Pinto crash test

[NYLIBUD]

Ahhhh,The official Ralph Nader Pinto crash test.

[cobraman]

I had a new Pinto in 1972 . I was rear ended twice in that car , guess what ? Never blew up . I’m still alive ! 

[NYLIBUD]

It’s strange, as time goes on,I like this little weird cars more and more.Such as the  Pintio,Gremlins,Pacers,Pinto And Pacer wagons.Thats just a few.There are a lot more.Idk,IMO,they’re cool now.I Grew up in the 80s-90s.Not that matters.

[Rob Hall]

My sister had a '76 Runabout for her first car...got it new, drove it through college...by the time she moved to Arizona in 1980 it was pretty rusty and worn out...got hit twice in parking lots driving cross country and had big dents in the door, hood and grille was broken out...traded it for a used '77 Datsun 280Z.    Haven't seen a Pinto in ages..

[thatz4u]

Owned 2 Pintos, no problems with either........as far as the crash tests, Vegas did the exact same thing when hit from the rear....except the PR people at GM renamed them as BLAZERs...LOL

[StevenGuthmiller]

49 minutes ago, NYLIBUD said:

It’s strange, as time goes on,I like this little weird cars more and more.Such as the  Pintio,Gremlins,Pacers,Pinto And Pacer wagons.Thats just a few.There are a lot more.Idk,IMO,they’re cool now.I Grew up in the 80s-90s.Not that matters.

The only ones that I ever thought were an attractive car were the Vega's.

A lot like a baby Camaro.

A friend of mine had a Vega exactly like this GT right after high school.

Unfortunately, like most cars from that era, they were monumental turds!

 

 

 

Steve

[thatz4u]

4 minutes ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

The only ones that I ever thought were an attractive car were the Vega's.

A lot like a baby Camaro.

A friend of mine had a Vega exactly like this GT right after high school.

Unfortunately, like most cars from that era, they were monumental turds!

Steve

a friend of mine bought a new Vega wagon when they first came out, he drove it for about 6 months & traded it for a full size Chevy Van.......go figure.. 

[StevenGuthmiller]

10 minutes ago, thatz4u said:

a friend of mine bought a new Vega wagon when they first came out, he drove it for about 6 months & traded it for a full size Chevy Van.......go figure.. 

The Vega was probably completely rusted out by then!

 

 

Steve

[STYRENE-SURFER]

If you watch the clip I'd say that soldier in the back was very explosive.

Never drove a Pinto,But had my share of econoboxes. Had two Opel Kadett's.

Wish one of them would have looked like this...

No seriously, they were fun little cars and easy to work on.

[Rob Hall]

That's a movie clip from 'Top Secret' in the first post...

[STYRENE-SURFER]

I thought that looked familiar. ?

Maybe these days they would make fun of self driving cars.

[Bucky]

Did somebody say, "Pinto"?

[GLMFAA1]

Now way back, I rear ended a Pinto with my Dodge Ramcharger sliding on ice, When I hit the Pinto I was expecting the worst of explosion and fire between the two cars, I remember that big rear window shattering to a million pieces. pushed the pinto into a car in front of him that was stopped to make a left turn, so my insurance paid for two car repairs, In the end the Pinto driver got paid for personal injury from my insurance. He took the money and didn't pay his ambulance bill, so I let the ambulance company know about that and he went straight to collection. 

[1930fordpickup]

Unlike the Vega, Pinto's were a good little car you could beat the stuffing out of and they took it. Just don't tell my parents. LOL 

[ChrisBcritter]

"But he didn't even hit it!"

"You don't have to hit it!"

[ChrisBcritter]

Full disclosure: I'm proud to say I was a member of the crew that created this:

A lot of silicone caulk and 23,000 mirror tiles went into it (I did most of the passenger door).

[Mark]

The downsized GM intermediates (particularly the station wagons) were bad in respect to rear impacts too, particularly in areas where cars rusted.  The frames would rot out behind the rear wheels because of the winter slop tossed up by the rear tires, leaving the rear part of the frame separated from the rest.  The Pinto was worse in that it had no "frame" back there.  A book I read about Ford awhile back blamed the design on cost-cutting, or "thrifting", as directed by the guy who was running Ford in that period.  His own book distanced himself from the Pinto, of course.

Where they really screwed up, is when someone at Ford weighed the cost of fixing the design against the estimated number of accident claims, and decided it would be cheaper to pay out the accident claims.  The cost per claim was supposedly based on guidelines established for use after plane crashes.

[Rob Hall]

2 hours ago, Mark said:

The downsized GM intermediates (particularly the station wagons) were bad in respect to rear impacts too, particularly in areas where cars rusted.  The frames would rot out behind the rear wheels because of the winter slop tossed up by the rear tires, leaving the rear part of the frame separated from the rest.  

I seem to recall there was a high profile lawsuit involving a fire from a rear collision w/ a '78-81 Malibu 2dr.

[StevenGuthmiller]

13 hours ago, 1930fordpickup said:

Unlike the Vega, Pinto's were a good little car you could beat the stuffing out of and they took it. Just don't tell my parents. LOL 

Yet you will still find the Pinto on nearly every "worst car ever built" list.

 

 

 

Steve

[Bucky]

12 minutes ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

Yet you will still find the Pinto on nearly every "worst car ever built" list.

 

 

 

Steve

It's amazing that over 3 million were produced over ten years, yet it made the "worst" list. LoL

[StevenGuthmiller]

1 minute ago, Bucky said:

It's amazing that over 3 million were produced over ten years, yet it made the "worst" list. LoL

People will spend their money on a lot of sh*t!

Back in that time period, the big three were producing a lot of it!

 

 

Steve

[espo]

Not that the Pinto and the Vegas didn't have their draw backs, but really for a small inexpensive economy car they were pretty good. No matter what kind of vehicle you're driving, if you get hit from behind by something almost twice your size there will be extensive damage, I think it's just simple Physics. When I first started working at a Chevrolet dealership I was given the usual tour of the dealership and the service area. I asked about the neatly stacked engines still in the create from Chevrolet. The stacks were at lease 6 wide and 5 or 6 high. The reply was that they were new warranty engines for the early Vegas.   On the Pinto side of things, a funny story except for the morning motor mouth on the local radio station. This was during the era of histrionics  over exploding Pintos and Firestone 500 tires blowing out at highway speed. The morning radio  programing was sponsored by the local Ford dealer. This one morning Mr. Motor Mouth, thinking that he was entertaining, made some off hand remark about an actual accident in the middle of town that included a Pinto that didn't explode.    He stated that the said Pinto had been running the Red Light when hit it burst into flames and the Firestone tire had exploded. Mr. Motor Mouth wasn't on the radio the next morning and no explanation about his leaving was never given.     

[StevenGuthmiller]

1 hour ago, espo said:

Not that the Pinto and the Vegas didn't have their draw backs, but really for a small inexpensive economy car they were pretty good.

I asked about the neatly stacked engines still in the create from Chevrolet. The stacks were at lease 6 wide and 5 or 6 high. The reply was that they were new warranty engines for the early Vegas. 

Doesn't sound very good to me.

A car that's engine warps from the heat and whose body rusts out in less than 2 years wouldn't have been considered even remotely acceptable in my book.

 

 

Steve

[Mark]

The Pinto and Vega suffered from their manufacturers' not really wanting to build small cars, because they felt they would make less profit per car with them.  HFII's popular remark was "minicars, miniprofits".  Apparently they felt that younger folks would buy Toyotas and Hondas, then switch to GM, Ford, or Chrysler products when they wanted or needed a bigger car.  Where they whiffed was in thinking that Toyota, Nissan, and Honda would never build bigger or more expensive cars.

[1930fordpickup]

12 hours ago, StevenGuthmiller said:

Yet you will still find the Pinto on nearly every "worst car ever built" list.

Steve

The only reason for that is the fuel tank issues. No they were not great cars but they were not the worst cars either. We had 4 at our house that had over 100,000 miles.  Vega's were far worse cars over all around here. When I was in high school in the mid 80's there were more than a few Pinto's in the lot. Not a single Vega still around. While I worked at the gas station in Toledo after school rarely a Vega came in. I worked within a mile of the Hydro-Matic plant. When a Vega would pull in at night, it had a small block under the hood and you never seen that car in the winter or the rain.