The Ford Pinto: Exploding Gas Tanks, the Pinto Memo and the Real Data

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The Ford Pinto is remembered as the car that burst into flames because its maker put a price on human life. This episode tests that story against the record. In the late 1960s, with the Volkswagen Beetle, Toyota Corolla, and Datsun 510 taking market share, Ford president Lee Iacocca ordered a car under 2,000 pounds and under $2,000, to be ready in 25 months instead of the usual 43. Engineers built the tooling while still designing the car. The fuel tank went behind the solid rear axle, standard practice at the time, but with little crush space and exposed differential bolts that could puncture it.

The scandal broke in 1977, when Mark Dowie's Mother Jones article Pinto Madness presented a 1973 cost-benefit memo as proof that Ford chose lawsuits over an $11 fix. The memo was an industry-wide estimate for regulators that used a $200,000 value per life supplied by NHTSA. What followed was a rigged crash test, a recall of 1.5 million cars, a huge punitive verdict, and the first criminal homicide trial of an American corporation.

• Ford sold over three million Pintos in a 10-year run, outselling the Chevy Vega and AMC Gremlin.
• Engineers weighed a rubber bladder and an over-axle tank but feared the bladder would degrade in gasoline and that luggage could puncture a tank near the passengers.
• For its 1977 test, NHTSA weighted the nose of a large bullet car, left its headlights on, and filled the Pinto's tank with gasoline instead of nonflammable solvent.
• In Grimshaw v. Ford, the jury added $125 million in punitive damages, later cut to $3.5 million, while in the 1979 Indiana case James F. Neal won a not guilty verdict.
• Law professor Gary T. Schwartz later found the Pinto's fatality risk was average for cars of its time and lower than that of the Beetle, Corolla, and Datsun 1200.