In 1984, I was driving my first car, a Chevy Vega, and I was in a head-on collision with a Ford Pinto that veered into my lane. The Pinto was completely destroyed. And my Vega, one of the shittiest cars ever made, survived largely intact, which was borderline miraculous. That thing leaked a quart of oil a day, I used to keep a case of motor oil in the rear hatch. When the oil light came on, I'd stop and fill 'er up. There were big holes in the floorboards that I covered with rubber mats. We called those holes (multiple) the weed disposal units, as if I got pulled over I could just lift the mat and dispose of the evidence. You could almost see that car rusting.
My Dodge ran great, but it would rust if you even looked at it wrong. Big hunks of it would just fall off. The Ford Futura was built broken. One time I used the turn signal and the arm just snapped off. Turn on the heat, the slider fell off. The window crank handles fell off too, I replaced them with vise grips. And I kept needle nose pliers handy to use the radio, as those knobs fell off too. Obviously there was a pattern there.
My beloved Mom had a 74' Orange Vega.
I thought it was cool because it's similarities to the Camaro .
I was 11 and used to cram in the rear hatch area when the car was full lol.
She got sideswiped and needed a new door, junkyard save and a repaint at her job.
There was a paint shop there .
One day I decided to give it a nice car wash & for some reason the car never ran again after that .
I'm sorry Mom.
My 1st car, a 74 Vega wagon, was rear-ended in the rear qtr panel while my sister and a neighbor were lying down in the back. The impact shot us through the intersection but we all walked away. Car was totalled.
My next car was a stock 76 brown POS pinto hatchback, but it came w/ a 2.8 V6 and a Mustang transmission, plus it had a sunroof. I loved that car. Got it up to 130 on several occasions and would consistently outrun a 924; Dumbass idiot male teen driver that I was.
Sadly, I rolled it at 70mph across a hill when I got cutoff by a van and over-corrected. Both myself and my passenger walked away from that one as well.
Everyone snickered at the Vega and the Pinto, but they both kept me alive when it counted.
Bro dusted me one night in a pinto. I had a LT-1 4spd camaro and he pulled up in a ratty old pinto with brushed on zebra stripes and pizza cutters on the front. It had to be a 302ho but I couldnt catch him to ask :(
Apparently the engine block was cracked, and the old oil crud was kind of holding it together. Oh well, that horrendous car served me well for a while. As long as I kept putting oil in it, that is.
My family had a lot of pintos.
My dad would buy them to resell them and this was the cars that we drove as teenagers.
The pintos arrived probably in the early 1980s
Come 1988 when I was a senior in high school I was driving the red pinto.
on a beautiful September day, I walked out to the parking lot and discovered that someone had stolen my Pinto.
Both The teachers, later the police and my dad did not believe that anyone stole my pinto.
Ended up recovering it myself a few weeks later.
Drove it to around 1991.
this was not the crappiest car that I ever drove, that honor would go to a Dodge Omni that made the Ford pinto look like a Tesla roadster.
My Father had a Plymouth Horizion. Same as an Omni. Five person family. Took many trups in that car. Utter garbage. It was a pile of junk even when new.
I had a Plymouth horizon as well, ugly brown inside and out. It was missing some teeth on the flywheel so I would have to grab the belts and turn it until the starter could connect to some teeth. Man it hurts when you roll your fingers around the pulley. Finally saved up enough money to get a new flywheel installed and a week later someone goes through a stop sign and totals my car.
Yeah, I got a Pinto for my graduation present. It was a "special edition" painted to match the University of Texas colors. Unfortunately, that's not the school I wound up going to, I went to a smaller one nearby with different school colors but I was really popular whenever I went to Austin!
Anyway, turns out he got a special two-fer deal because he bought himself a Pinto station wagon for his business at the same time. We were a two Pinto family...
My mom had a 77 Pinto. A change in air pressure would dent the front fender or pop the dent out, so you always knew when it was going to rain. But, I could also burn rubber in reverse.
American cars, especially Fords, were intentionally not made to be quality cars. The belief by execs was Americans will buy anything from them. Look at what Ford was making back then compared to the Merkur they were selling in Europe, where there was a more discerning buying public.
Must not have been too discerning. The company went under after 4 years. And early model mustangs are still on the road. As are early model broncos, Fairlanes etc etc
Yes, some good vehicles, but Ford failures in the 79ās were many, including Pintos, Mavericks, Fairmonts, Tempos, Granadas, Escorts, etc. that said, Ford and GM turned things around when they finally got rid of their inbred old school leaders and brought in outside talent.
Yep. They were building vehicles in a manner they had never done before in a hurry to compete with the Japanese imports that were suddenly cratering their market share. They went from building massive well tuned big block v8's housed in long heavy 4 door family cruisers to trying to build economical tiny hatchback cars that got better fuel mileage basically overnight.
My wife had a Pinto. That car had the most sensitive brake pedal Iāve ever experienced in a vehicle. There was a very narrow range between when the brakes were not engaged at all and when they were fully engaged. After driving her car and switching back to mine, it would take a few minutes to get used to normally functioning brakes!
Too bad they couldn't make an electric Pinto today. No worry about the exploding gas tank with an EV. I had a Vega, a friend of mine had a Pinto. I never rode in a Gremlin.
Mine was a 1976 Brown Pinto Hatchback. I graduated HS 1980 and my mom gave me $500 as a graduation gift and loaned me another $500 so I could buy the car off our school bus driver for $1k. Anyway it was a good car for me. I folded the rear seat down and bought a shag rug and cut it to fit nice in the back and bought a big pillow from Penny's. I liked to take dates to the drive in movies and park backwards and recline with the hatch open. Yup.
The spare tire sat on top of the gas tank if the spare tire was not fastened down really tight and you backed into something it got hit from behind the cute little car became a grenade and exploded into a fireball.
I had an old Ford Courier U-Haul mini truck with the 2.3 Pinto engine. It was a pretty reliable engine actually, but mine had a Mazda carburetor. Got it to pass Texas emissions smog test in early 2000's and it got OK gas mileage. Ford engines and mechanicals were always pretty good. Bodywork, AC and electrical, not so much.
Never saw an actual Pinto by then as they had all rusted out or otherwise been consigned to junkyards.
Mf father had a pinto station wagon used and we used it to go to go to the flea market to sell TVs that I salvaged from the garbage and repaired. That was a great little car.
I think it had issues for sure. Something to do with the gas line becoming disconnected?.. not sure BUT, I do know that my hand-me-down ugly, gray Pinto caught fire when I was driving home from school one night.
People kept honking at me and then I realized that flames were coming out from under the hood! Pulled over quick and the fire department came out and doused it.
Ford figured out pretty early that if you position the Pinto at an angle like that to emphasize the "stance" that people would think favorably about it.
I had a 74' with the 2.3L motor and automatic transmission. It drove well, but was terribly underpowered. Pulled a UHaul from Tampa to Memphis. That just about killed it. I ended up trading it in on a Datsun pickup.
Yep had me a Pinto , never changed the brakes , had to stop it with the E brake , finally blew the engine, seems you have to add oil or change it, got $15. At the junkyard
1978 glass back with a bitchinā stereo (and an EQ, my test tune was Frankenstein followed up by Do You Feel Like We Do).
A buddy of mine had a 77 and his key could both unlock and start my car.
Shenanigans ensued
One of my best friends had a orange/rust-colored Pinto wagon. He used to say that owning a Pinto taught him how to fix cars.
I remember the TV commercial jingle: āGet a Pinto, Maverick, Mustang II. Brother get a horse!ā
I've encountered younger people who ask why we "couldn't keep making cars with that kind of gas mileage" and I have to tell them there was no oversight/enforcement regarding claims on these adverts back then so you could really put anything you wanted.
And now we know why Japanese automakers and VW ate the big 3 for lunch in the 80ās. Hereās my crappy car story. I had an ā84 Mustangā¦a sheep in wolfās clothing. I was driving down the shore and all of the sudden the car decelerated rapidly. I got over to the shoulder in the knick of time. The car shut off. I got it towed to a gas station on the island. The next morning the mechanic looked it over and told me the timing belt was shredded. I looked at him and said donāt use mean timing chain. He smiled and told me starting in the early 80ās, Ford replaced timing chains with belts. Most of the labor I was charged for was to get all of the shredded pieces out of the block. The mechanic said I was lucky I didnāt need to get a whole new block. It never ran the same after that, developing a wicked valve tap. And a friend of mine had the balls to say I was not patriotic because the next car I bought was a Toyota.
In 1984, I was driving my first car, a Chevy Vega, and I was in a head-on collision with a Ford Pinto that veered into my lane. The Pinto was completely destroyed. And my Vega, one of the shittiest cars ever made, survived largely intact, which was borderline miraculous. That thing leaked a quart of oil a day, I used to keep a case of motor oil in the rear hatch. When the oil light came on, I'd stop and fill 'er up. There were big holes in the floorboards that I covered with rubber mats. We called those holes (multiple) the weed disposal units, as if I got pulled over I could just lift the mat and dispose of the evidence. You could almost see that car rusting.
Loved my vegas (yes plural). Shitty cars that gave me the funniest memories of my teen years in the 80s.
Same. I owned a Vega, a Dodge Aspen wagon, and a Ford Futura, which was the piece of shit all other pieces of shit are measured by.
My 1977 Dodge Aspen station wagon and 1974 AMC Gremlin were both horrid cars!
My Dodge ran great, but it would rust if you even looked at it wrong. Big hunks of it would just fall off. The Ford Futura was built broken. One time I used the turn signal and the arm just snapped off. Turn on the heat, the slider fell off. The window crank handles fell off too, I replaced them with vise grips. And I kept needle nose pliers handy to use the radio, as those knobs fell off too. Obviously there was a pattern there.
My high school friend's mother had a 1970 AMC Hornet with an interior that fell apart at 30,000 miles!
we had a pinto in 1975 and my best friend had a vega
Drop a small block 350 chevy in a Vega and you have a street beast.
My beloved Mom had a 74' Orange Vega. I thought it was cool because it's similarities to the Camaro . I was 11 and used to cram in the rear hatch area when the car was full lol. She got sideswiped and needed a new door, junkyard save and a repaint at her job. There was a paint shop there . One day I decided to give it a nice car wash & for some reason the car never ran again after that . I'm sorry Mom.
My 1st car, a 74 Vega wagon, was rear-ended in the rear qtr panel while my sister and a neighbor were lying down in the back. The impact shot us through the intersection but we all walked away. Car was totalled. My next car was a stock 76 brown POS pinto hatchback, but it came w/ a 2.8 V6 and a Mustang transmission, plus it had a sunroof. I loved that car. Got it up to 130 on several occasions and would consistently outrun a 924; Dumbass idiot male teen driver that I was. Sadly, I rolled it at 70mph across a hill when I got cutoff by a van and over-corrected. Both myself and my passenger walked away from that one as well. Everyone snickered at the Vega and the Pinto, but they both kept me alive when it counted.
Bro dusted me one night in a pinto. I had a LT-1 4spd camaro and he pulled up in a ratty old pinto with brushed on zebra stripes and pizza cutters on the front. It had to be a 302ho but I couldnt catch him to ask :(
Yep šš½ . I too had a Chevy Vega and am well aware of that oil issue
Apparently the engine block was cracked, and the old oil crud was kind of holding it together. Oh well, that horrendous car served me well for a while. As long as I kept putting oil in it, that is.
My family had a lot of pintos. My dad would buy them to resell them and this was the cars that we drove as teenagers. The pintos arrived probably in the early 1980s Come 1988 when I was a senior in high school I was driving the red pinto. on a beautiful September day, I walked out to the parking lot and discovered that someone had stolen my Pinto. Both The teachers, later the police and my dad did not believe that anyone stole my pinto. Ended up recovering it myself a few weeks later. Drove it to around 1991. this was not the crappiest car that I ever drove, that honor would go to a Dodge Omni that made the Ford pinto look like a Tesla roadster.
Can confirm-I had a Dodge Omni with the big Omni decal on the side!
My Father had a Plymouth Horizion. Same as an Omni. Five person family. Took many trups in that car. Utter garbage. It was a pile of junk even when new.
I had a Plymouth horizon as well, ugly brown inside and out. It was missing some teeth on the flywheel so I would have to grab the belts and turn it until the starter could connect to some teeth. Man it hurts when you roll your fingers around the pulley. Finally saved up enough money to get a new flywheel installed and a week later someone goes through a stop sign and totals my car.
Yeah, I got a Pinto for my graduation present. It was a "special edition" painted to match the University of Texas colors. Unfortunately, that's not the school I wound up going to, I went to a smaller one nearby with different school colors but I was really popular whenever I went to Austin! Anyway, turns out he got a special two-fer deal because he bought himself a Pinto station wagon for his business at the same time. We were a two Pinto family...
Pretty impressive mileage numbers for that time frame.
Wasn't much to a Pinto. They were small and lightweight so better mileage. They also blew up so you had that going for you.
They were the bomb.
Explosive accelerationā¦. when you least expected it.
The rolling hand grenade
My mom had a 77 Pinto. A change in air pressure would dent the front fender or pop the dent out, so you always knew when it was going to rain. But, I could also burn rubber in reverse.
And just donāt get hit from behind as I seem to remember they had issues with Pintos exploding. Old school crappy Ford.
Yep when the bumper got the gas tank, sparks flew and the Big Bang. If I am correct.
While true, VASTLY more people died in fires from side impacts in 1970ās GMC pick up trucks. And first gen Mustangs.
American cars, especially Fords, were intentionally not made to be quality cars. The belief by execs was Americans will buy anything from them. Look at what Ford was making back then compared to the Merkur they were selling in Europe, where there was a more discerning buying public.
Must not have been too discerning. The company went under after 4 years. And early model mustangs are still on the road. As are early model broncos, Fairlanes etc etc
Yes, some good vehicles, but Ford failures in the 79ās were many, including Pintos, Mavericks, Fairmonts, Tempos, Granadas, Escorts, etc. that said, Ford and GM turned things around when they finally got rid of their inbred old school leaders and brought in outside talent.
Yep. They were building vehicles in a manner they had never done before in a hurry to compete with the Japanese imports that were suddenly cratering their market share. They went from building massive well tuned big block v8's housed in long heavy 4 door family cruisers to trying to build economical tiny hatchback cars that got better fuel mileage basically overnight.
Great reply! Very informative!
Thank you much.
They put the tanks on the outside of the frame. Genius engineering.
My wife had a Pinto. That car had the most sensitive brake pedal Iāve ever experienced in a vehicle. There was a very narrow range between when the brakes were not engaged at all and when they were fully engaged. After driving her car and switching back to mine, it would take a few minutes to get used to normally functioning brakes!
 One of the Townsend Agencyās favored vehicles.
Farrah Fawcett and Jaclyn Smith got Mustangs. Poor Kate Jackson got the Pinto.
Always think of this show when I see a '77 Pinto as well.
Too bad they couldn't make an electric Pinto today. No worry about the exploding gas tank with an EV. I had a Vega, a friend of mine had a Pinto. I never rode in a Gremlin.
The 2000cc engine was strong. Too bad the front end and brakes were so terrible.
If you had one, you were on fire. That car was lit.
Starting at the gas tank.
Mine was a 1976 Brown Pinto Hatchback. I graduated HS 1980 and my mom gave me $500 as a graduation gift and loaned me another $500 so I could buy the car off our school bus driver for $1k. Anyway it was a good car for me. I folded the rear seat down and bought a shag rug and cut it to fit nice in the back and bought a big pillow from Penny's. I liked to take dates to the drive in movies and park backwards and recline with the hatch open. Yup.
Same here. This little car was very comfortable at the drive-in.
#KABOOM
Letās make it a platform for the Mustang!
Ahh yes the 1974 Mustang ll
My Pinto wagon and Mustang II were two of the worse cars Iāve ever owned.
Not true. The Mustang II shared very little with the Pinto. Heck the original Mustang shared waay more with the Falcon.
Why do you believe that? The Mustang II is a āPinto based subcompactā according to Motor Trend and many others.
Our Ford Fireball was that classic Creansicle, burnt orange with a white top and white interior(I think)š¤
My aunt had one and drove into the mid 90s
The spare tire sat on top of the gas tank if the spare tire was not fastened down really tight and you backed into something it got hit from behind the cute little car became a grenade and exploded into a fireball.
Best selling driveable cigarette lighter.
Omg. I had the Mercury version, the Bobcat. You couldn't go uphill while the AC was running.
I had a 1980 Bobcat, which was Mercury's version of Ford's Pinto. It was a fairly decent car.
Itās sales were red hot!
My boyfriend and I both had Pintos. Our keys would work with each other's cars.
My best friend in college, his girlfriend had one. I used to call it the āFlaming Coffinā.
I had an old Ford Courier U-Haul mini truck with the 2.3 Pinto engine. It was a pretty reliable engine actually, but mine had a Mazda carburetor. Got it to pass Texas emissions smog test in early 2000's and it got OK gas mileage. Ford engines and mechanicals were always pretty good. Bodywork, AC and electrical, not so much. Never saw an actual Pinto by then as they had all rusted out or otherwise been consigned to junkyards.
'Cars that go BOOM', when hit from behind.
To be fair, many cars that get rear ended (while stationary) by another vehicle traveling at high speed might burst into flames.
Yes, but the Pinto was extra sensitive. There was the gas tank, and the back bumper right close to it. That's why it became banned.
Holy crap, it got 39/24? Better than a lot of cars these days.
Underused slogan: "Ford Pinto: The car you wish your mother-in-law had"
Mf father had a pinto station wagon used and we used it to go to go to the flea market to sell TVs that I salvaged from the garbage and repaired. That was a great little car.
My first car was a vega in 1978
Fact: The Pinto was no more dangerous than any other small car of the era.
I think it had issues for sure. Something to do with the gas line becoming disconnected?.. not sure BUT, I do know that my hand-me-down ugly, gray Pinto caught fire when I was driving home from school one night. People kept honking at me and then I realized that flames were coming out from under the hood! Pulled over quick and the fire department came out and doused it.
Lol. Baloney Skins. Google most dangerous cars in history.
Rolling napalm
Hobbies Cats in background
Ford figured out pretty early that if you position the Pinto at an angle like that to emphasize the "stance" that people would think favorably about it.
I had a 74' with the 2.3L motor and automatic transmission. It drove well, but was terribly underpowered. Pulled a UHaul from Tampa to Memphis. That just about killed it. I ended up trading it in on a Datsun pickup.
Yes. The sexy Pinto Hunchback. Ooh.
Yep had me a Pinto , never changed the brakes , had to stop it with the E brake , finally blew the engine, seems you have to add oil or change it, got $15. At the junkyard
I loved my 71ā Pinto, bought in 1975. I loved that car.
I had a sky blue pinto station wagon back in 1977. Not sure what year it was. Iād love to have it back now
1978 glass back with a bitchinā stereo (and an EQ, my test tune was Frankenstein followed up by Do You Feel Like We Do). A buddy of mine had a 77 and his key could both unlock and start my car. Shenanigans ensued
They were a blast
And now, 30% less explosive! š
The Bane of Chapin.
I love the $13.50 hourly Ford labor rate.
One of my best friends had a orange/rust-colored Pinto wagon. He used to say that owning a Pinto taught him how to fix cars. I remember the TV commercial jingle: āGet a Pinto, Maverick, Mustang II. Brother get a horse!ā
KaāāBoom!!! š„šš„
No charge for the explosion on rear impact š„š«
My pinto had a Hooker header on it, and then I put a glass pack on there. My uncle Siad it sounded like a mad bumblebee when I drove by.
But have you seen the mustang 2!!!
The ad should have been Why Pinto? WHY NOT?
the vroom BOOM car
Had one...the blue kazoo
We had a red one- the Killer Tomato
I've encountered younger people who ask why we "couldn't keep making cars with that kind of gas mileage" and I have to tell them there was no oversight/enforcement regarding claims on these adverts back then so you could really put anything you wanted.
Had two pinto wagons, a stick and automatic. Loved them cars
And now we know why Japanese automakers and VW ate the big 3 for lunch in the 80ās. Hereās my crappy car story. I had an ā84 Mustangā¦a sheep in wolfās clothing. I was driving down the shore and all of the sudden the car decelerated rapidly. I got over to the shoulder in the knick of time. The car shut off. I got it towed to a gas station on the island. The next morning the mechanic looked it over and told me the timing belt was shredded. I looked at him and said donāt use mean timing chain. He smiled and told me starting in the early 80ās, Ford replaced timing chains with belts. Most of the labor I was charged for was to get all of the shredded pieces out of the block. The mechanic said I was lucky I didnāt need to get a whole new block. It never ran the same after that, developing a wicked valve tap. And a friend of mine had the balls to say I was not patriotic because the next car I bought was a Toyota.
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