Scandal: Ford’s Deadly Pinto | Short Documentary
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- čas přidán 13. 10. 2023
- In the 1970's Ford Rushed to market a subcompact car, but a flaw in its design would cement the vehicles reputation as a death trap......
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The fuel tank was actually in FRONT of the Bumper and BEHIND the Real Axle...
I’ve got another one simmilar…. Look at the 1973-1987 Chevy/GMC C/K pickups…. The saddle tanks blew up way more than the pinto… killed far more people…
Fun fact. The Russian BMP-1 has it’s fuel tank in the rear access hatch.
@@ethanelzinga7559Pretty sure that was a hoax
As a onetime Ford employee who spent useless time in quality control, I'm definitely picking up some of those Pinto stickers!
I remember seeing a flame paint job on a Pinto online once. But the flames started at the back of the car working forward.
Smart, like the red camouflage some animals use. A "Don't eat me."-sign but in this case a "Don't smack into my rear or we're both toast"-sign.
How quaint.
@@danpavelko8414go look up the definition of a word before using it
Hehehe, now whenever I think of painted on flames I think of a YT lawyer talking about a former client he had whose entire body was tattooed. He asked "entire?" And the guy confirmed "yes, entire." So the lawyer asked "what would you put on a penis?" And his client replied "flames." I die thinking about that 😄😆😅😂🤣☠️👻
That’s awesome
People don’t realize that along with going up in a fireball that rear end hits would almost always jam the doors shut of the Pinto. So not only could you burn alive pretty fast, you couldn’t even get out if you knew what was coming.
Happens to many vehicles, that's why the jaws of life became a thing.
That's why you break the window.
@@NotMykl Which you can't do anymore as laminated side windows.
@@NotMykl sure, but uh, have you ever seen those people that get arrested and try kicking out the cruiser window to get out? Those are normal car windows. It’s not as easy or as fast as you’d think.
@@taliakuznetsova7092laminated side windows are quite uncommon
Because of youthful poverty, I was the not-so-proud owner of not one but two Pintos. We called them Zippo, from the advertising slogan "Lights every time."
should have called them Zippo and Ronson
On my level of youthful poverty I could only afford a used 1973 Pinto. Man, I loved that car.
@@ellayararwhyaych4711 Oh, mine gets worse. I owned two Gremlins. Strangely, I really liked one of then. Good FM radio and four-speed.
A very important point is that Lee Iaccoca himself kept refusing the modifications to the fuel system. It was known that he would threaten to fire any engineer that even used the word "safety" in his presence. He was stubbornly committed to the "under 2,000 lbs/under $2,000.00" plan and absolutely refused to even consider any modifications. Iaccoca is often hailed as a hero for jumping from Ford to Chrysler and "saving" Chrysler by bringing out the cheap "K car" line, an ugly, boxy little subcompact with the cheapest "use it and throw it away" Mitsubishi 4-cylinder engine he could source. Any positives he might have brought to the automotive industry are more than cancelled out by his reckless disregard of human life while overseeing the Pinto project.
K cars came off the line with a rod knock.
I'm certain of it.
SAFETY was a dirty word for ALL vehicle manufacturers. Every safety item, from safety glass windshields, to seat belts, shoulder belts, dual master brake cylinders, antilock brakes, air bags, etc., came about because some state, frequently New York, passed laws requiring them. And, since they were mandated in the given state, to protect themselves from lawsuits, the car companies put them in all vehicles, initially, of course, charging extra for each "improvement".
@@markmailander9571 Not entirely true but your point is taken.
Initially their thought on "safety" mostly centered around making the vehicles themselves "stronger"... the opposite of the thought in use today.
Cars were beefed up so that impacts preserved the car as much as possible, with the idea that the people inside wouldn't be *crushed*... but at the expense of ignoring G forces. Seat belts being the only thing for a long time to really address that.
Today all the "crumple zones" are a polar opposite theory, absorbing energy and dissipating it in the car to reduce G forces... and then of course the air bags and all that, augmented the idea.
You're right in that the manufacturers were against some of this because it meant they had to charge more for a car and this would potentially meet resistance from buyers. They knew this so avoided it like the plague.
@@MadScientist267 NASCAR inexplicably reverted to this mindset when they made the newest cars. The last generation tended to have spectacular-looking but non-life-threatening (mostly) crashes due to having lots of crumple zones. Now they've got much more rigid cars that immediately got hit with controversy with the very real possibility that it's that same design that's cut short several drivers' seasons and at least one career.
I actually own 2 K cars and they both have Mitsubishi V6 6G72 motors that are 3 times more reliable. Any K car with a V6 is as reliable as a lancer, but the I4 engines sucked balls for sure, Chrysler never could make a good engine
It still blows my mind that companies are able to not recall something like this simply because they could absorb the costs of settlements more easily than to retool and reproduce better parts
The new version of this is companies claiming they're "green" but having you dispose of parcels because it's cheaper than reshipping and restocking fees, and that doesn't count as them adding something to the growing dumps
A downstream effect of this is the massive amount of e-waste now growing in certain ports because of most countries' new laws regarding exporting of e-waste, and previously by the horrible conditions the exploited workers who recycled these materials worked in
The fight club equation
@@maxhill7065even worse, companies can claim they're green by buying carbon credits from other companies
Why is your mind blown? The world is run by psychopaths. They are far more interested in making money than k*ll*ng you or me - still, when it comes to profit, if you get in the way, then like a bug that hits a windshield, oh well. Just as you drive your car without thought to all the bugs that might meet their end on your windshield, they to run their companies without thought to what may happen to you or me. They are only forced to restrict themselves by our moral laws.
Met a cop one day as I was speeding in a friend’s pinto…the cop quickly turned around with his lights on so I went ahead & pulled over around a corner…the cop came speeding around the corner, slid his tires trying to stop, finally getting stopped about 80ft in front of me…he runs up, all excited, & says “I thought you were going to try to out run me!”…I’m like “Dude, I’m driving a PINTO!” 😂 lol
I outran po with my pinto …No joke.
Poor guy thought all his dukes of hazards dreams were coming true. Glad you didn't get shot.
Pintos were reasonably fast for the time. I had a wagon as my first car and you could easily bury that 85 mph speedometer - going downhill. You could also get them with a V-6 engine.
Is it bad... I like the body design??? Could I get one in a full size model I'm 6'4
@@scottyV1000It's wild for me to think that 85 was once a high speed for cars, because that's now become the average speed on the highways nearby me. (Not posted speed limit, of course)
*Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling!*
"Bloody hell, they're right, you know!"
😂😂
Ahh the irony, AMC's contribution to the domestic sub-compacts, the Grimlin, a vehicle named after mythical little creatures that cause mechanical problems, was actually a rocksolid, well built tank of a car.
Good news! The Dacia Sandero is mentioned in this video!
American auto manufacturers deciding that "Stopping people from being horrifically burned to death isn't cost-effective" is one of the most ghoulish things I've ever heard, but honestly not surprising.
There were literally a dozen safer options people could have taken. Why should they make you safer in a way that isn't cost effective when you refused to do so?
@@newperve The danger of the pinto Ford already knew about wasn't widely known to the public until after the damage was already done to families that, may I reiterate, could not have known better. Thinking people "refused" to go with safer options with the sequence of events happening as they did is a rather questionable take to come away with here, ngl.
@@theincrediblehibby8239 The exact source of the danger want known, but everyone knew that compact cars didn't the same crash protection as full sized cars. The Pinto wasn't much more dangerous than similar cars like the AMC Gremlin. Pinto buyers advisory knew of the risk.
Republicans
@newperve I’m honestly shocked people like you exist.
My dad saved a woman from her Pinto when it got hit and burst into flames. She tried in vain to get her purse, despite literally being on fire, and he had to pull her out by her hair. I cant believe this was a problem for so long
The Term "Hot Hatchback" gets a completely new meaning!
I remember this scandal all too well. I was a preteen when import compacts were becoming all the rage (yes, I’m old enough to remember the fuel embargo) and a teenager getting close to driving age when all of this came to light. I kept on top of the news because my parents had been longtime subscribers to Newsweek and I read every issue.
When I was in driver’s ed, the lawsuit trials still pretty fresh. I remember our instructor talking about how to keep a safe distance when following other vehicles and citing Ford Pintos as a damn good reason why. We all definitely understood exactly what he meant.
One of the notable people leading the fight to get Ford to correct the Pinto’s problems was Ralph Nader. He’s the author of “Unsafe At Any Speed” published in 1965. In it, Nader criticized American auto manufacturers of preferring to pay to settle lawsuits instead of of paying to implement safer designs into vehicles like the ones John talked about. Because of that report, my father never bought a new car without seat belts, even though they were an add-on at the time. Our 1966 Corvair had them and everyone always asked my dad why he bothered when they weren’t required. He would point at me and say, “That’s why.”
Same here i am old enough to remember the good old 60s and 70s Ralph Nader cars without a seat belt ash trays everywhere in the cars and the best part you had to leave a window open to get rid of the exhaust fumes in the car Damn wish i could go back in time and do it all over again
„Good, old times.“
Also, responsible dad. Love that.
"Corvair"
Yeah... the car which´s suspension wouldnt work if the tires werent at the right pressure or... overloaded 1-2kg above max load height. Overcomplicated suspension that caused lots of accidents.
A lot of trucks from the 50s to the 70s used to have the gas tank inside the cab behind the seat (in those days, pickups were all two-door, bench seat models, so it was easy to hide them there. On one hand, it wasn't nearly as dangerous as one would think, because the cab is pretty well protected in a collision. But the real problem is, tanks can leak, and leaded gas fumes in a relatively small compartment isn't good for brain function. Add to that, EVERYONE smoked at the time.
My uncle was a victim of one of those failing gas tank explosions before I was born. My mother never really moved on from that. It changed her.
How awful! Was he a driver or passenger?
@@ItsJustLisa driver
It’s always a shock for me that no matter the subject of Plainly’s video, there is always someone in the comments who was personally affected by the tragedy! Some of them seem to be in distant memory, yet for others they are very much not. Sorry for your family’s loss
I worked with a woman whose baby brother was one of the police officers who fell victim to the faulty design of the Crown Victoria tanks. It affected her greatly. It's truly horrific to think about.
😢
When I was a kid in the mid-70s my friend’s mom owned a 1976 Pinto. One day at a red light we were rear-ended so all of us jumped out of the car and ran just in case the gas tank exploded.
Smart.
And I suppose nothing happened.
@@tripplefives1402 and be resealed
That's a rather anticlimactic story.
Gas tank you mean fuel Petrol tank
My father way an exec with IBM and was working with the same law firm who defended Ford, He actually saw the memo and was amazed that this memo was ever put on paper for it to become a chance discovery,
In the late '80s when I started working at GM, it was made clear that we should never use the word "fire" in any context while at work, especially in writing. We had to call the firewall, an industry standard name, the "engine bulkhead." This was in response to the Ford memo, of course.
My parents had one of those in 1980-81. All things considered, they'd have preferred to drive the Coke can, but a used Pinto was what they could afford.
My mother used to drive a late '70's Pinto with four kids in the backseat with no seat belts. Then leave us all day on the beach with no life jackets and no sunscreen all day. With a tuna sandwich in our pockets in August. Generation X, where our parents actively tried to murder us.
"Funny" but changes came AFTER Gen X. You were like everyone before you.
Corporations had too much power so Boomers pressured Nixon to sign the EPA into law. Boomers also created the Internet, in hopes of democratizing information BUT some just use it for whining
@@FreedomJane-bx4um😂 it was a unique parenting style 😳
We ended up competent though, that's for sure.
Coke can?
@@katiekane5247 competent or corpses, depending on luck
There were a lot of questionable designs on the road in this era. We had a '72 Chevy truck with the gas tank inside of the cab behind the back seat. You could hear the fuel sloshing around while driving. In 1973 GM moved the tank to a place in front of the rear wheels and outside of the frame rail. In a side collision the tank would be sandwiched between the other vehicle and the frame rail. The only protection the tank had was a piece of sheet metal that was part of the truck bed.
Man 70s was a era of eh who cares it will sell. Did chevy got complaints about placement?
I had a 1969 subaru where the gas tank was literally the shelf under the rear window! I also seem to recall that either Toyota or Datsun had a model where the gas tank was sat upright just behind the rear seat cushions, essentially forming the seat back.
The "news" show that made one of these explode overfilled the tank all the way to the top, eliminating the air space that GM designed into the tank for the fuel to go if the tank was deformed, plus they attached a model rocket engine to light the fuel that shot out of the filler neck, which you can see from their film. The network lost a lawsuit over this, as I recall.
60 Minutes likewise rigged an Audi 5000 to simulate unintended acceleration claims.
@@ostrich67 Dateline on NBC.
It turned out GM trucks were dangerous if:
1) You overfilled the tank.
2) You put an improper non factory cap on the filler that can easily pop of.
3) You hit it at the right angle.
4) You placed an explosive ignitor next to the tank.
NBC still claims they did nothing wrong and blamed the production crew that worked for NBC but weren't direct NBC employees.
Damn guy so that video is rigged?
I'd heard of the scandal and the Pinto as a punchline many times, but I'd never seen that crash test footage before. Pretty terrifying how it just instantly engulfs both cars with flame.
That's the most concisely appropriate statement about the Pinto I've ever seen committed to print.
But the car was rigged to make sure it exploded
@@robertheinkel6225And the earth is also flat
@@robertheinkel6225 It was "rigged" in such a way that the gas tank was full of gas. Like gas tanks usually are. It's true that normally crash tests were performed with an empty tank, but since the specific issue was fuel leaking out in a crash, it's understandable that the tank would be filled with fuel. You know like tanks are filled with fuel in the real world. A few people have tried to claim that it was dishonest for the NHTSA to but fuel in a fuel tank for a crash test, but those people all had something to sell.
@@furripupau Pay no attention to the corporate drone.
My Dad won a brand new Pinto in a local contest back in the day. My parents only had it for six months before it was totalled in a wreck, luckily hit on the side of the front end not the rear. They took the insurance money and bought a Ford Grand Torino, wished they had kept that one.
Why would you wish them to keep a pile of junk? Those Torinos didn't last very long...they really were cheaply made garbage.
My mom went to school with a girl whose parents and her younger brother died in a Pinto explosion, I don’t know if a suit was ever filed on behalf of their wrongful death (it sure as hell should have been) but I always remember because afterwards she had no family to take her in, and for obvious reasons during the 70’s she didn’t want to enter foster care, especially as a teenager, she did file for emancipation and was successful.
A friend of mine in college had a Pinto.
We went to visit his home over a weekend. He missed the off ramp from the Interstate, so he pulled over onto the shoulder and backed up to try again.
I gasped out, "Bill, this is a Pinto."
Reversing a Pinto, AKA: "Please hit me, I want to catch on fire!"
The Pinto's engine, however, had quite the legacy. The stout bottom end of the engine made it very condusive to turbocharging. First the McLaren Mustang, then the Mustang SVO, Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, and Sierra XR4Ti. Eventually the engine would become the basis for the 2.0 turbo engine in the Sierra Cosworth.
Nowadays , though, I typically see Pintos with large V8s and decked out for drag racing. Ostensibly to get away from anything following them.
In that case the tank would have been swapped out for a fuel cell anyway.
@@DragonGrafx-16 more often than not, yeah, was making a jape.
@@jamesmchenry4708 Jape?
Vegas” too
A previous mechanic of mine had a Pinto that he turbocharged and sooped up. It got so fast he decided to attach a drag chute. One night on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood he was drag racing someone and pulled the chute, it ripped the bumper clean off the car.
this was my first car. a tan, pinto hatchback. I was in high school, and my friends and I would pile in - much like the VW - to see how many we could get in there. I cringe to think what could've happened, considering how teenagers drive.
When I was in high school , my friends & I would pile into one friend's '72 Pinto and do donuts on the ice in a local school's parking lot. Until that fun night when we hit the dry pavement & went up on two wheels, nearly flipping that death trap!
We didn't do that foolish behavior after that!
@@jimmyguitar2933 there are times I wonder how so many of us survived our high school years. we did some crazy shit, at high speed. no seatbelts, or airbags. I was in a serious accident in my uncle's station wagon. remember how old dudes had cb radios bolted below the dash area in their cars? I was in the passenger seat, and we hit a tree at 80mph, and the car folded up and the radio box went through my left shin. 4 of us in the car and all survived..... but we shouldn't have. I had a basketball scholarship for the following fall. that ended that. stupid
PS: donuts in icy parking lots is so much fun lol.
Incredible how clean the underside of the Honda is.
you forgot about how the doors also had a very high chance of not opening after a rear end crash on top of fire because of the frame could and would bend in a way that did not let the latch unlatch after a crash
As a child I was introduced to the Pinto's legacy via a scene near the end of the movie Top Secret where a German truck full of screaming soldiers taps the back of the Pinto and the Pinto explodes. My best friend's father (who was a farm & auto mechanic) explained to my friend and I all about the Pinto and it's fuel tank issues.
Looking back now I can see issues like that with compact cars are part of the reason why here in the part of the Midwest US where I live hardly anyone drove compact cars up until the early 90s. Compacts were for a long time thought of mostly as semi disposable as new or as used cars meant for poor first time drivers, as none of them were looked upon as being able to last more than a few years or worth putting hardly any money into fixing to keep them on the road.
Not to mention that our winters mean rear-ending another car because of slippery conditions is not uncommon. I remember seeing some Pintos as a preteen/teenager, but not many, and I grew up in a university city. Inexpensive cars are staples for college students.
This is the scene: czcams.com/video/4-Qj58o87sY/video.html
@@ItsJustLisa My brother had a Pinto back in the mid-70's when I was a kid. Luckily he never got rear-ended in it.
@@mal2ksc Because of the scandal and accusations of "Not being a real Mustang," these cars are endlessly bagged on, including that they are ugly. Honestly, and keeping their price in mind, I thought they were fairly nice looking cars.
As a teen in the 70's I got to experience the sub-compact boom that occured right after the OPEC oil crisis. Datsun were the boom and I learned to drive stick on 2nd generation Dodge Colt which was basically a rebadged Mitsubishi Galant. The only reason I had to learn to drive stick was because the cars were owned by bhe Pizza palour place I drove delivery for and I'd already blown the transmissions on the two automatic cars in the fleet.....what do you expect, give a 17 year old what for the time was a hot ride to tear around with and things are gonna break.
Also remember the first generation of the Honda Civic CVCC's. We called them 10,000 mile cars, coz after 10,000 miles, they'd be burning the blues and pretty much rusted out. Mind you, back then most cars went from prestine to rusted hulk in a few short years.
"This piece of paper is the Pinto's rear bumper" 🤣 Well done!
So the Pinto is the source of the whole Hollywood movie inspiration for exploding anything smashed. ;p
It's pretty mind blowing Ford chose to save up those 10 or w/e dollars per car, instead chosing possibly getting multi-million lawsuits. Great logic right there. Corporations at their best.
Even crazier, Ford Europe at this point had several smaller models readily available and well proven which could have been altered to suit the US market.
Even crazier the crown Victoria Police interceptor models would burst into flames after getting rear-ended, and trap the people in the car
the Pinto was the first step in a long line of cursed cars for my mother, she somehow managed to pick every dangerous or recalled vehicle starting with the Pinto, followed by a Bronco (fire hazard AND the most stolen car of its year, some fools stole it while she was at work and it wound up crashed in a ditch ablaze), a Mercury Lynx (also prone to fires when it was recalled for other massive crash safety failures), some burgundy landboat of a car recalled for engine fires i've long since forgotten what kind it was, and a 90s minivan that had a recall on part of it literally a week after she bought it because the sliding side door would pop open while driving. Thankfully she doesn't drive anymore at all so her dangerous car luck is one less thing to worry about.
In sales your mom is referred to as a "harbinger customer", someone who is prone to buy products that fail. It sounds ridiculous, but as your mom's choice of car shows, it happens. This is quite a recent discovery, 2015 was the first major study from what I read.
There is one caveat: harbinger customers usually buy things that will be discontinued, not repeatedly and reliably buy a rolling fire hazard.
I wonder if that minivan was the Aerostar.... My parents had one of those that by the time the warranty period was over, had had every part replaced outside of the seats.
Hopefully your mom had good luck in some other area of her life to make up for the car troubles!
I worked at an aftermarket car part company for a few years. The older mechanics had a joke: FORD isn't a last name. It's an acronym--Found On Road Dead.
One of my coworkers owns a Pinto wagon, we always joke that if he doesn’t show up one day we know what happened. It’s actually wild how safety standards are relatively new. I used to own a 92 Firebird, and there was a warning saying essentially if you got in a head on collision, you were dead. I now have a 63 Galaxie, which sadly isn’t running at the moment, but you’d really have to press the brake pedal hard to get the brakes to engage on cars that old.
The wagons didn’t have the fire problem. The tank was located differently. I had a wagon as my first car and have fond memories of it - other than the leaking rear engine seal I could never get fixed properly.
Huh, didn’t know that info. Thanks for sharing it, looks like I’ll have to come up with another joke from now on.
Not even knowing the fuel tank issues, when my sister and I would see these as kids, we'd yell "death trap, death trap!"
My wife's first car was a 1975 Pinto hatchback . It was recalled and Ford installed the plastic shield between the fuel tank and rear differential. It was never rear-ended. The camshaft wore out in 1981. I replaced that on the driveway. We had the car until 1987, one of the few Pintos still running after 12 years.
I HATE how many of these stories boil down to "for want of a cheaper nail"
Nice touch having a red 1967 Ford Galaxie 500 rear ending the pinto!
The piece of paper as the bumper in the demonstration had me rolling lol
My grandma's pinto caught fire with my dad (3 years old at the time) was still in it. They were at a gas station, and the fire started while my grandma had gone inside to pay for gas. Luckily, somebody saw the fire and was able to carry my dad to safety.
In the early 80s Ford had another issue with exploding vehicles. Their full size, heavy duty extrended vans that were converted to ambulances developed a habit of randomly catching fire. The ambulance conversions had bigger fuel tanks and the exhaust should have been rerouted, away from the gas tank, but the bean counters said "I'm sure it'll be fine."
That cost analysis system was actually satirized in the movie _Fight Club,_ where the protagonist's job at an insurance company was to apply that formula.
As always, thanks for the video!
From a strictly economic standpoint, the analysis is correct. Where it fails is it assigns zero value to the emotional impact of deaths caused by the defect (and corresponding loss of sales due to the loss of the brand's reputation as a result of that emotional impact).
@@solandri69 Indeed. In the movie, recasting the company as an insurance one was perfect-since emotions and brand mean nothing to them. 🙃
Scrolled for exactly this, The Recall Formula scene.
Plainly Difficult is basically "The Recall Formula Throughout History" series.
At the time, all compact cars with similar fuel tank placement behaved about the same as the Pinto in the event of a rear end crash, as you note. Ford was picked on by the press mostly because of "the memo" and the sheer quantities of them that were on the road. Their PR Department was the worst ever in handling the fallout. No station wagons were involved and there never was a 4 door Pinto wagon--only 2 door models. I had two Pintos and liked them both--the biggest problem was body rust in the northern IL climate.
The gremlin was the ssecond most firey rear
Could be--all compact cars on the market were tested and the Pinto fell about in the middle for safety in a rear end crash.@@TheHamadanners
The VW Beetles had the gas tank in the front and not a lot else in the front, might I add.
There were a lot of vehicles that were unsafe compared to the cars of today. GM's G10 vans were death traps in frontal crashes, their C and K series trucks had a side saddle tank that would split in a side impact.
@@henryturnerjr3857the VW beetle has fire issues for different reasons too. Fragile fuel lines that like to rupture
There's also a newer scandal with similar issues. The 2002-2007 Jeep Liberty/Cherokee. The fuel tanks were unprotected and behind the rear axle. Lots of fires resulted with loss of life. The "fix" was to install trailer hitches in all of the vehicles to "protect" the tank. There was controversy that the fix was probably not very effective. Would make a good video.
Funny that breaks pennsylvania laws concerning trailer hitches (cant drive around with a hitch but no trailer)
Jeeps are some of the most overrated vehicles out there IMHO. They also sponsored president Brandon's phony "social distancing" drive-in rallies, so it wouldn't surprise me that they don't actually value the safety of their customers when they pushed mask & vax mandates so hard.
@@GearGuardianGaming The hitch is the mount to the car. The ball and ball mount is the part you can’t drive with.
A factory trailer hitch is a reinforcement bar which spans nearly the full width of the car. It's designed to transmit torque from the trailer (via the receiver ball) to the left and right sides of the vehicle's frame. It would provide as much protection as you could expect for a fuel tank mounted behind the rear axle. Any forces from being rear-ended would need to collapse the sides of the car, before it allowed intrusion into the fuel tank space. The tank would still be vulnerable to side- and off-center impacts, but no more so than a tank mounted elsewhere.
@@solandri69 Agreed. I owned one of those Jeeps and felt reasonably safe with the hitch installed. I think some of the concerns were portions of the hitch had somewhat sharp edges that could rupture the tank. I think the main issue (with the Jeep Liberty/Cherokee) was it remained in production as one of the few modern SUVs with a behind the axle fuel tank
Omg!
When Planly difficult puts a CAR on the channel, you know it's going to good!
Yeah I remember that incident where three women were killed in Indiana when their Pinto was rear-ended. The joke about pintos exploding when you rear-ended them ended up in the movie entitled Top Secret. Think the movie Airplane but for the 007 series.
Top! Secret was great! It really flew under the radar though. Awesome movie series
There was also a scene in the movie “Spirit of ‘76” where a car *just barely* misses rear-ending a Pinto.
“Let’s get out of here!”
“But I didn’t even hit it!”
“You don’t have to!”
Ka-BOOM!
Yes, it was a Zucker Brothers film, same people who produced Airplane and The Naked Gun! The star was also a young Val Kilmer.
I lived 30 minutes from where that accident happened. The road design was as much to blame as the car. The road had solid curbs all along it preventing a car from pulling off the road in the event of trouble. The girls had stopped in the right-hand lane to check and see if they had forgotten to put the gas cap back on at a gas station. It's hard to see how any car of that era, stopped cold in a traffic lane and rear ended by a van traveling 60 mph would have had a good ending.
Top Secret was awesome!!!! And Val Kilmer... sooooo *fine*
My mom had a Pinto in the early 70’s, I remember it well. I shudder thinking how we could have been one of those unfortunate souls.
My oldest brother’s first car was a Pinto. We called it “The Pintera”.
As opposed to PANTERA. CUTE❤
Given how many times you've used that Pinto-looking graphic in your videos, it's about time you've actually covered the legend itself! I am old enough to remember these cars being quite common, and like most 70s American "compact" cars I thought it was crap. Or, well, my dad did, anyway, and I was like 7 or 8 so I tended to agree with him. But I remember what they looked like up close, with cheap chrome and trim, a finish that was sure to rust through after a couple of winters' salted roads, and that awful exhaust smell. Some old cars, with no smog pumps or catalytic converters, smell cool, but in the 70s when they tried to clean up the exhaust they stank horribly. Nowadays cars hardly smell at all. When an antique hotrod drives by though, that smell suddenly transports me back to my childhood.
I remember that weird not-quite rotten egg smell. So gross 🤢
In the car industry no-one is talking about fires in a car but maybe “heavy smoke” or “heat generated”. Volvo had issues with exploding batteries or as they put it ”rapidly expanding” batteries.
As always a good and interesting video.
I had one! It was the 2 door station wagon version with lime green paint and fake wood paneling on the sides! It couldn’t have been any uglier and I loved it because it was so ugly.
My parents' was white.
@@New_Wave_Nancy I bought mine in 1987 for 500 bucks and drove it a year before it died.
The Pinto was Ugly but Cool Looking
My high school years in 1989 or 90. About 8 of us at state park down a path not traveled much. It's little past midnight girls and guys are high or drunk. Having fun until we see headlights through the trees headed our way. Girls says it's police, it's police. I say "NO NO it's a Pinto!" Yes it was a Pinto. Pintos have a distinct headlights from all other cars back then. When all of us realized it was a Pinto. We could not stop laughing. 33 years later 3 of us keep in contact. It could be a funeral or something good. No hello or wats up. They say "No No it's a Pinto!" It's still funny telling about this.
A boy I went to school with died like this. We were in kindergarten. My parent'sand this boy'smother both owned Pintos. I remember her talking to the boy's mom one day, they were discussing their Pintos and how they hated having to drive them but couldn't afford anything else yet. Not long after, we were able to get something that my dad and uncle could fix so we'd have a car that wouldn't possibly blow up. The next year, that boy and his mother were rear ended not far from our school and both died as a result of the instant fireball - the vapor was able to spread well into the car before ignition so there wasn't much hope of getting in there, especially seeing as to get out of the back seat you had to open the door, fold down the front seat and climb out.
Loved the Pinto in the Blues Brothers movie. They legit dropped it 200ft from the air by crane. They had to do it twice. First to prove to the city that they could hit an X target. Second one on film with Chicago in the backround. It did not blow up but it was flattened upon impact. Great movie. 👍
The Ford Piinto was a very durable little car with good rust protection and bullet-proof engines. It was more safe in a collision than the Datsun (Nissan) Toyota and VW of the time. The problem here was not the car, the problem was Ford Motor Company's sweeping an easy safety fix under the rug.
True, no more prone to rear end collision fires that any other subcompact of the period: Vega, Gremlin, Colt, etc.
I worked for Ford in their quality control depart for a while in the 90's. My father worked in their health and safety department for around 35 yrs. Sweeping an easy safety fix under the rug to save a dollar a car is completely their style. No, I have never owned a Ford vehicle.
In the late 80s I got a '76 Pinto as my first car. It was a salvage title, wore tires bald in 3 months, and had bumpers from a different car on it. As luck would have it, my rear bumper was badly dented in the center. I used to joke mine wouldn't blow up because it had already survived being rear-ended. It was originally yellow, although by the time I got it, it had been repainted red. It turned out to be very reliable, and I kept it for a few years until getting a better used car.
I grew up in that time but no one I knew owned a Pinto (Rust Belt U.S.A.). Cars were generally not safe at anything but low speeds at that time but it was a rite of passage to navigate a twisty road with 70 degree curves and large oak trees on the way to school in a rustbucket. Some of us survived to adulthood 🙃
The strong and the lucky 😊
As a young child in the 1970s, my parents drove me around in a Pinto station wagon. We also spotted it occasionally on the highway (identifiable by a bumper sticker still on it) for years after they sold it.
the Wagons never had that probem due to their rear overhang being several inches longer than on the hatchbacks.
I can't wait for the "Unsafe at Any Speed" saga of the Chevrolet Corvair.
The closest I ever came to one of these was a friend's Chevette, and even the memories of that thing are somewhat softened by the effects of the exhaust leak it had. Good times, I think.
My parents bought a 77’ chevette for my Mom & what a POS it was!
I had a friend with a Chevette - the Pinto was roomy compared to that. I remember my knees pressed into the dash.
Guy I worked with told me about Chevette that was a company car at a previous job.
If you slammed the driver door shut, the passenger door popped open.
The host of _other_ mechanical problems that car had earned it the nickname "Sh*t-vette." 🤣
My driving lessons in 1984 were in a 4 door Chevette. Nothing like 4 full size guys riding around in what was a de facto clown car. It was pretty clapped out, so by the time of the final test, we got to drive a brand new Acadian - essentially an updated Chevette. At least it wasn’t a Hyundai Pony. . . .
Two events, 1. My uncle had a Mercury Bobcat. Saw a drunk weaving coming from the opposite direction and he quickly got to the shoulder only for the drunk to hit him head on. He got out safely and got the other driver out, and both across the street.... then the Bobcat went up in a spectacular 1970s Barnaby Jones explosion. 2. In the mid-80s I was delivering pizzas, and heading back to the shop after a delivery I saw a black smoke ring rise to the heavens... got to the 18 way stop-sign misfunction junction (fixed since then) to see an old man (obviously a farmer) standing next to a pickup truck holding a fire extinguisher bawling his eyes out... He had been rear ended by another who drove off, and all he did was tap the old Pinto's bumper. The thing about them 1970s cars was they were made of plain steel bodies, and rusted sometimes before they got sold. The metal was thin and rust prone, the gas tanks were not properly vented so gas fumes would rise into the cabin area.... resulting in flash fires. 5 high school cheer leaders, afternoon of Homecoming and the big game...... they looked like Hollywood horror movie props, like Hammer Productions 1960s stupid bad movie props. The fire so so intense the metal roof sagged, glass shattered, and just carbonized skeletons and no fire left in the 2 minutes it took me to drive from where I saw the smoke ring to the intersection.
I am amazed you had the balls to not include that one Pinto clip from the movie "Top Secret" in this production. Much appreciated (even if I like said movie quite a lot).
But that scene is classic! LOL
I survived the Pinto, should be a shirt. We had ours until 1989! It was a lovely shade of dookie brown. 😂😂😂
man, I'm glad you decided to start up this Scandal series, I'm loving each and every episode in the series so far!
Love this! I mean, horrible tragedy, but I love the way you describe the disasters and scandals in detail and with humorous pictures (and not-so-funny real videos and pictures). Anyway, thanks!
Thank you!!
Decades later, a Rutgers Law Journal report vindicated the Pinto, finding it no more dangerous than other contemporary cars, even with regards to fires.
Well then how come other cars aren’t known for blowing up? I think studies aren’t always reality.
All the cars back then used the top of the gas tank as the bottom of the trunk. Ford brought in the back halves of all the competitors cars to the trial to show the Pinto was not unique.
Shouldn't it be compared to the best cars of the time? Did the SAAB fare better at the time?
In 1975 I was in a accident in my friends grandma’s 1973 Pinto. A guy ran a stop sign in a 1969 Oldsmobile (Cutlass?). We were struck in the left front at the door pillar. Probably at around 30 mph. We were all ok with minor injuries with mine being the worse as my head struck the windshield and dash. Concussion and a pretty abraded chin. And no, no one was wearing seatbelts. None of the doors would open and we had to exit via passenger window. Once out we all smelled gas and the Pinto was leaking gas. Nothing was out to the public yet but in 1977 when it began to become common knowledge my family remembered my crash and consider me lucky.
haven't lived until you've ridden in an orange pinto that has bungy cord keeping the doors shut and the back seat was so worn you barely have any cushioning and it felt like you were sitting on the gas tank; not to mention the rust eating through the floor on the passenger side lol. why yes, a friend of mine did, in fact, have this exact vehicle in high school...in the 90s.
Had to drive our baby blue Pinto in high school. I got my drivers license in it. I am surprised they allowed it after inspection, the thing was a mess. The passenger door didn't close, you had to roll down the window, and from the outside hoist the door onto the frame. Then the passenger had to crawl in through the window. Also, the nighttime lights on the dashboard failed, and if I was driving at night my passenger had to flick a lighter to tell how fast we were going. Eventually the car developed a shimmy whenever it went above 50, so I didn't need anyone to flick a lighter anymore, lol. It got so bad that when I offered friends a ride they would say "Um, is it your Dad's car? Then no.". lol
The only Pintos I like are beans.
I guess that's just how you frijole
Remember in the film Speed where Sandra Bullock tells Keanu Reeves that driving the bus is "Just like driving a really big Pinto"? I now finally understand the reference 😂 almost 30 years later 😅
Girlfriend’s mom had one. The 4 cylinder engine was powerful as a squirrel with 3 legs. -Memphis
Love the Automotive industry videos! This, the VW scandal and the Takata recall were very well done, I hope you make more in the future!
Whenever I think of the Ford Pinto, I remember that hilarious moment in Top Secret! 😂
I owned not one but two Pintos and neither had the safety cage around the fuel tank. I never had any trouble driving in heavy traffic, everyone seemed to keep their distance from me even on the 5 and the 405 freeways here in SoCal.
That foal was presumably born some time around 1970, or ~53 years ago. Typically, horses die of age-related causes starting at about 25, and continuing until 40 is considered exceptional. The longest reliable horse lifespan is 62. In 2013, a horse named Shayne died at the age of 51. So if that foal somehow is still alive, it would be the 3rd oldest horse on record. On the other hand, it's very possible it lived to see both the Pinto and the circa-2000 rollover recalls.
Ah, yes, the Pinto. I was too young to fully understand the jokes about it back in the day, but I remembered them all. For a long time all I knew was that it was a punch line of a car, along with the Vega.
There were even Stickers sold you could put on your Pinto : "Hit me and we die together"
No s#$t. See 14:15.
My dad had a 78 Bobcat. He loved that little car. ❤️
My family's hatchback Pinto was rear ended, but fortunately it was in a tiny convenience store parking lot at low speed, so the only poor result was my over-dramatic sister wailing for hours. We kids were just piled into the back, no seat belts or anything, so even a slightly more severe Pinto accident would have been catastrophic.
For fellow folk from the United States who were concerned about John's mother's car, a "backbox" is the UK term for what we could call a "muffler."
just what i needed to watch before filling by boats 300 Litre fuel tank up........ I may just do the water tank instead 🤣
My first car was a 1973 Pinto as a teenager. As soon as the recall notification came out My Dad rushed the car to the Ford Dealer and had that corrected.
I had a 72 Pinto that I named Sadie. I loved that car. She was reliable and fun right up until she threw a rod. They are a kind of unicorn today but i still do a double take when i see one.
My aunt actually had a blue pinto back in the day. And yes it did explode. But nobody was harmed
Gas tanks don't just "explode" while the chance of fire are greater with an empty tank because of fuel vapor, a full tank will not detonate #realfordmechanic
True. Vapor is the stuff that happily goes 'bang' but things like petrol (gas) will merely just burn.
There's a reason anyone having to take on the unenviable task of welding a fuel tank will fill the tank with water.
A subsequent analysis of the overall safety of the Pinto suggested it was comparable to other 1970s subcompact cars. I had a Chevy Vega, same design as a Pinto.
I had a Pinto back in the 90's... rare bird by that time... AND later helped a buddy restore one around 03 or 04... They weren't exactly "crap cars"... I mean, I wouldn't have wanted to strip and rebuild for racing or anything, but for a basic town-and-country model to get where you're going, it wasn't half bad. Obviously, by then, cognizant of the fire hazards and the dubious irreverence with which Ford didn't care, I DID get enough plastic together to cover the bolts and went as far as to "add a fair amount of beef" to the rear bumper, even retro-fitting it directly to some sub-framing installed around the tank ENTIRELY to deform so to generically push gas DOWN and out, rather than let it randomly fly everywhere. It wasn't much, but rather than leave it essentially wrapped in approximately the sheet-metal equivalent of a wet paper towel, I thought any improvement was better than none...
AND admittedly, it was the ONE car in my whole life that was NEVER EVER without a fire-extinguisher that was absolutely up to date on inspections and maintenance... On that point I was a bit of a prick...
The engine, though was actually pretty good. Again, it was NOT a Mustang by any stretch, but I had no trouble out of it, and with the one we restored together (because I like retro-fits and re-engineering) similarly performed admirably, all things considered.
I DO still crack up at the movie "Top Secret" with the scene where the Jeep loses control and skids to a stop just "tapping" the rear of a hidden Pinto in the bushes... "Ting!" and the eruption of the fireball... It's dated as hell, but a pretty solid sight-gag... like so many in that silly movie... ;o)
And after being excited about making it to the video early, I realize it's about the ford pinto, my uncle died in a crash in a Pinto, still gonna try to watch it to learn something, might be hard. Anyway, appreciate the video.
My condolences, mate
Sadness. (((hug))) for your loss.
@@jun2xweh Appreciate it. The night we got the phone call I will never forget. Hearing my Dad just scream out in the worst emotional pain a person can experience is etched into my memory. Hated that car ever since. And we all knew it was a dangerous car at the time. Not a lot of options when we're all broke though.
@@Jeremy_M_ I feel you. I've got some issues with white SUVs, ever since my stepdad was killed in a crash in his off-white Ford Escape caused by a road-raging driver in another white SUV, make and model forgotten, though the court case is continuing. (The driver survived, and has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, among other things.)
Unfortunately, whitish SUVs are incredibly popular in my city. My theory is that being a blue collar town in Canada where the weather gets pretty harsh in the fall/winter/spring, they're good for hauling whatever needs to be hauled, they feel secure even if they aren't, and the off-white colour hides salt and other snow-related muck well. I hate those damn cars.
Back around 2005? There was a little old man who lived on the edge of downtown, with a burgundy Ford Pinto, used to see him all the time. One day I was driving past and saw an accident: The Pinto had been rear-ended by a modern SUV, there were FOUR fire trucks and maybe 20 fire fighters that had responded, but the car didn't catch fire. Saw the old guy again later driving a new Ford Focus.
That SUV was probably tall enough to go the fuel tank! 😅
I wasn't going to bother with this video; thought I knew enough about Pinto. WRONG!! Your version is by far the deepest diving and *fairest of all to date. Congratulations from a 🇨🇦 Canadian.
Thank you!!
When i was a teenager, a closed friend of mine lost her mom in that explosive pinto! And her sister, who was severely burned from that incident, still carry those scars and mentally and physically to this day!
You should do one about the exploding fuel pumps in the explorer after being drove under 1/4 tank and the time they bought trailer tires from Firestone, installed them as spares (on the same model year explorer i believe) and then proceeded to blame Firestone for providing "defective" tires.
Wait what?🧐
@@aw5557which one were you not aware of? They call the first generation "Exploders" for a reason 😂
@@goosenotmaverick1156 the fuel pump and the trailer tires.
Or the Firestone 500 tires that actually were defective.
The Explorer/Firestone thing wasn't trailer tires, but Ford's insisting that Firestone let them run a lower pressure than they were designed for to enhance ride quality. Rather than loose the sale, Firestone agreed and their engineers signed off on it which made them responsible, but once Ford's involvement was discovered they had liability too. The tires were as safe as any other when used at the pressures Firestone had originally required.
My father had a 1972 ford pinto station wagon, but it was bare bones. I always thought it always looked odd. Never mind the fact my sister and I used to ride in the backseat without seatbelts, we managed to luck out and not been in the car when it was in an accident. Also was fortunate my father was involved in a side-impact crash toward the front and it wasn’t the standard pinto. So strange to be a part of that interesting history.
the Wagon had a longer rear overhang hence it wasn't prone to fires
As a Michigander who grew up surrounded by Ford propaganda, I appreciate this video coming out during the UAW strike against the big three automotive companies. Great video and great timing.
Even though I’ve got CZcams premium, I still love the little advert warning in the corner. So nostalgic, so heartwarming. Thanks.
Having done the Challenger disaster last week, you then moved onto another disaster that we looked at when I was doing my mechanical engineering degree lol.
I know it was an entirely different time, but seeing not even 1700$ for a new car is insane. I paid more than that for the GPU that's running my PC.
I'm sure you get a lot more fun out of it and have lower maintenance costs, at least...
@@scorinth It's been a one-time payment so far without issues. Can't say that about my actual car sadly hahaha
I had two Pintos. A 79 solid glass hatchback. And a 78 Sedan Delivery Hippie Wagon. The Hippie Wagon was V6 auto power rack & pinion. Super neat.
“Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.”