anyone ever read it? . summary ?
i mean we all know what we are driving.
everyday ,I get one person that says" I ain't seen one of those on the road in a while" and another says " aren't you afraid it will blow up?" . sometimes it's the same person. :-)
I want some bumper stickers that say ' NADER wasn't right about the Corvair either!"
crossy
Old story. There were more than a few cars that "blew up" when hit from the rear, the problem is not a "blowing up Pinto", the problem is a fractured gas tank that spilled gas and the fumes ignited. This can happen to a lot of vehicles.
Unfortunately, the Pinto was the most "notoriously" and widely covered example of this type of mishap. Interesting what people will remeber...and if it's a topic that is "media driven" and widely publicized, it tends to stick around for a long time!
Never read it, don't care to. Everyone drives vehicles with gas in them, and they can be hit by other vehicles, crash on their own from mechanical failure, etc. Is there anything more potentially dangerous?
Chris
In 1969 you could go to your Chevrolet dealer and they were giving away bumper stickers that said "I LOVE MY CORVAIR!!" Not a bad idea for the Pinto but I do not remember Ford publicly saying anything to counter Nader's book or offering pins, buttons or bumper stickers at the time.
I read the book out of curiosity, it was a good book but it got bogged down a bit in all of the court proceedings. Basically what it amounted to was that the powers that be at fomoco figured it would be cheaper to pay for a few lawsuits than to pay for a recall. I.E. 50 lawsuits settled out of court X $10,000 = $500,000 or a million cars recalled at 50 bucks a pop = 50 million bucks. (Not exact figures but you get the idea) So Ford was getting raked over the coals for putting a price tag on a human life. Were there problems with the design of the Pinto that could cause a fire? Yes. Are there problems with the designs of other cars that could cause a fire? Of course. I once owned a '70 Opel Rallye Kadette that had a recall for the same problem. The fuel tank was in the trunk on the right side and the screws from the tail light could puncture the tank if hit in the rear. They put rubber vacuum caps over the screws!! Why didn't you hear about that? Because there were maybe 12 junky Opels on the road and 40 gazillion Pinto's!
When people talk to me about it, I basically say the same as everyone else, that the same holds true of almost any compact of the era, and the japanese cars were far worse as was the gremlin to a rear end explosion. But then I add that the real danger of the Pinto was that in a straight on rear end collision, the body would buckle on the tops of the doors and could trap people from getting out. So was there a design flaw? Yeh, and that was it, as for the explosion thing, Anything with a gas tank has massive potential for an explosion, it really is just a matter of how hard and where it is hit, and oh yeh, an ignition source. Not like the one used on 60 minutes though :lol:
. I once owned a '70 Opel Rallye Kadette that had a recall for the same problem. !! Why didn't you hear about that? Because there were maybe 12 junky Opels on the road and 40 gazillion Pinto's!
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well it does my heart good to tell you that i personally removed one of those 12 from the road . We killed that poor Opel in the woods. I wanted them all off the road because they were one of the only compacts in the same engine size that could consistently give My OLD 71 & 72' Pintos ( I owned 3) a run for the money.
Around here the only Opel Kadettes i see have rotary engines in them at the race track-GRRRRRRRRR, now i hate them worse.
crossy
The law suit was one of the biggest suits at the time.
Chevy pickups of the 1980's had a real side impact problem and the gas tanks would erupt in flames in a collision and several people lost their lives. It was on TV for a few months but it never seemed to hurt pickup sales and I doubt if many people even remember it but they sure remember the Pinto!
The whole problem with the Pinto fire issue was as posted before, the introduction of an internal memo from FoMoCo stating it would be cheaper to settle the lawsuits than to redesign/repair the cars. Keep in mind this information came from insurance actuarial tables which stated "x number of cars driven x number of miles will equal x number of rear impact collisions resulting in x number of fatalities." From a business point of view, it makes sense to say "We will save a ton of money this way." From a humankind point of view, especially in retrospect, it was about as dumb a thing as a corporation could possibly do, let alone write down and then have it introduced in court, most likely on company letterhead. In truth, the Pinto wasn't any worse than many other cars, including the Mustang, which, based on data I recently saw, is actually far worse than the Pinto ever dreamt of being. At the moment I can't recall the number of people killed in Pinto accidents (of the variety which the lawsuits regarded), but it wasn't over thirty. For some reason 29 is sticking in my head. The Pinto case is frequently referred to in corporate law classes to this day as an example of a really good business decision being a really bad product liability business decision.
Quote from: gordie on September 18, 2008, 07:43:53 PM
Chevy pickups of the 1980's had a real side impact problem and the gas tanks would erupt in flames in a collision and several people lost their lives. It was on TV for a few months but it never seemed to hurt pickup sales and I doubt if many people even remember it but they sure remember the Pinto!
I owned one of these and their answer to that mess was to offer me and everyone else a $1,000 voucher to buy a new Chevy truck.