There was strong competition for Ford in the American small-car market from Volkswagen and several Japanese companies in the 1960’s. To fight the competition Ford rushed its newest car the Pinto into production in much less time than is usually required to develop a car. The regular time to produce an automobile is 43 months Ford took 25. Before production however, Ford engineers discovered a major flaw in the cars design. In nearly all rear-end crash test collisions the Pinto's fuel system would rupture extremely easily. Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway, exploding gas tank and all, even though Ford owned the patent on a much safer gas tank. Safety was not a major concern to Ford at the time of the development of the Pinto. Lee Iacocca, who was in charge of the development of the Pinto, had specifications for the design of the car that were uncompromisable. These specifications were that "the Pinto was not to weigh an ounce over 2,000 pounds and not cost a cent over $2,000." Any modifications even if they did provide extra safety for the customer that brought the car closer to the Iacocca’s limits was rejected.

The rush of the Pinto from conception to production was a recipe for disaster. Many studies have been concluded by Mother Jones on Pinto accident reports which have revealed conclusively that if a Pinto being followed at over 30 miles per hour was hit by that following vehicle, the rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion, right up to the back seat. The tube leading to the gas-tank cap would be ripped away from the tank itself, and gas would immediately begin sloshing onto the road around the car. The buckled gas tank would be jammed up against the differential housing (the large bulge in the middle of the rear axle), which contains four sharp, protruding bolts likely to gash holes in the tank and spill still more gas. Now all that is needed is a spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If a Pinto was struck from behind at higher speed say, at 40 mph chances are very good that its doors would jam shut and its trapped passengers inside would burn to death.

The financial analysis that Ford conducted on the Pinto concluded that it was not cost-efficient to add an $11 per car cost in order to correct a flaw. Benefits derived from spending this amount of money were estimated to be $49.5 million. This estimate assumed that each death, which could be avoided, would be worth $200,000, that each major burn injury that could be avoided would be worth $67,000 and that an average repair cost of $700 per car involved in a rear end accident would be avoided. It further assumed that there would be 2,100 burned vehicles, 180 serious burn injuries, and 180 burn deaths in making this calculation. When the unit cost was spread out over the number of cars and light trucks which would be affected by the design change, at a cost of $11 per vehicle, the cost was calculated to be $137 million, much greater then the $49.5 million benefit. These figures, which describe the fatalities and injuries, are false. All independent experts estimate that for each person who dies by an auto fire, many more are left with charred hands, faces and limbs. This means that Ford’s 1:1 death to injury ratio is inaccurate and the costs for Ford’s settlements would have been much closer to the cost of implementing a solution to the problem. However, Ford’s "cost-benefit analysis," which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn't profitable to make any changes to the car.

The product objectives were clearly stated in the Pinto "green book". This is a thick, top-secret manual containing a step-by-step production plan for the car, detailing the metallurgy, weight, strength and quality of every part in the car. These product objectives as follows:

• Size
• Weight

• Initial price
• Fuel consumption
• Reliability
• Serviceability

• Appearance
• Comfort
• Features
• Ride and
• Handling Performance

Safety is not one of the objectives and is not even mentioned in the "green book". As Lee Iacocca was fond of saying, "Safety doesn't sell."

It is interesting to note that the Pinto disaster almost never occurred. In pre-production planning, engineers seriously considered using in the Pinto the same kind of gas tank Ford uses in the Capri. The Capri tank rides over the rear axle and differential housing. It has been so successful in over 50 crash tests that Ford used it in its Experimental Safety Vehicle, which withstood rear-end impacts of 60 mph. Why didn’t Ford use such a gas tank? When asked about the Pinto gas tank, a Ford engineer admitted: "That's all true (The fact that the car tends to explode in minor accidents). But you miss the point entirely. You see, safety isn't the issue, trunk space is. You have no idea how stiff the competition is over trunk space. Do you realise that if we put a Capri-type tank in the Pinto you could only get one set of golf clubs in the trunk?"

The technology was available to make the Pinto a safer car. An inexpensive lightweight plastic baffle was placed between the front of the gas tank and the four protruding bolts on the differential housing. This piece of plastic prevents the bolts from puncturing the gas tank and was used in one of the only successful crash tests the Pinto underwent. In another successful test, a piece of steel was placed between the tank and the bumper to add support against the crumpling back end. The best method for improving the safety of the Pinto was to line the gas tank with a rubber bladder. Ford alleged that it would cost $11 per car to add any sort of gas tank, fire prevention device. This fact is mentioned earlier in the cost analysis and like the other Ford cost facts, is also false. The fires that occurred in Pintos could have been largely prevented for considerably less than $11 a car. The cheapest method involves placing a heavy rubber bladder inside the gas tank to keep the fuel from spilling if the tank ruptures. Goodyear had developed the bladder and had demonstrated it to the automotive industry. Crash-tests were conducted and there are reports showing that the Goodyear bladder worked very well. On December 2, 1970, Ford Motor Company ran a rear end crash test on a car with the rubber bladder in the gas tank. The tank ruptured, but no fuel leaked. On January 15, 1971, Ford again tested the bladder and again it worked. The total purchase and installation cost of the bladder would have been $5.08 per car. That $5.08 per car could have saved the lives of several hundred innocent people.

The Pinto disasters that were taking place did not go unnoticed by the government. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) began investigating the case shortly after the Pinto started rolling off the assembly line. The NHTSA contracted with several independent research groups to study auto fires from around the country. The studies took months, which was just what Ford wanted. The results were worse than anyone could have imagined. Robert Nathan and Associates, a Washington research firm, found that 400,000 cars were burning up every year, burning more than 3,000 people to death. Furthermore, auto fires were increasing five times as fast as building fires. Another study showed that 35 per cent of all fire deaths in the U.S. occurred in automobiles. Forty per cent of all fire department calls in the 1960s were to vehicle fires—a public cost of $350 million a year, a figure that, incidentally, never shows up in cost-benefit analyses. Also a report was prepared for NHTSA by consultant Eugene Trisko entitled "A National Survey of Motor Vehicle Fires." His report indicates that the Ford Motor Company makes 24 per cent of the cars on the American road, yet these cars account for 42 per cent of the collision-ruptured fuel tanks. Another staggering fact that was discovered was that a large and growing number of corpses taken from burned cars involved in rear-end crashes contained no cuts, bruises or broken bones. They clearly would have survived the accident unharmed if the cars had not caught fire.

In 1972 the NHTSA had been researching and analysing auto fire causes for four years. During that time, nearly 9,000 people burned to death in flaming wrecks. Tens of thousands more were badly burned and scarred for life. And the four-year delay meant that well over 10 million new unsafe vehicles went on the road, vehicles that will be crashing, leaking fuel and incinerating people well into the 1980s.

It wasn’t until May of 1978 that the Department of Transportation (a division of the NHTSA) announced that the Pinto fuel system had a "safety related defect" and demanded a recall. Ford agreed, and on June 9, 1978 the company recalled 1.5 million Pintos.

Unlike many engineering disasters, there was no single event that caused all of the deaths and injuries related to Pinto’s. Ford had many opportunities to limit the damage done by the faulty design of the Pinto. Engineers bowed to pressure from superiors to keep quiet about the unsafe cars. As deaths and injuries continued to occur, Ford decided that it was not profitable to recall Pinto’s.

http://www.mojones.com/mother_jones/SO77/dowie.html

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~sharoon/a1/A1disaster.htm

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/comp601/case2.html

Simon Wills

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