Friday 11th September 1970

The $1830 Ford Pinto designed to compete with compact imports, was introduced in the US. However, the car had a design flaw; the location of the petrol tank was such that it was likely to rupture and explode in a rear end collision of over 20mph. It was eventually revealed that Ford knew about the design flaw before the Pinto was released and had calculated that it would take $11 per car to correct the flaw at a total cost of $137 million for the company. Compared to the lowly estimate of $49.5 million in potential lawsuits from the mistake, the Ford report deemed it “inefficient” to go ahead with the correction. A value of $200,000 was assigned by the report for each death predicted to result from the flaw. Ford’s irresponsibility caused a public uproar, and in 1978, a California jury awarded a record-breaking $128 million to a claimant in the Ford Pinto case.