1977 Ford Pinto Squire: Regular Car Reviews

our giveaway car the 350 horsepower mazda speed 3 ends this wednesday click the link in the description and don't miss out hot mug hot hatch but the roots of this mazda ford 2.3 liter engine go back 40 years ford started experimenting with overseas 4-cylinder engines as early as 1970. the mazda speed 3 wouldn't exist without the ford pinto load up a xxx film on 16 millimeter drink spiced wine out of a goat bladder and openly sniff snow in a school board meeting it's a 1977 ford pinto squire this is a two-door wagon and here it is the connection between the mazda speed 3 and the ford pinto this is the original this is genesis this is the 2-3 lima engine aka the t-88 aka the ford metric aka the euro engine here it is all that choo choo subaru fighting evo hunting power it begins here this engine is elder scrolls arena and you wouldn't believe that this modern hatchback and this 1970s wagon thing are related you wouldn't believe that because this thing is slow yeah pintos blew up from butt stuff because they can't go fast enough to ram anything head on pedal down and there's no acceleration there's nothing here they called this the ford select shift that means you can select how disappointed you are it has three speeds useless huh and come on man this thing accelerates slower than a plymouth from the 1950s maybe a pinto is faster than a beetle and it's faster than a chevette at least it's faster than a ford courier anything smaller than an impala back then was advertised as having sporty european handling this is sporty european handle once you get going it's not so bad this is just still going straight that rack and pinion series uh this has this has a rack and it does yeah wow remember in the early 1990s when every program that came on a cd-rom had the word interactive on the box yeah same marketing fluff going on here a ford pinto handles like a bean bag ford pinto handles like an inflatable mattress in the common area of your dorm a ford pinto handles like a playground spring horse it handles like f a t i t t i e s driving a pinto wagon today is more of an experience or it's an uh a display of intentionally looking so uncool your automotive fashion just comes right back around again it's driving a ford pinto is like playing a four double a battery green and black screen original game boy on an aisle seat on a delta regional flight maybe you're wearing a nintendo power shirt while you do it just to make your point yeah i know what i'm about yeah look we're cruising in a pinto maybe we'll make it and this pinto has 30 000 miles here's kevin talking about how he found it i found it down in virginia actually uh to use car dealership um they actually had it there for over a year and nobody wanted it and so they put it on ebay and that's where i got it they only knew it was a one-owner car and uh i approved that and uh it was sold new in california and i guess he drove it cross-country moved to virginia and that's where it was its whole life and now it's here in pa all i know is his name was david i think and he only put 26 000 miles on his pinto for however long he owned it which was i guess 40 42 years he was the original owner yeah original owner yep i would like to uh eventually reach out to his family if i can uh you know find out who they are and just tell them you know his car's still around it's uh it's being taken care of as much as i can um what sort of stuff did it need when you bought it really nothing um i just did a little bit of carb tuning and i just changed the oil how is the car running that's great um i do want to keep it as original as i can so it's still got all the california emission stuff on it which makes it slower but tell me how this behaves on the highway surprisingly well um i've actually gotten it up to like 80 81 it was my top speed got this thing in the 80. yeah on a downhill on a day right yep but um it'll get up to like 60 pretty easily um we were doing like 65 the whole way here okay um uphills are obviously a challenge uh gotta use my flashers pretty often oh okay if it's something we're out on the highway filming this we may need to fly maybe it's only if there's like someone going slow in front of you and then you can't keep the movement is it yeah it's just a three speed down yeah just a three speed select shift what do they mean select shift i guess you can just select one and two if you want but i mean selection yeah that's oh this is the same piece that was in the mustangs going back to the 60s and there it is there i wonder if this is the exact same look at that i wonder if this is the exact same pieces that ford just used all the way back to the early 60s is this am radio only just am yep nice yep no power steering um which is kind of weird because this car is it's the squire package which was like the top trim it has all the wood paneling and all the nice trim in here but he didn't get like any other options he got an automatic and am radio no power steering uh let's see what else don't need any of that no ac just a just a fan this was available with air conditioning yes oh how slow would that be very slow yeah i'm kind of glad it doesn't have it because well i mean it would be nice in the in the summer oh yeah as long as you don't have to take it off do these rear windows pop yes they do let's see if i can yeah there's a lot of space back here yeah it's surprisingly roomy have you used this car for any sort of like utility stuff outside of just car not yet i would like to eventually um what i really want to do is uh replicate this old ad where they put like a tree a christmas tree on top of the pinto and it said put a tree or put a pinto under your tree and i thought that was kind of clever yeah so what i really want to do is get a tree and put it on the roof and like recreate that ad nice but i'm a little afraid of scratching the paint but yeah one of the oldest phrases in modern vernacular is about someone's reputation preceding them the concepts of your exploits being known so far and so wide that people come to a decision about you long before you've ever shaken their hand it's a phrase that seems tailor-made for the ford pinto a card that casts a shadow longer than its 163 inches this was ford's very first sub compact now we can talk about the falcon and we can even talk about mcnamara's plan to build the cardinal that never happened and this car had a brief life as a mercury vehicle as well when it was rebranded as a bobcat named after white patched horses the pinto was an appealing little car in the early age of the import craze and the struggle of american automakers to keep pace but the pinto is a unique case in the sense that even if its reputation as a fire trap is undeserved and there are people who will argue that it's still a tale of bad ideas and cut corners this all started in the late 60s when lee iacocca was president of ford he recognized that imports were beginning to take hold stateside with cars like the beetle corolla and datsun 510 cutting into the market share of american alternatives like the falcon and the maverick the ford cortina offered a captive import brought over from ford's european division but it wasn't the same as actually tailoring a sub-compact to the american market and so iacocca laid out the specs the car had to weigh less than two thousand pounds cost less than two thousand dollars which is about fourteen thousand dollars today and iacocca wanted it out quick which meant the final design would be locked in early and remain mostly unchanged to prevent delays some guys don't have enough people who love them enough to tell them no whereas some guys have so many people telling them no that by their very congregation they're compelled to do the opposite the mustang had earned iacocca the benefit of doubt on future making but that's not the same as actually having a good idea of course we don't know what amount of pushback the pinto received internally only that the decision to rush the schedule would have far-reaching consequences released on september 11 1970 for the 1971 model year the pinto took just 25 months from idea to fruition this was the shortest turnaround in automotive production history at the time beating the 43 month average for production cars the rush schedule meant the pinto was exposed to design flaws that weren't caught until testing in this case a gas tank that was prone to rupturing the tank was in the rear on the undercarriage with very little structural support in low-speed crashes a single spark could ignite the fuel vapors and light the car up like a tanker and fury road but the cars were already in production and the eggheads had determined that it would cost too much money to fix this all came to light in the infamous pinto memo a glorified cost-benefit analysis which calculated that it would cost 11 per car to modify the fuel system which would be a total expense of 137 million versus the predicted 49.5 million in payouts if ford was taken to court in essence it was cheaper to pay damages than to issue a recall remember that scene from fight club where the narrator says my job is to apply the formula this is it if the average out of court settlement is less than the cost of a recall we don't do it and so ford stayed the course in one of the more ethically dubious decisions in automotive history it was a dark stain on iacocca's legacy and if he hadn't saved chrysler from bankruptcy a decade later it's hard to imagine how he would have bounced back from this upon its release the pinto was praised for having sports car handling an appealing design and an affordable buy-in price but it only took two months from release for pintos to start being recalled and not just from fuel tank issues either the first 26 000 pintos were recalled due to accelerator problems while an additional 220 000 units were recalled over fuel vapors in the engine air filter presenting an increased fire risk but in spite of this the pinto sold well it was cheap they crossed the 100 000 unit line threshold in just four months and tripled that figure to 352 402 units for 1971. eventually hitting a high of 544 209 units for 1974 which is all the more impressive if you consider the public relations nightmare for dealt with over the lifetime of the vehicle they branded the little carefree car ford didn't have legal issues they had legal subscription and it all started in 1972 with the tragedy that ended one life and ruined another on a california freeway in 1972 a pinto stalled and was rear-ended by an oncoming vehicle the gas tank ruptured and a spark ignited a burst of flames the fire claimed the life of the woman driving the pinto and disfigured her passenger who suffered third degree burns covering ninety percent of his body and required extensive skin grafting a civil jury awarded over 2.5 million to the kids family and nearly six hundred thousand dollars to the family of the woman in addition to 125 million in punitive damages to ford a figure that exceeded the amount ford analysts had anticipated a recall would cost but the number didn't stick as ford lawyers appealed the decision and got the penalty down to only 3.5 million thus sadly proving the analysts right that paying damages would be cheaper and retroactively justifying a careless decision still ford wasn't going to take any more risks on cases they didn't think they could win and wound up settling out of court on similar cases for the most part anyway over the nine year life of the pinto ford was the subject to 117 lawsuits with one of the more significant trials centering on the death of the ulrich girls in the summer of 1978. the person driving the car had accidentally left the gas cap on the roof of the car after filling and pulled over to retrieve it at which point the car was rear-ended by a van causing a fire that killed three teenage girls a recall notice didn't arrive for the old ridge family until 1979 just salt in the wound that was already going to stay open forever the ulrich has sued and in a landmark decision ford was charged with three counts of reckless homicide by an indiana grand jury making this the first time a corporation was charged with homicide but ford was acquitted after the defense basically pointed the finger at other manufacturers claiming that they weren't any less safe and that this could have happened to anybody and while ford did lose a civil suit they only had to pay seven thousand five hundred dollars to each plaintiff what apparently made the pinto dangerous was a combination of placement and structural support or more importantly the lack thereof the gas tank was centered between the rear bumper and the rear axle which was hardly anything new in american automotive standards my ford falcon was the exact same way in fact this might be the exact same part number for the tank but unlike the falcon the pinto had far less crash space between the rear axle and the bumper than the average subcompact which was already at a crushed base deficit in comparison to standard-sized cars in the court documents from grimshaw v ford motor company the problems were as follows number one the pinto's accelerated schedule meant that styling preceded engineering and dictated engineering design to a greater degree than usual number two the styling of the pinto meant that it only had nine or ten inches of crush space a dangerously small number number three the design meant the bumper was little more than a chrome strip number four it lacked reinforcements from hat sections basically to longitudinal side members it also lacks structural bracing in the form of horizontal cross members running between the hat sections meaning the pinto was less crush resistant than other cars and number five the differential housing had exposed flanges and a line of exposed bolt heads which could puncture the gas tank on a rear impact complicating the matter of ford's complacency was the state of regulations in the late 1960s which didn't take rear collisions into account when the national traffic highway safety administration made their proposal to include rear impact crashes and testing the pinto was already in month 18 of its 25-month production cycle with many of the components locked in in a compromise that prevented them from shelving the pinto ford volunteered to meet the stricter 20 mile per hour fixed barrier testing standard by 1973 tests with a modified ford maverick in 1970 already proved that ford had issues to worry about with low speed crashes revealing potential flaws in ford's fuel system design even american motor company enlisted their fuel system engineers to conduct tests on a ford design revealing more potential vulnerabilities after the pinto's release ford resisted an outright recall for as long as they could even after the lawsuits and deaths news magazine mother jones in the infamous pinto madness essay in 1977 claimed that over 900 deaths were caused by ford's carelessness ralph nader went on the offensive as part of his consumer advocacy efforts and held a news conference in washington dc to basically rake the piano over the coals for its lack of safety this forced a second investigation by the nhtsa that concluded on may 8 1978 when they determined that the pinto had a faulty fuel system ford argued that the nhtsa were buckling to public pressure and changing their testing methods to ensure the pinto failed such as using a bullet car instead of a moving barrier and testing a pinto where they filled the gas tank all the way up including all the way up the filler neck rather than using a partially filled tank of non-flammable liquid the nhtsa investigation attributed some 27 deaths to the pintos faulty system between 1970 and 1977 that's when ford stopped putting up a fight because there was no way to salvage the pinto's reputation the only thing that could happen was more lawsuits and bad press and so they initiated a voluntary recall in june of 1978 just before the official order came down from the nhtsa sort of the automotive equivalent of quitting before you get fired about 1.5 million ford pintos and mercury bobcats were recalled and then they were modified with safety improvements like a better tank filler seal and structural reinforcements like a shield between the tank and the exposed flange and bolt heads contemporary analysis by former ucla professor gary t schwartz suggested that the ford pinto was more or less standard for its class in terms of cars on the road at the time in fact he argued that the pinto was in fact safer than its foreign opponents like the corolla the beetle well of course a beatles a death trap and the datsun 1200 but pinto took the heat and now the pinto's reputation remains as a symbol of corporate negligence and greed in a lot of ways the pinto is the equivalent of dating someone for a year and then finding out they're a hollow earther it's like why can't you just be who i thought you were you know why do you have to toast the bread get it all nice and golden brown add crisp bacon fresh lettuce and a juicy tomato only to drop a wet tangy deuce between the buns some people will look at the sandwich and say it's not any more harmful than any other sandwich you might get or even the ah everything's gonna kill you while stepping over the bodies of the people who died eating it but even if a sandwich is mostly good it really doesn't take much to overwhelm the positives now now in 2021 a pinto can exist outside of its reputation it's almost 2022 and now this is a funky cool wagon and of course it exists as a sedan hatchback and everything else two-door wagon this thing is hip this thing is cool this thing will kill you but now that's kind of the scene i had fun driving it even if i didn't get very far or go very fast the bad reputation for a little carefree car costs more than just frustration from its fuel tank reservoir once called it a bobcat or a horse in patchy white it cost them a fortune for each case they had to fight my force here [Music] my fort's here

Channel: Regular Car Reviews

Views: 395,267

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Regular Car Reveiws, Car Review, Car Satire, Mr Regular, RCR, Pinto, Ford Pinto story, Pinto fire, Pinto rear ended, Ford Pinto lawsuit, Ford Pinto review, Ford Pinto wagon, Two door wagon, Malaze era, 2.3 Lima engine, first 23 engine, Ford Euto engine, Ford Pinto unsafe, funny ford pinto, Survivior fdord pinto barn find, barn find pinto

Id: 8xkPcWKuR54

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Cessnaporsche01]

"this thing is cool, it's hip, it'll kill you... but now that's kind of the scene."

Ford Pinto: The ultimate Gen Z car. Quirky, stylish, retro, and you might get to die!

[u/e2hawkeye]

One of the neighborhood older kids was a budget baller who bought a set of those classic five spoke Cragar SS wheels for his baby blue Pinto. I distinctively remember him doing a one wheel peel down the street while blasting Don't Fear The Reaper from the open windows.

[u/1stoffendment]

A high school friend had use of his parents Pinto wagon and we took that car to hell and back. It went places that no RWD should ever have gone. And yes there were slow and unrefined, probably on purpose, back then the Big 3 hated that they had to sell small cars to compete with the Asian and European makers so they made small cars a miserable experience.

[u/GrumpyCatStevens]

My first car was a '74 Pinto. At least mine had a 4-speed; I don't even want to think about how slow it would have been with an auto.

[u/Lapbunny]

Liked this episode a lot, the shots make it look like it aged really well and the owner seems to love it.

Do people donk these things a lot? Those arches look like they could use it.