dougrainer wrote:
Here is a fun fact. The FIRST Major Lawsuit against the Pinto was filed by the Elkhart County District Attorney back in the 70's. He alleged Ford was liable because 3 young girls died in a rear end FIRE when a motorist rear ended their Pinto on a hi way. YES, Elkhart, Indiana where the majority of RV's are made. Elkhart won.
Here's an even more fun fact, that's wrong.
The trial was Winimac, IN, 75 miles away from Elkhart and it was NOT the first lawsuit it was the first attempt to find Ford corporately criminally guilty of reckless homicide, after a 10 week trial the Ford Motor Company was exonerated after 4 days of jury deliberations.
Probably the fact the driver had stopped in the right lane to retrieve the fuel cap that had fallen off after fueling the car up, it was hit by a full-sized van doing 55 mph with a modified front bumper had a lot to do with the whole affair.
They lost because, as stated earlier, the defence showed that when hit by 1972 Chev van (which was what hit the Pinto), many other cars had similar damage as what happened to the Pinto in which the three girls perished. The testing involved the Chevrolet Vega and Impala, American Motors Gremlin, Dodge Colt, and Toyota Corolla.
The first lawsuit was, the one that started the ball rolling was in California, and the FACTS of that case was that the car stalled on entering the freeway and was rear-ended by a larger vehicle doing 35 mph, it had been unable to slow down from highway speed fast enough.
BTW, speaking of fun facts, as stated earlier, over 3 million of them were produced, more than 90% of those were sold AFTER the 'problem' became known.
More fun still? GM had to recall 320,000 of its 1976 and 1977 Chevettes for similar fuel tank modifications because of the same problem.
