My take on the whole situation on the gas tanks was that Ford`s knew of the problem and other car makers of the time were jut as bad or worse BUT Ford was caught weighing the cost of the fix vs the cost of the payouts..I found this excerpt from    home.att.net/~Resurgence/Pinto.htm .. " One of the tools that Ford used to argue for the delay was a "cost-benefit analysis" of altering the fuel tanks. According to Ford's estimates, the unsafe tanks would cause 180 burn deaths, 180 serious burn injuries, and 2,100 burned vehicles each year. It calculated that it would have to pay $200,000 per death, $67,000 per injury, and $700 per vehicle, for a total of $49.5 million. However, the cost of saving lives and injuries ran even higher: alterations would cost $11 per car or truck, which added up to $137 million per year. Essentially, Ford argued before the government that it would be cheaper just to let their customers burn! "