BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???

Subject: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 07:40 PM

Well, after my buddy, Rap, put the mean mouth on this car I figured that there might be some other folks, other than me, who liked the car...

I had one... 4 cyl./4 speed and one bad ass Ford...

You???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 07:41 PM

Did you have the auto-ignition model?

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bobert
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 07:54 PM

What is an auto-ignition, Rap???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: ranger1
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 08:06 PM

The kind that blows up, would be my guess.

I never owned one myself, too young, but my grandfather had the Pony station wagon model. It was a pretty solid, reliable car, for the most part. Heck, it survived being owned by my grandfather, who was notoriously hard on his cars. What killed her was the Connecticut River flooding when the ice went out and the mill boss refusing to let the workers go move their cars out of the parking lot to higher ground. We have a newspaper clipping of her standing on her nose in the middle of an ice jam in the river. She was totaled, poor old girl.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 09:10 PM

I never owned one, but I thought the name was a good joke on the Mustang.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Wesley S
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 09:33 PM

My dad - an aerospace engineer - had one for about a week. He returned it - and called it a piece of trash. I'll trust his judgement. YMMV.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Rapparee
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 09:40 PM

It wasn't the car itself, exactly....

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 10:15 PM

Don't get rear-ended.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: number 6
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 10:17 PM

I had one .... same as yours Bobert, a 1974 4 cyl./4 speed 2 door (did it come in a 4 door?) ... it was a cool car to drive ... but by 1976 it was a rusty piece of no good junk.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Sep 13 - 10:53 PM

In comparison with its nearest Detroit-built competitors, the Chevy Vega and the AMC Gremlin, the Pinto was a great car. In comparison with anything else, it was a piece of crap.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 07 Sep 13 - 09:32 AM

We had the Mercury equivalent, the Bobcat. Not sure of the year. I think it sounded a lot like Bobert's spec wise. Manual transmission, so I had to learn to drive a stick. We dubbed it the baby tank because of how it handled on the highway, rattling around. Me being a reckless youth at the time, had a musician buddy. We would drive the bobcat to open mics, and I somehow got the skill of handling the stick shift while drinking a can of beer and passing a number back and forth. (not something I would recommend these days to anyone)I think we drove that car till it wasn't worth anything as a trade in. Pleasant memories of that car.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Sep 13 - 05:37 PM

My brother had one. Advertised it for sale with the optional rear seat rottissarie (SP?).

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST,hg
Date: 07 Sep 13 - 09:17 PM

I had a lemon yellow station wagon which I bought in South Florida. On the second day driving it home to Michigan in Riceville Tennessee, it broke down. The electrical system was faulty. The resulting experience is one of the worst things that has ever happened to me. I won't recount it here. It also broke down in a huge snowstorm in the dead of winter on the road from Lansing to Ann Arbor leaving me and my friend and his Martin stranded at three am. Luckily some busses were being delivered to parts south and one picked us up or we would have frozen to death. It never worked right and caused unending difficulties until I gladly traded it in for a Datsun HoneyBee. It was a 1973 built on a Monday in July before contract negotiations, I guess.

I HATE THE FORD PINTO, Bobert

love hg

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Sep 13 - 10:41 PM

I am not a fan. But the car was likely under-rated and over-shadowed by the Mustang hype.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: gnu
Date: 08 Sep 13 - 07:37 AM

SINS... sad but funny!

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bobert
Date: 08 Sep 13 - 10:15 AM

So, the rap on the Pinto is that it was designed poorly because it had the gas tank in the back???

Huh???

That's where all cars with an engine in the front have their gas tanks...

Oh well???

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 08 Sep 13 - 11:49 AM

Bobert-
The location of the gas tank wasn't the problem. It was the rigid connection between the filler cap and the tank that made it a potential death trap if rear-ended.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 09 Sep 13 - 08:59 AM

Oh yeah, my old college room mate had a real Pinto (not the bobcat I used). I think a lot of students had them at the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: clueless don
Date: 09 Sep 13 - 09:06 AM

My second car was a '77 Pinto. It was the only car that I actually looked at the catalog and selected the color and all of the options. Never blew up. I liked it.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Sep 13 - 06:15 PM

An ex-girlfriend had a rust-bucket one with the exploding gas tank option. After she found this out she decided to get rid of it and sold it to this guy who told her he planned to - get this - enter it in demolition derby.

Brilliant.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Sep 13 - 10:58 PM

Here's the deal...

Cars catch on fire... Trucks catch on fire... According to my buddy, Ralph Nader, Corvairs are unsafe at any speed...

I've driven both Corvairs and Pintos and here to say, "I liked 'um both"...

Let me brag on my Pinto... If I really dogged it it would smoke the tires in first and second gear and out run just about any V-8 light to light... 1/4 mile??? Different story but I sho nuff pissed off a few folks with Vettes...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: kendall
Date: 10 Sep 13 - 07:18 PM

The only way you could piss off anyone in a Vetts is to be in their way. LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Sep 13 - 07:37 PM

Bad, Capt'n, bad...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 01:33 AM

My experience with Ford products of that era was that they were fine, as long as you only traveled in straight lines (awful handling), never got rear-ended, and were fond of rust. I weas unfortunate enought to acquire a Maverick.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: clueless don
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 08:10 AM

These are probably very old, but I heard them fairly recently:

FORD - fix or replace daily

FORD - found on road dead


My second and third cars were Fords. No complaints.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: catspaw49
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 08:52 AM

Bobert......Although cars burn now and again, the Pinto had a built in fault that was well known by FMC. The design around the filler/tank connection was at fault but Ford decided to do nothing, figuring a few lawsuits would be cheaper than actually re-engineering the problem.

That, my friend, is criminal. Period.

I liked the early models but only with the 2 liter OHC engine. Coupled with a very decent clutch and transmission made it sort of fun to drive. The 1.6 was junk. Sadly though Ford didn't even try to make the adaptations that would have retained the best of the 2L when the CAFE standards and added emission controls came along in '73.

The Corvair was a different story altogether and was lost to Nader who knew jackshit nothing about cars.


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 11 Sep 13 - 10:16 PM

I thought it was a great little car. My sister had one back in the 70s and I would borrow it at times. If you put its automatic transmission into second gear it would go through any amount of snow in the Cleveland Ohio winters. A great little tank.

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 04:43 AM

Ford decided to do nothing, figuring a few lawsuits would be cheaper than actually re-engineering the problem.

Two separate "corporate lawyers" at EAC made the same statement in my presence within a few weeks, identically enough that it apparently was "company policy;"

"Legal doesn't matter. My job is to tell 'em how likely it is that they'll get caught, and how much it will cost 'em to have me get 'em out of it when they do."

That seemed to be how they worked.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Any Ford Pinto Fans Here???
From: GUEST,Ed T
Date: 12 Sep 13 - 06:20 AM

While the potential fire issue seemed to be one faulty part, it was easily fixed. Not fixing it was a Ford executive decision issue. These decision-making people were responsible for all Ford vehicles, and does not alone mean this car was, overall, worse tan others because the executives failed to do the right thing and were "found out". Many vehicles have had safety issues that were fixed, not ignored and allowed to harm people under specific situations.