The 10 least safe cars of all time

Don't forget the Tucker cars. cuhulin

Then why did Ford, at no cost to me, replace my Pinto with a Mercury Bobcat shortly after the lawsuit ended? The Bobcat had the gas tank moved 3 inches inward, making it not explode like the Pinto would if hit straight on in the rear. Also I knowledge of the lawsuit prior to Ford offering a no cost replacement.

Also over 500 Americans burned to death when their Pintos when poof after being rearened. The courts let Ford of easily with only a $500 dollar fine and the lead designer had to be fired without compensation. That same person was 4 months later highered by Ford in a Management position.

Econo-cars

Some of those pickup trucks were 'dangerous' too, similar to Pintos/gas tanks.

I had a '64 Bug with factory seat belts.

There will always be a balance between what car designers want to engineer into car safety, and what the public wants to buy. Just guessing, but I don't think Nader had any significant effect on what the mass public was buying. The Corvair and Pinto died because they weren't making enough money for GM and Ford. Consumer Reports has much more influence on car buyers than Nader did. But even though they rated the Isuzu Trooper "unacceptable" that vehicle lived on for years afterward. Anyway, that's just my idle speculation. Seems if a car is making money for the company, they can easily address safety concerns. But if the model isn't a good profit center they'll dump it and move on. A couple examples come to mind with Ford. The trans falling into gear (LTD?) and lawsuits didn't stop production. Because it was making money for Ford. A few years ago there was a stink about LEO's burning up in Crown Vics when they got rear-ended. Didn't stop production of Crown Vics. (Forget for minute the incidents happened when stopped squad cars got plowed into at high speeds, though there's some similarity with the Pinto,) That one is dicier because the Crown Vic has a captive market with RWD fancying LEO agencies since the demise of the RWD Impala. Anyway, all ways to speculate about Nader influence, which I think was positive in the end. I just don't think he was a "giant killer" in killing car models. More like an ant stomper.

--Vic

This is where I call BS. Mother Jones citing "Conservative estimates" is not truth. The real reported number appears to be less than 30 in pinto fires.

That is what it turned out to be, no doubt, but the Subject was "The 10 least safe cars of all time" :>)

That covers a lot of turf.

Tegger wrote in news:Xns9E479648FCC26tegger@208.90.168.18:

My mistake! The university was Cornell, not Stanford.

You might be using outdated figures for the over 500 deaths due to the Pinto's design. Can you cite any reputable source for these figures? Thanks.

Personally, I think the early Mustangs which mounted the tank in a hole cut into the trunk floor and used the gas tank as a structural member was a lot more dangerous design. That was the bomb! No, literally, it was a bomb. :-)

Didn't your great-great grandfather also own, train and sell Pterosaurs?

Whatever you say, clownboy.

I liked the way they said the Corvette was THE worst, and then placed it BELOW the Mustang...!?!?!?!

The only problem with Toyota is that they gave Americans a hand in design and engineering.

"Portnoy" wrote in news:idmds3$kek$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

At least you bottom-posted this time...

Lame comment.

--Vic

This website

Perhaps not. I have been a Toyota owner since the early 70's, and never saw such crap from them until I got a 1999 Camry made in KY. Ever since then, the Toyotas I have bought have JT for the first 2 places in the VIN.

Yup:

And if I remember correctly, Nader didn't even have a drivers license at the time his book came out.

And if I remember correctly, Nader didn't even have a drivers license at the time his book came out.

------------------------------------------------ Wernher von Braun was never an astronaut, Vivien Thomas was never a physician, Bill Graham was never a musician, Bill Gates never built a computer, Howard Cosell famously "Never Played the Game", prior to his success as a director, Martin Scorcese was never an actor, but those professions were neither their areas of expertise nor the jobs they were trained, hired and paid to do anymore than Nader was an engineer, test or race car driver. Your broaching such a canard offers prima facie evidence that the point far exceeds your grasp and any further spoonfed explanation would likely be lost on you in any case.

I have no idea why Ford replaced your Pinto with a Bobcat (I suspect you are not telling us the whole story). And the gas tank wasn't moved at all. The only thing that changed was they added huge bumpers becasue of the 5 mph bumper rules. My family owned two Pintos (a '72 and a '73). Neither was replaced for free. We did get the recall parts (polyethelene shield, long filler neck and filler neck reinforcement ring) for "free."

Where are you gertting this 500 number? It smacks of total BS and I suspect is from the wildly inaccurate Mother Jones article ( a hatchet job full of lies and half truths). In fact your whole response smacks of the same sort of half truths that plauged the Pinto. Compared to other contemporary samll cars, Pintos were not particualrly dangerous or fireprone. They were not the safest small car in the early 70's, but they were not the most dangerous either. From "The Ford Pinto case: a study in applied ethics, business, and technology" By Douglas Birsch, John H. Fielder:

"PINTO CONTROVERSIES: FATALITIES

"Another dispute in this case involved the number people who were actually killed in low speed, rear-end collisions involving Pintos. Dowie [the Mother Jones Article author] charged that there were somewhere between 600 and 900 fire-related deaths. Prior to the recall in 1978, Ford claimed that Pintos had been involved in 35 cases of rear-impact, fuel leakage fires; producing