In the early 1970s, Lee Iacocca was president of the Ford Motor Company.

He wanted the car in showrooms for the 1971 model year. In the published chart, the Pinto is responsible for 298 deaths per million cars in 1975, making it on par with the Chevrolet Vega (288) and Datsun 510 (294), but considerably safer than the Datsun 1200/210 (392), the Toyota Corolla (333) and the VW Beetle (378).

Iacocca was fired the following month.

The fundamental problem with the Pinto, according to Robert Lacey, author of Ford: The Men and the Machine, was that Iacocca only once before had worked on a new car that was really new. A spark ignited the mixture, and the Pinto exploded in a ball of fire.Gray died a few hours later.

Cannot stress enough... Just call them!" Iacocca used to say, "Safety doesn't sell. The following year, the Center for Auto Safety petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall Pintos.
In other words, Ford decided that profits were all that mattered, and that irreplaceable human life ultimately carried a lower value than an inanimate heap of aluminum, plastic, and glass.In the aftermath, Lee Iacocca had this to say: “Clamming up is what we did at Ford in the late ’70s when we were bombarded with suits over the Pinto, which was involved in a lot of If you or someone you love was hurt by a defective or dangerous product, you may be entitled to compensation for the damages you’ve suffered. On June 9, 1978, Ford agreed to recall 1.5 million Ford Pinto and 30,000 Mercury Bobcat sedan and hatchback models.



Due to a lack of evidence, the jury found Ford not guilty in that case. It was too late to save Ford… "You can send a message," prosecuting attorney Michael Cosentino told the jury.

There is no way of knowing how much Ford paid in Pinto suits because some were settled quietly out of court. "In 1978, following a damning investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Ford recalled all 1.5 million of its 1971–76 Pintos, as well as 30,000 Mercury Bobcats, for fuel system modification.

On August 10, 1978, three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an The small and economical Pinto, which debuted in 1970, was Ford’s first subcompact car produced domestically, and its answer to popular imports like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Toyota Corolla. But later, the Pinto would gain a newer, darker sort of fame as one of the worst and In the early 1970s, Lee Iacocca was president of the Ford Motor Company. *"100's of millions won" refers to value of all settlements and payments awarded for all cases in all practice areas by our attorneys since 1982. Because After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. *$40,000,000 refers to the amount recovered across all practice areas from 2014-2019. An accident in 1972 led to the case of Part of the court’s reasoning was that Ford knew about the dangers, but pushed the Pinto onto an unwitting consumer market anyway. The jury deliberated 25 hours before finding Ford not guilty of three counts of reckless homicide in March 1980. That also meant that the Pinto's tooling was developed at the same time as product development. The safety of the design of the Pinto's fuel system led to critical incidents and subsequently resulted in a recall, lawsuits, a criminal prosecution, and public controversy.


The three-month long trial was riveting. Pinto was a best-selling subcompact. The lawsuits brought by injured people and their survivors uncovered how the company rushed the Pinto through production and onto the market. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses.

Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days. Iacocca, a rising star at Ford due to his success with the Mustang, argued that Volkswagen and the Japanese were going to capture the entire American subcompact market unless Ford produced an alternative to the VW Beetle. The entire Vietnam War claimed 58,000 American lives. Mother Jones, a left-wing magazine that specialized in investigative journalism, reported in its September/October 1977 issue that Ford knew - and did nothing about - pre-production crash tests that showed that rear-end collisions easily ruptured the Pinto's fuel system. The Ford Pinto was completely engulfed in flames and the accident resulted in the death of the three young girls. While the NHTSA determined in 1974 that a recall was not merited, Ford ultimately issued its own recall in 1978. The Pinto quickly became known as "Lee's car." So a comment by the foreman in the California civil case - in which most of the $128 million award was in punitive damages - must have been chilling to Ford Chairman Henry Ford II, who vigorously fought federal automotive safety regulations during the 1960s and 1970s.



In 1972, the heyday of the Ford Pinto and nadir of automotive safety in the country, 55,000 died in car accidents. Initial reviews of the Pinto’s handling and performance were largely positive, and sales remained strong, with Ford introducing new Pinto models such as the Runabout and the Sprint over the course of the early 1970s.


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