Originally Posted by 71dusterdan

sweet, now drop in a 5.0 h.o. from the fox body with the injection a tremec 5 gear, a 9 inch and then make it a lowered pro touring car and i will worship the ground you walk on.

Originally Posted by Netfly

I drove a friend's Pinto with a manual in the 70's. Not bad for a small car. It was fun, economical and held up well to abuse. Sometime in the early 80's after they were noted for exploding too easily from getting hit in the rear no one wanted them anymore. Maybe that's why they stopped making them. Shortly later the Audi's were getting a bad rap for unintended acceleration and the joke of the day was: You know your having a bad day when you pull up to the toll booth and there's a Pinto in front of you and an Audi behind you.

Originally Posted by wikipedia.org

Safety problems
Through early production of the model, it became a focus of a major scandal when it was alleged that the car's design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event of a rear-end collision which sometimes resulted in deadly fires and explosions. Critics argued that the vehicle's lack of a true rear bumper as well as any reinforcing structure between the rear panel and the tank, meant that in certain collisions, the tank would be thrust forward into the differential, which had a number of protruding bolts that could puncture the tank. This, and the fact that the doors could potentially jam during an accident (due to poor reinforcing) made the car a potential deathtrap.

Ford was aware of this design flaw but allegedly refused to pay what was characterized as the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. Mother Jones magazine obtained the cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of an $11 repair against the cost of paying off potential law suits, in what became known as the Ford Pinto Memo. The characterization of Ford's design decision as gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to major lawsuits, criminal charges, and a costly recall of all affected Pintos. While Ford was acquitted of criminal charges, it lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue that seats four."[3]

The most famous Ford Pinto product liability case resulted in a judicial opinion that is a staple of remedies courses in American law schools. In Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., 119 Cal. App. 3d 757 (4th Dist. 1981) [1], the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District reviewed Ford's conduct, and upheld compensatory damages of $2.5 million and punitive damages of $3.5 million against Ford. It also upheld the judge's reduction of the punitive damages from the jury's original verdict of $125 million. Of the two plaintiffs, one was killed in the collision that caused her Pinto to explode, and her passenger, 13-year old Richard Grimshaw, was badly burned and scarred for life. Arthur N. Hews was the attorney for Plaintiffs.[citation needed]

However, a 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz [2], argued that the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. Only 27 people ever died in Pinto fires. Given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built), this was no worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argued that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles, and that the supposed "smoking gun" document that plaintiffs claimed showed Ford's callousness in designing the Pinto was a document based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations about the value of a human life rather than a document used to design the Pinto.

Due to the alleged engineering, safety, and reliability problems, Forbes Magazine included the Pinto on its list of the worst cars of all time.