<VV> Pintos and Corvairs

[Tony Underwood]

At 10:00 PM 12/30/2011, Dennis Pleau wrote:
>The early Mustang's and Mavericks had the same top of the gas tank is the
>floor of the trunk as the Pinto's.  Why weren't they subject to the same
>scorn?


They weren't as much of a "big deal".   The Mustang came along before 
Nader, when everybody and their brother wanted to bandwagon those 
lawsuits if they pinched a finger in a door... and the Maverick was 
nonthreatening to anybody and didn't garner much attention other than 
looking slightly like the '70 Corvair was intended to look like.

The Pinto, like the Corvair, had been regarded by lots of authorities 
as a bit of a wunderkind, and showered with praise by Motor Trend 
etc.  It was a household word for quite a while... THAT is why it was 
targeted.  It was popular.  Misanthropes love to take down popular targets.


>A simple fire wall over the tank or behind the rear seat would have
>solved the problem, but it either one would have cost a couple bucks.


...and saved a life or two or 50 or 100...

Just recently there was a lawsuit launched regarding the burn death 
of a guy whose first-gen Mustang was hit from behind and it went up 
in flames.  This suit (last I heard) targeted as unsafe the first-gen 
Mustangs, Crown Vic/Marquis, and Town Car for the drop-in gas tank 
they all use.  No mention of the Maverick... OR the numerous other 
cars that use exposed gas tanks INCLUDING imports.


Now:   The Pinto didn't use a drop-in tank.  Its tank was hung from 
underneath.   The problem with the Pinto tank was that it would pop 
if the car was hit VERY hard since it wasn't a large vehicle and 
structurally not as rigid as some front ends of various vehicles that 
ended up plowing into its rear end.   AS mentioned numerous times, a 
small compact is never going to hold up as well as a land yacht in a 
rear-ender.   Even then, Pintos rarely caught fire in a rear-ender 
unless they were hit hard enough to rupture a full fuel tank, which 
unfortunately was usually hard enough to rip apart the seams where 
the trunk sheet metal met the floors and allow entrance to the cabin.

The decision to hang the tank rather than perch it above the rear 
axle like the Capri was because it got in the way of the rear floor 
of the hatchback model, which the Capri never offered... even though 
the Capri and Pinto shared the same platform.  A Capri could take a 
hard hit in the ass that would buckle-crush the car all the way up to 
the differential and the tank would remain intact... although a hit 
that hard was usually enough to kill the occupants anyway... not sure 
if that was anything one could call an improvement.


Speaking of deaths:

A LARGE percentages of deaths in Pintos attributed to fire involved 
people who had been killed by the initial impact that was severe 
enough to involve a ruptured tank and fire.  This inflated figure was 
used to support the case against the Pinto as a "fire trap" etc ad nauseam.

Figures from investigations conducted at the pleasure of the 
government and NHTSA  (and these figures came from the government) 
show that actual deaths from fire (deaths specifically caused by fire 
and NOT attributed to impact trauma) in Pinto crashes totaled -= 28=- 
and NOT the "hundreds" claimed by many sources who based their 
estimates on pure fantasy.  In short, deaths by fire in Pinto crashes 
were no higher than ANY OTHER typical car at the time.

The Crown Vic platform (which had fewer examples produced than the 
Millions of Pintos) accounts for well over 100 (and a rather high 
percentage of those involve police officers who spend a lot of time 
in Crown Vics), and another government source stated that the drop-in 
tank Mustangs have burned 109 people to death.

Yet the lowly Pinto is the car that gets all the bad press over its 
"exploding" tank that lights off in a "low speed impact"... which is 
of course total BS.  There are a variety of crash instances where 
Pintos got plowed from behind hard enough to wad up the entire car 
and it didn't catch fire.


>You can't get me to say anything bad about that 70 Maverick.  It was a damn
>good car and most cars of its area didn't live to 100,000 miles

It was made to order for a long life.   It was simple and 
unspectacular, and it had a driveline that was well proven and 
durable.  They did tend to rust in the salt belt but then most cars 
did.  I still see the occasional Maverick/Comet running around town 
to this day, usually driven by a geriatric sort who didn't beat it to 
death along the way.


Yeah, but Pintos explode.

And Corvairs roll over and their heaters catch fire and they run off 
the road backwards.



tony..