Not only were 1980 Ford Pintos fairly rare when new, but they’re unicorns now. And one of them has been spotted by crash71100 in Switzerland, or so I believe. I know that the Swiss were some of the last American car lovers in Europe, and they still have a soft spot for nice big “Amis”, but a Pinto?
By 1980, not only was the Pinto utterly obsolete in the US, but it would have been positively antideluvian in Europe, compared to all of the modern little FWD hot hatches. But somebody loves an outsider, and it does appear to be well loved. But then you would not expect to see a beater in Switzerland; it goes against the deep cultural grain.
Enjoy this shot, because it might be a while before you see another.
Wow—great fun to see this in Switzerland, of all places. I’ll guess costs of ownership not too bad, and hope not too many parts to be searched for.
My 1980 wagon was purchased about 1987, and I knew it was an orphan and “old technology then,” but it never missed a beat, including on each summer’s cross country Idaho-to-Ohio trip. The first clutch lasted 80K miles, the engine started at 30 below, and the skimpy rear seats were manageable in the rare instances they were needed. We only sold it because a 1990s cross-country move (U-Haul rental truck plus the newer car) meant we had to leave it behind, rust-free, in Idaho. Local friends reported spotting it for many years afterward, and I get silly notions about finding the Pinto in a western wrecking yard–sunburned and perhaps needing an engine rebuild, but otherwise CC-able.
Cheers to our Swiss friend for keeping this one in nice shape—an unexpected treat today!
I wonder if the Pinto would have been osbolete and antideluvian if was sold in Brazil and Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s? 😉
IMO It would be a flop in Brazil. In 78 we got the Ford Corcel II, a FWD sedan and wagon, very frugal on gas and it sold fairly well
Oh, those wacky Swiss!
The 79-80 Pinto has one of the all-time most discordant facelifts. From the straight-on front view the car is all-in on the boxy ’80s look. Then you walk around and see the rest of the car, and it’s like it’s from another era (which of course it is).
Amazing combination of car and location!
Interestingly, the headlight bezels are painted white here — originally they would have been either chrome or black – and also the tape stripe may have been replaced at some point along the line, as the original version had a thin line of color outlining the stripe. So I guess someone had restored this Pinto, and gone to pretty exhaustive efforts to do so. I’d love to know the full story.
A similarly striped Pinto was featured in the 1980 brochure — this is how the original tape stripe appeared:
That would have been a perfect candidate for a single-unit, Euro headlamp/turn signal–replace the bezel, headlight, and turn signal with one flush/rectangular unit.
I think it would have worked really well.
It wasn’t all that “rare” in 1980. MY sales were 185,054, with left overs of 27.795 sold in MY ’81.
https://www.automobile-catalog.com/production/ford_usa/pinto.html#:~:text=model%20year%201980%20%2D%20Ford%20(USA)%20Pinto%2C%202%2D,Pinto%2C%20total%20sales%20%2D%2027795%20units
That’s the first time I’ve heard or read about MY 1981 Pintos! I thought the Escort took its place right at the beginning of the model year.
It did. There were no 1981 Pintos; hence, any sold in 1981 were leftovers from 1980 still lingering on the dealer lots.
I’m unsure how that page is defining “model year,” but they’re evidently not using the definition of the factory…which was basically “a 1980 model is any model built in 1979 or 1980 with a ‘0’ in the VIN.”
Remember two being advertised at our local Ford dealer after new years “81”.
One was a base model, few options, did have all glass hatch.
1979 and 80 were identical in specification. Ford gave them the final facelift so that they had a thin patina of freshness so they wouldn’t look too out of place among the very hot selling new Fairmont and LTD models that had fully adopted the boxy styling that was emulated on the front of the Pinto.
The choice of options and models of Pinto remained enormous until the very end of production. Practically every single youth oriented item that could be conceived with the exception of a v8 engine option was offered. Stripe and trim packages, several wheel options, multiple audio choices and dealer accessories. Then you could go to the aftermarket for many unique speed or appearance parts. Being a mechanical sister of the mustang II didn’t hurt anything either.
I do remember years ago, reading about some car where they had a bunch of leftovers, and just changed the VIN numbers and sold them as 1981 models. I couldn’t remember if it was the Monza or the Pinto.
However, I don’t remember where I read it, and it could have been some error on the author’s part.
The Monza would actually make more sense to me, since there would be a bit of a gap in the Chevy lineup for ’81, as the Cavalier didn’t come out until 1982.
I don’t know when it started, but at some point the federal government began regulating just when a model year could begin and end. The goal was to prevent manufacturers from getting around new safety and emissions regulations by simply extending the model year.
If federal regulations had changed for the 1981 model year, those re-serialized Monzas would need to meet that model year’s applicable regulations in order to be legally sold.
FWIW, the 1980 Toyota Corolla, was “antediluvian” RWD, too.
‘antideluvian’ is incorrect spelling, btw.
Whatever attraction the Pinto may have held for me up to around 1973 (and it was more than a little) was gone by 1980. The existence of the Omnirizon O24/TC3 then made these Pintos absolutely invisible to me. I don’t imagine those cars are as mechanically durable as the Pinto, but I think I would choose one over the Pinto even now.
Were there any changes between the ’79 and ’80 models? I assume not, but I never know.
I always thought the 1979 Pinto was an effective facelift. The rectangular headlights and enlarged taillights succeeded in modernizing the styling and priming customers for the Escort, while the higher hoodline made the car look more substantial. By contrast the 71-76 Pintos had a toy-car look to them, and the 77-78 shovel-nose models with the bucktooth turn signal lenses just made me shudder.
I think the only noticeable changes were in colors and graphic packages, with this stripe setup being one of the new designs.
Other than that, the 1980 models came newly equipped with a mini-spare, and there were a few other little changes like that as well.
The 1977 to 1980 Pinto was much improved over the earlier versions in several areas.
The Saint Thomas, Ontario plant implemented several process improvements in the body fabrication shop and the paint shop resulting in better panel fits and welds. The process improvements gave St Thomas assembly the ability to offer black exterior paint as a regular production offering. Black was not a regular production offering prior to 1977. You could get it but the buyer was told that they should expect imperfect bodywork!
The other big change that came with better body shells was the the introduction of the all “glass hatch lid” for the Runabout. It was a big visual improvement for the Pinto.
Ford still managed to sell about 185,000 Pintos in 1980, so it may not be as rare as you might think. And considering the age of the car and increasingly stiff competition, that wasn’t down too far from the 1977-79 sales level.
While there were far more modern choices out there, the Pinto still probably made a lot of sense if you just wanted something cheap, economical, and fairly reliable.
It made a lot of sense for the USPS. I remember reading an article about how their fleet of 1980 Pintos had some of the lowest maintenance and repair costs of any vehicle they used.
The high price of gas at the time certainly didn’t hurt Pinto sales, either. Even an antiquated car that had been around for a decade still sold well back then if it got good gas mileage.
Sister/brother in law got an “80” ,lightly used, in 1981.Red, auto, back window defroster.
Was a decent runner. Traded in 1985 I think. One of those there “Voyager Van’s took it’s place.
H’m. At Swiss fuel prices, that’d be one very expensive fire!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Pinto in Europe. Quite a find!
I remember seeing a Mustang II in Switzerland in 2004, on a highway near Geneva.
The Pinto was considered cheap disposable car. I tried to find the Car and Driver road test that had a photo of a woman pushing a K Mart shopping cart filled with Pintos.I wasn’t successful. It wasn’t that they were just cheap but they were potentially deadly if they were rear ended.
The notion that the Pinto was any more dangerous than any other RWD car with a rear-mounted gas tank of the time has been refuted.
In effect, Ford’s accountants and legal team had determined the risk of Pinto occupants being seriously injured or killed was not worth the price of minimizing the danger. No other manufacturer was placing a deflecting shield in front of the gas tank that would force it downward to avoid being punctured by the rear differential carrier (and subsequent fire) in the event of a rearend collision.
Ford’s issue was one of public perception when the research documentation came to light. Unfortunately for Ford, this was the Watergate scandal era, and it seemed like there was a similar coverup of Ford’s potential liability calculation versus taking steps to minimize the danger. Ford simply handled the whole situation very badly.
It’s not significantly different from GM’s knowledge (and decision to omit) a cheap, rear sway bar that would cure most of the Corvair’s dangerous swing-axle handling characteristics, something that was also common to the popular rear-engine Beetle. The big difference was the danger was amplified by the Corvair’s more powerful engine. And VW never saw the need to correct it, either, with zero repurcussions.
It’s worth noting that, even with the scandals, both the Corvair and Pinto, with fixes in place, remained in production for years afterwards. If a significant danger had remained, I can’t imagine sales being good enough to avoid a much more rapid discontinuation of either model.
The silver lining to the whole Pinto fire affair was an industry relocation of subsequent vehicles’ gas tanks from horizontally located under the rear trunk floor behind the differential, to a more protected, vertical place behind the rear seat, something made possilble mostly by a FWD drivetrain which no longer required a rear differential.
I remember reading that overall, the Pinto had a lower death rate than similar-sized cars. So while the Pinto got all that notoriety as the “Barbecue that Seats Four”, the twisted irony was that it was one of the safest small cars around at the time!
I’ve wondered how dangerous those older Ford cars with the “drop in” gas tank really were, too? Cars like the Falcon, earlier Mustangs, Fairlane, etc. I hear a lot of fuss about the safety of those from time to time, but it seems like they never achieved any level of infamy like the Pinto did.
And that served for some Pinto jokes like the one in the movie Top Secret.
The so-called “Pinto Memo” had nothing to do with the Pinto. It was a cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations that the federal government had requested from Ford.
It was an interoffice memo: one that is circulated among offices within a single organisation—Ford, in this case. You’re confusing the Pinto burn death math memo with another. There were many memos associated to one or another degree with the Pinto, including some such as you describe, but the relevant one isn’t among them.
Professor Gary Schwartz covered this in his 1991 Rutgers Law Review</I. article.
The memo was not admitted in the Grimshaw case because it had nothing to do with the Pinto. If another memo existed that did deal with the Pinto, then the plaintiffs could have forced Ford to turn it over to them (inter-office memos would not be exempt from such a subpoena). It would have been relevant to the case, and the judge would have allowed it to be admitted as evidence. But that did not happen. If Ford had been found to have withheld documents from a valid plaintiff’s discovery request, it would have been in big trouble.
That’s quite a lot of ifs and would-haves.
The matter is covered in great and scholarly depth in The Ford Pinto Case: A Study in Applied Ethics, Business, and Technology.
The $200,000-per-life figure was actually developed by NHTSA in 1972 as part of an analysis on the social cost of motor vehicle accidents. Again, that figure referred to vehicular accidents in general, not just Pinto fuel-tank accidents or even deaths by fire in vehicles.
Yes, the $200k/life figure was devised by NHTSA. That’s not the question at hand.
It’s easy to get confused on matters like this. At the time, NHTSA was still a sharp-toothed agency engaged in a great deal of rulemaking, and Ford (like the other American automakers) were engaged in all-out war against every last bit of it. There were mountains of documents, interoffice memos and other kinds, generated on whatever sub-sub-subtopic one might care to name. Some of those documents were published to one degree or another; some weren’t.
Even easier than getting confused is cherrypicking in support of whatever one’s pet ideas might be, because there are bushels and bushels to pick from!
Again, that source is no more valid than the last time you linked to it. The original source of information – the Mother Jones article – has been proven to be inaccurate in everything from the number of fire-related deaths in Pintos to the meaning of that supposed “smoking gun” memo.
The memo you are referring to did not deal exclusively with the Pinto. It was a memo that explored the potential cost savings of deferring various design changes of several Ford vehicles (not just the Pinto) from the 1974 model year to the 1976 model year. It was a standard memo that was – and is – regularly drafted at auto companies. It’s not a smoking gun that proves one thing about the Pinto.
And, yes, the $200,000 figure IS relevant, and, yes, it is part of the question at hand. Ford has been portrayed as callous for using it…when it was the federal government that came up with it, and the federal government requested the cost-benefit analysis memo (using that figure as a basis) in the first place.
Whether Ford was engaged in “all-out war” with NHTSA is irrelevant (and note that voicing objections to a proposed regulation is part of the regulatory process – that does not constitute “all-out war”). NHTSA was charged with drafting the regulations, and once said regulations were promulgated, Ford (and every other car maker, foreign and domestic) would have to meet them. If the agency requested documentation from Ford, it was under obligation to provide said documentation, whether it wanted to or not. Otherwise, it faced sanctions from the federal government.
Whether there was a “mountain” of documents is irrelevant. If the NHTSA or the plaintiff’s attorneys in the Grimshaw case demanded documents, via a request or a subpoena, if necessary, Ford had to provide them, whether they constituted a mountain or a mole hill. That is the way the law works, for example, in products liability cases. Any competent law firm will have a team going through said mountains of documents with a fine-tooth comb.
If there had been a smoking gun, then the plaintiff’s attorney would have broadcast that loud and clear. Whether the memos were every formally “published” therefore is irrelevant. Ford had to provide them upon request to the federal government or the plaintiff’s attorney. Case closed. (Incidentally, now the discussion has gone from “the memo existed,” to, “it probably exists somewhere in the universe but those evil doers at Ford somehow successfully hid it from government regulators and top-notch product liability attorneys.”)
The facts remain – there was no smoking gun memo. Mother Jones greatly overstated the number of fire-related Pinto deaths. NHTSA could only get the Pinto to explode in its test after filling up the tank, lowering the front of the test Chevrolet Impala to ensure that it hit at a lower point, and turning on the Impala’s headlights to better ensure the presence of a spark, in order to guarantee some sort of ignition. Even then, it took more than one try to get the Pinto’s gas tank to explode.
The Pinto’s overall safety record (looking at all types of fatal accidents, not just those with fire-related fatalities) was better than most competitive subcompacts of that era, and only a bit worse when it came to just fire-related deaths.
That’s a memo—several of them, actually—other than the one I was referring to.
I’m not engaging with the rest of your assertions (under either of your posting names); there’s no point trying to change anyone’s religious beliefs.
that rear end thing was over hyped. While Ford was too cheap to pay for a simple shield that would have made things safer. The actual likelyhood of the fuel tank fires was about on par with other similar size cars. Mind you, the ones that happened were awful enough (and sensationalized) to instill a mind set.Ford acting like there was no issue they know of added to the frenzy.
Rather like the “Corvair debacle” of the 1960’s; more hype/hysteria, then actual danger.
I’ve got a pair of Chevy Chevettes in Holland, it doesn’t get much more strange than that.
Are they “driving you happy”? That teeny tiny brake pedal, even in the automatics always drove me nuts! lol Brother had the “Pontiac” badged clone . (T1000). Was fun to drive. Color combo was classy too. Silver out//red in.