grbeck

For what it's worth, the current Honda Odyssey has been on the market since the 2018 model year. Interestingly, sales bottomed out in 2022, and have been increasing since then.

We're looking for a new vehicle, and the back seat of the Bronco Sport and Maverick are too small for our teenagers. That crossed both vehicles off our list, even though I really like the Maverick.

The Ford Model A had the gas tank located in FRONT of the windshield! Yikes!

Again, was the Pinto a paragon of safety? No, but neither were other small cars of that era. I wouldn't exactly relish a trip in an old VW Beetle or an AMC Gremlin. The latter had the fuel tank extremely close to the rear bumper (I remember looking when I washed my father's Gremlin). I wouldn't want to be in a head-on collision in the VW, which had no engine up front, but did have the gas tank located there. The car originally met all applicable safety standards, and its overall fatality rate was actually better than several contemporary small cars. From the data that is out there, it was only slightly worse than other small cars when it came to fire-related deaths. I'm also very concerned that we label something dangerous when it meets applicable safety standards. This can lead to inevitable question - what's the point of requiring manufacturers meet to a standard when said federal agency can turn on the manufacturer because of public pressure? If standards are meaningful, it's not fair to crucify a company when tests are used that far exceed the standard to prove that a vehicle is supposedly "unsafe." I'm sure Ford could have improved the Pinto in a lot of areas, including fuel-tank safety. But that could be said of any initial design - once the original is out there, competent, well-focused management directs engineers and product planners to find ways to improve it. Toyota and Honda have both made hay in North America by consistently following that practice for over half a century for everything from safety to rust resistance to engine refinement. Improvements to an original design do not necessarily mean that the original design was "bad" or unsafe. It's my understanding that Ford DID beef up the Pinto's body shell for 1974 - most likely as a result of the introduction of the 1974 Mustang II, which was based on the Pinto platform, but needed to be quieter and more refined to satisfy its intended audience.

Again, there is no conclusive proof that recall changes prevented fires. The burden of proof is on the party making such a claim, and if there is no evidence to support it, one cannot say that the recall changes were effective. The two main cases involved crashes that would have had a similar effect on other small cars of that era. The Pinto met applicable fuel-system safety standards, and its overall safety record was better than other small cars of that era, and its record of fire-related deaths was only slightly worse. It was hardly a death trap by the standards of that era.

There is no conclusive proof that the recall reduced the rate of fire-related deaths in Pintos, which weren't that far out of line with competitive small cars of that era before the recall.

The choice to discontinue Mercury was most likely made easier by GM having already phased out both Oldsmobile and Pontiac. The old-line medium price brands had been squeezed from both above and below for years.

When the Pinto was being developed, the federal standards for fuel-tank safety were in flux. The initial standard called for vehicles to pass a 20 mph, moving-barrier crash. Ford moved ahead under the assumption that this would be the standard. The federal government twice considered a stricter standard for the final regulation. The first change involved making the standard a crash into a FIXED barrier at 20 mph. The second proposed change involved raising the crash speed to 30 mph, while retaining the fixed barrier. The government settled on the 20 mph moving-barrier crash standard, and the Pinto met that standard. I doubt that other small cars of that era would have fared much better in high-speed crashes of the sort in the Grimshaw and Ulrich cases, and no doubt, in those cars, other engineering issues would have come into play that resulted in a fire. At the end of the day, the Pinto met all applicable fuel-tank safety standards, and its overall safety record was better than average for comparable small cars of that era. When it came to fire-related deaths (which, again, would have included deaths from ALL fires - including those that started under the hood), it was slightly worse than average. By some data sets, it was not THE worst (that was the AMC Gremlin). From what I have read, the plastic shield really didn't do anything to increase safety. But it gave the appearance of the federal government having pressured Ford into "doing something," which is what mattered.

Hyundai had been good about replacing the engines (there is no fix for this - the engine has to be replaced). But from what I'm hearing, as the problem has become more widespread, the company has begun taking a harder line on covering a complete engine replacement.

I'm reading of catastrophic engine failure on Hyundais and Kias at around 100,000 miles. A friend who has a Kia has just noticed a dramatic increase in its oil consumption (which is the first sign of total engine failure). Those lower price points can come at a hidden cost.

Inflation was high throughout the 1970s (and got worse in the late 1970s), so those recall costs were in inflated, 1978 dollar values. The test that the federal government used to order the recall was rigged. The government agency filled the Pinto's tank with gas, and then used a 1971 Chevrolet Impala as the "battering ram car." The Impala's nose was lowered to make sure it made direct contact with sheetmetal shielding the gas tank, and its headlights were turned on to ensure a spark. Even then the federal government had to keep increasing the speed at which the Impala hit the Pinto to get the desired explosion. In his 1984 book, Lee Iacocca quotes Joan Claybrook, who was NHTSA Administrator at the time, as saying that what Ford had was a "public relations problem, not an engineering problem. The Pinto isn't worse than any other small car." I would imagine she would have forced him to retract that statement if he had misquoted her, or fabricated it. Claybrook wasn't noted for her soft stance on the auto industry.

If other competitive small cars had been put under the same microscope, I'm sure that they would have been found to have been unsafe, too. The parties in the lawsuit aren't looking for the truth. They are looking to get their version of the facts before the trier of fact (the judge or a jury). That means excluding facts that could be harmful to their case - such as the speed at which the 1963 Galaxie hit the Pinto in which Grimshaw was riding. The Pinto's overall safety record was better than competitive small cars, and its record of deaths due to fire was only slightly worse than the class average, based on some measurements. (And that included ALL deaths due to fire, which meant if the fire started in the engine compartment, and it was fatal to the occupants, it was counted.) The car met all applicable safety standards of the time - including standards covering fuel tank and fuel system safety. All small cars of the era were death traps by our standards, and I wouldn't want to have been in any of them in a collision with a larger vehicle. The Pinto was simply typical for small cars of that time.

The complaint about the GM full-size trucks was that the frame went around the tank...as opposed to the tank being placed behind the frame. Which, in some respects, echoed the complaints about the X-frame used by some GM divisions in the late 1950s and 1960s. There was no protection in side impacts. As for the Pinto - the Japanese cars of the era weren't terribly robust when it came to body strength, and their rust resistance was only two steps above that of the Vega. The VW Beetle had its own safety issues, and the less said about the Chevrolet Vega, the better.

All of the factors listed as proof that Ford was negligent fall apart when one realizes they could apply to many other small cars of that era. (And Ford didn't use a drop-in gas tank design for the Pinto. The Pinto did not use that design, in which the top of the gas tank doubled as the floor of the trunk. The Falcons and Mustangs of the 1960s did use that design. Note that Toyota also used that design for the Corona that was sold here in the early 1970s.) In the Grimshaw case, the defense claimed that the 1963 Galaxie that slammed into the stalled Pinto was traveling at 50 mph at the time of the impact. (In the Grimshaw case, the Pinto had stalled out on the freeway. The driver couldn't get the car restarted before a 1963 Galaxie slammed into it.) The plaintiffs claimed the Galaxie was traveling at 30 mph. There was proof to support the defense's assertion, but the trial judge accepted the plaintiff's version of events. Interestingly, during arguments, the plaintiffs agreed that no contemporary small car could be expected to survive a direct hit at 50+ mph from a much larger vehicle. Which brings us to the Ulrich case... In that case, the driver stopped the Pinto in the middle of the lane because she realized that she had left the gas cap back at the gas station. (The road lacked a shoulder.) She had just filled up the Pinto. The driver of a Chevrolet van traveling at about 60 mph failed to see the stopped Pinto, because he was reaching to pick up a cigarette - some say it was a marijuana joint - he had dropped on the floor. He thus didn't brake before striking the Pinto. No contemporary small car could have survived an impact at that speed by a much larger vehicle, particularly with a full tank of gas and the gas cap not installed. There is no Ford Pinto memo. The memo in question dealt with a proposed federal rollover standard, and it applied to ALL vehicles. Ford was using a cost-benefit analysis approved by the federal government. This is why the memo was not admitted as evidence during the Grimshaw trial - it did not specifically refer to the Pinto. Mother Jones claimed that weighing costs against potential fatalities showed how callous auto makers were towards their customers. The problem with that claim is that Ford, and other automakers, were using a formula used by...federal regulatory agencies. A cost-benefit analysis is a standard part of the regulatory procedure. The Pinto's overall safety record (meaning, fatalities from ALL crashes, not just those involving fire) was actually better than many contemporary small cars. It's hard to sift out only fire-related fatalities (as that would include fatalities from, say, a fire that started in the engine compartment), but most data shows that the Pinto was a little worse than average in that regard (again, compared to contemporary small cars). One set of data shows that the worst offender was actually the AMC Gremlin. I remember riding in my parents' 1973 Gremlin and hearing the gasoline slosh in the tank during even moderate turns. That was hardly comforting as the Pinto news story broke in 1978.

I remember looking at Dodge Hornets at the Harrisburg Auto Show when they first debuted. What sticks in my mind is that they were considerably more expensive than comparable Ford, Honda and Toyota models, but offered less room. Plus, if online forums were to be believed, initial reliabilty was terrible. More money for more trouble and less room is not a winning formula for this segment.