Was the Pinto ever banned? Seems like an exploding gas tank would be sufficient!
Thank you
Sorry, no cite. Just an anecdote - what a career Air Force relative told me about his time in Germany in the mid-1960s.
I hope you know the exploding gas tank is a combo of urban legend and movie clip made for (IIRC) CBS which used standard Hollywood special effects to produce the explosion.
The Pinto was no differently crashworthy than any other subcompact design of its era. The *cause celebre *was entirely that this was one of the first times the cost/safety tradeoffs inherent in any design effort were aired out in public.
And Ford came out looking none to good when the pubic first noticed (was told?) that low cost and low safety are connected.
See for more: Ford Pinto - Wikipedia
The 2 front wheel arrangement is more stable, everything else being equal. When any front-wheel-steering vehicle turns, the front of the vehicle points slightly away from the center of the turn. So the centrifugal force is not perpendicular to the vehicle; rather, it is slightly towards the front. Two tires at the front will resist the centrifugal force better.
You know this from Top Gear and not from Mr. Bean? Are you like 2 years old?
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My first (used) car was a 1964 Corvair. The thing I had problems with was not tipping over but an intermittent tail lights. Best thing about it? Great car in snow with all the weight from the engine in the rear. Sometimes I look at the ebay motors for Corvairs, never serious, but about the only make and model I do that for.
The Reliant three-wheeler was a reasonably common car here - the neighbour had a succession of them. I remember one of them blew over on its side during a gale when parked outside the house one night. It could, like the German ‘bubble car’ three wheelers, be driven on a motorbike licence in an age when many people had not quite become affluent enough to rise out of riding motorbikes.
The engine was based on the pre-war Austin Seven unit and was used in Seven Fifty Formula racing cars in the 1970s as the nearest still-in-production thing they could get to the original Austin Seven based racers.
A friend once got a chance to drive one of the Messerschmidts. He said that it was terrifying; the steering was go-kart quick and waaaaay too sensitive.
Recalled and fixed, not banned.
I bought a 1974 Pinto in 1988.
Part of the scandal of the Pinto was that the fix was a very cheap part, and they knew the fix was a very cheap part, and they decided the cost of settling lawsuits would be less than the cost of a recall.
IIRC, Ford was adamant that the Pinto sell for $2000, and the $2 that the protective bushing on the bolt (that without it could tear open the gas tank in a crash) would add to the manufacturing cost would put it over. Because apparently making 1/10 of 1% less profit was not an option.