end collision fires, and a similar number were severely injured.
Two takes from this:
1. Lee Iacocca is not the hero that he's proclaimed to be by the media for his "saving" of Chrysler. He was an arrogant scum bag corporate executive from the 70s who didn't give a rip about the people he was charged with serving. This kind of hubris is what made the foreign cars way better than the American cars by the mid 1980s, to which the American auto makers have yet to catch up. He's also a criminal for selling a vehicle for which he knew was dangerous, resulting in the death and injury of many.
2. The next time you ask yourself why a judge gives such generous punitive damages in a product liability case, it's because manufacturers in the past did these kinds of analysis all of the time, putting people's health and safety at risk because "the numbers worked out". With potential punitive damages, you can't do this any more.
There's background risk in everything we do, but when you know something is really dangerous and know how to cheaply fix it, but don't do so to make a few bucks, not telling the public about the risk, it's criminal.
