<VV> Pintos and Corvairs

[Sethracer at aol.com]

_tony.underwood at cox.net_ (mailto:tony.underwood at cox.net)   writes:

There's  nothing inherently wrong with the Pinto.  And I don't wanna 
hear  anybody start in on that exploding Pinto fiasco which is bogus 
and needs  to be chalked up right beside Corvairs turning over and 
Yugos rusting in  showrooms. 
 
The problem I perceive on the Corvair wasn't anybody rolling over, and the  
problem on the Pinto wasn't an exploding gas tank. The problem - in both 
cases -  was the accountants over-ruling good engineering decisions. The 
Corvair was  designed and tested with a front anti-sway bar - it was then removed 
before  production for cost reasons. To save a little bit of money on each 
car.  At least the GM accountants or engineers didn't say; "Well, without 
the  front bar, we will only have a few cars roll over for the life of the car 
 on the road. Those possible deaths won't cost us as much as equipping all 
of the  cars with a bar."  Uh - with the Pinto, a Ford engineer testified in 
court  to having performed that very calculation. Only so many possible 
accidents and  fires, that would cost less than solving the possible 
tank-into-axle issue on  all those already-built Pintos. If nothing else, it was bad 
PR for Ford,  and bad PR for automotive engineers (and accountants) in 
general. It really  doesn't matter if the Pinto was no worse than many other cars 
of the time (just  like the outcome of the safety tests on the Corvair). 
Somehow the public  received the news that the car companies had to make 
trade-offs for safety  reasons vs. cost. That made a subtle change in the way many 
people thought of  the car companies in general. We all lived through it. 
(Well many of us older  folks!) The conspiracy theorists among us might say 
that the "Safety" issue has  been used by car companies to justify huge price 
increases for newer cars.
 
-Seth Emerson