Yes, the seventies were a cruel decade for cars. It was bad enough that engines were strangled by the Rube Goldbergian smog-reduction contraptions, killing ignition advance being one of the more retarded tactics. But then along came 1974, the year of the five-mile bumper standard. Some manufacturers put a bit of effort into integrating them; others didn’t. The Pinto falls solidly in the latter camp: the result was a shelf butt of remarkable crudity, but maybe you’re you’re into that sort of thing. It had its compensations though: very convenient as a refreshment stand: a low altitude bar, or serving tray always at hand for your milk and cookies.
That is, unless you don’t like bringing your Pinto into the house. But there are solutions for that too.
Of course, the front end got the same treatment. What shall we call that, in anatomical terms? Oh wait: google. Let’s try “shelf chest”
Hmm; that won’t do. Let’s try something else, a bit more explicit:
“Shelf tits” Yes. That’ll work. Now she was number one in google’s mysterious ranking algorithms, but number four is in many ways much more compelling. google always knows best; we assume. “Do you take milk with your tea?”
So can we say that that after three years, the Pinto had matured sexually? That’s almost in line with real live Pintos. Maybe Ford should have changed its name to Mare.
Just as a frame of reference, here’s how the Pinto’s arse looked, in its svelte foalhood. Don’t stare so long, you ponyphile! Now if it had a proper five-mile shelf bum-per, it wouldn’t have bent its little delicate little tail.
And the front too, before the hormones kicked in. That’s a mere training bra up there. And btw, here’s my CC on that 1971 Pinto. I highly recommend it; natch. And I’ll wait ’till you’re back.
So since we’ve now already covered everything between the Pinto’s new sexual prow-ess and boot-y before, we’ll skip all the rest of this one. Why waste precious time and energy on redundancy? It’s not like the parts in between got any better either. More like the opposite.
They do make a nice refreshment holder. I remember I once sat a basically empty can on the “rear shelf” of one of my cars and had forgot I sat it there. I got in the car oblivious to the fact that it was still there until I arrived at my destination that had included a drive at speed only to find that can still sitting there.
I did the same thing with the gas cap on an 84 Olds 98. I forgot to put the cap back on when I filled up, then got on the highway and drove about 120 miles. I got to my destination, and the cap was still sitting on the bumper. I was amazed.
My dad had one of these, in puke orange-brown, like the color of slightly burnt carrots, light tan interior. He loved the damn thing and so did I (he called it his sports car) but my parents bagged it pretty much as soon as the gas tank thing became an issue. Our other car at the time was a massive 76 b-body Impala wagon… Black vinyl seats!
Ford was the worst among the Big 3 (and AMC, overall) in integrating the 5 mph bumpers. Depending on your point of view, Ford also was the best/worst about out-Brougham-ing everyone else.
Still wish we could have chrome bumpers on cars today though. One “love tap” on today’s big, fat glossy painted bumper covers and you have a nice nick, scrape, or worse. Anyone familiar with severe “bumper rash” on NYC cars?
Spotted in the Yoyodyne employee parking lot…
About that Victorian-era woman: Maybe Henry N. Manney III was wrong about the Jaguar E-type. I think she could be the “crumpet-catcher” and the E-type the “strumpet-catcher.”
http://www.joesherlock.com/Henry-Manney.html
Baby got back.
Seriously though what else are you going to do?
I think the worst front bumper in the 5mph era, is the 320i, that one looks big enough for Secret Service agents to ride on.
I recall when doing my active reserve time out of the US Army, one meeting, my Captain asked me to go down street and get him hamburgers. As I walk out of his office, he throws me his keys and told me to test drive his new car. I walk outside to see a new 74 orange and white Pinto. Orange was (is ?) the color of the Signal Corps, our unit.
The car was a four speed, fortunately, I learned how to drive on a stick. A cute little car, all in all. The CO was about my height, 6’3″, and the car seemed roomy. I got his burgers, a bit nervous cause there were only about 20 miles on the car. I parked the car back in his space, delivered his lunch, and he enthusiastically asked me what I thought of the car. I truthfully told him that I liked the car, especially sharp in the Signal color.
I can’t recall how long he had the Pinto. His other car was a grey Olds Cutlass. I never got the chance to drive that.
Yes.
For all the trash talk about Pintos; they did fit a big body.
Of course, first you had to get down in there. A big young buck could do it; but I doubt I could anymore today. It’s quite a foldup.
This reads as though authored by someone who skipped his morning coffee for a cholesterol test.
In any case, Pinto’s will always hold a special place in my heart as I learned to drive a manual trans in one, on a sunny summer Saturday, in the park with a cooler of beers in the trunk. I guess people don’t do that anymore.
And I’ll pass on the cookies, thanks.
God those things were ugly! That rear bumper was probably because it exploded on rear impact and that gave you about 5 feet of space between the car and the bumper! What were they thinking when they designed that 5mph bumper?!?
The Pintos that were ‘flammable” were 71-72’s, not these.
The recall covered 1971-76 Pintos sedans and Runabouts. Beginning with the 1977 Pintos, the fuel filler pipe was was strengthened and more protection was added to the fuel tank.
Geeber . . . you’re right. In a moment of confusion, as an eighteen year old, I did look at a ’77 Pinto Runabout and a Stallion (silver/grey and flat black). I did notice what appeared to be a “cradle” under the gas tank like some kind of reinforcement . . . .
The gas tank retrofit wasn’t so much reinforcing/stengthening as it was designed to deflect the gas tank downward in a rear-end collision.
IIRC, what was happening was the gas tank was being slammed straight into the rear axle and that’s what was causing the explosions/fires.
With the added deflector between the gas tank and rear axle, the gas tank would move forward and down, avoiding impact with the hot rear axle.
You’re essentially right, but as I understood it, the explosions were caused by the bolts from the rear differential puncturing the gas tank.
Ding ding we have a winner, the fix was a plastic shield to prevent the bolts on the axle from puncturing the tank and a bracket that reduced the likelihood of the filler pipe being pulled from the tank.
As a side note back in the 80’s I worked in shop with a guy who was a former Ford dealer mechanic. He told me a story about another guy who worked there who got the tank recall jobs. Instead of installing the shields he was taking naps and stacking them up in the corner. Someone found him sleeping and his stash of uninstalled shield and of course he was looking for a new job.
What a jackass! Someone should’ve sued his ass! (I am usually against sueing, I think its a terrible idea, but in this case that guy would’ve deserved it!)
I think a simple firing was certainly too lenient for certain. From my understanding they call all the owners of the cars he had drawn to fix and hand them come back in for them to actually get the shield installed.
Ford had a different, bulkier ‘bumper shock absorber’ design than GM, so their bumpers were huge in comparision.
The only type of car enthusiasts that love big 70’s bumpers are Demo Derby drivers! They especially like 74 Impalas’
http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf
According to his study, the number who died in Pinto rear-impact fires was well below the hundreds cited in contemporary news reports and closer to the 27 recorded by a limited National Highway Traffic Safety Administration database.
The Pinto was just as safe, if not safer than other cars in it’s class, any only slightly less safer than the average car of all sizes.
Thank goodness! I drove my ’72 in and around Boston like a total maniac (in other words, like everyone else) for five years.
Where and when were you in Boston, Mike? I’ve been around heyah since ’96.
Yes you were way more likely to die in a Honda Civic of those years either from the impact or the resulting fire due to it’s gas tank, that was far more exposed, exploding. Of course Honda never tested theirs and found a common cause of fuel tank puncture. They also never proposed that a bladder style tank would be far better and would far exceed the crash test standards by a far greater margin. That was the real smoking gun in the Ford case not the number of fires but that the engineers had a plan that would far exceed the safety standards of the times but the bean counters said no it is not cost effective to make something way better than it has too particularly when we are trying to meet the $1971, 1971lb, 1971 model that was being pushed by the marketing dept and management. As an aside that was one of the reasons the Pinto fared so poorly on the handling tests, to meet that price target the spec’ed out non-belted undersized base tires. Move up to the optional “wide oval” tires and handling improved significantly. I still have a OE Pinto tire that has never been on the ground that I found in the spare tire well of a 71 Pinto I had. It has tread about 3″ wide and is of the old “hundred” series designation with their 82 series profile.
I Had one of these as my go to work car back in the 80’s; it was a ’72 so I didn’t think it looked that bad. It got 30mpg and with the 4 speed and 1600cc engine did seem sporty if not a real “sports car”; much better than the 22mpg 1600cc Datson that I had just previous to the Ford, which would run rings around the 510. Wasn’t aware of the gas tank “flammablity” issue but had seen several in the ditch due to driver exuberance and a light tail, but if you were aware of this it was a fun drive.
Paul…Paul…is it Seasickness Week? This gut-churning collection of images hurts almost as much as that bilious barkantine of a Rolls.
Need to find some dramamine, or at least more Joan Holloway pics.
I always wondered if Ford miscalculated……as if it were for 7 mph bumpers, they looked so much worse. And I’m a Ford fan! But then compare the 74 Camaro to the 74 Firebird, the F-bird comes off much better.
” killing ignition advance being one of the more retarded tactics.”
Pun of the Year right there!
+1
Funny thing though, my ’72 had a bad spell of overheating at highway speeds that I went crazy trying to track down. Never boiled over thanks to the gauges I’d put in.
Finally I discovered a damned plastic one-way ball valve in the vacuum hose to the distributor was in backwards. Apparently its careless owner took it out and put it back the wrong way ’round during a tuneup for some unknown reason. It looked the same either way of course, thanks Ford. Ten-second fix, overheating vanished.
I don’t know about other cars, but the 2.0 liter ’72 Pinto certainly did have and depend on ignition advance.
PS: Those womens’ photos are terrifying. I may be scarred for life.
PPS: Your photo car was white from the factory. That’s what an Oregon car looks like if you don’t wash it for forty years.
Yes, it had some advance, but not as much as it used to. Reducing advance was a key (easy) way to reduce NoX emissions.
When I moved to CA in 1976 with my ’68 Dodge A100, they made me buy this aftermarket do-hicky that attached to my vacuum advance, basically reducing it substantially. Power and mileage went down instantly. Of course, like everyone else, I unhooked it after my smog test.
I’d say less advance was one of the key reasons “smogged” engines in the seventies had less power and worse efficiency.
I’m sorry to scar you; didn’t know you were so…innocent?
Paul, funny you mention the then required after market “smog” devices in Calif. Our family bought a ’64 Skylark (that my sister promptly wrecked) and a ’67 Skylark. Two different variations on the 300 V-8; the 64 a nailhead, the ’67 the 90 deg. V-8. Anyway, there was some kind of thermal type device that was inserted onto the radiator hose and i do recall mechanics slightly retarding the igntion advance. In high school auto shop, we removed that radiator gizmo with the two vaccum hoses, and promptly advanced the ignition slightly plus of factory specs (had to run 1970s California leaded premium, which from ’73 through 1982 was 93 octane). Cal didn’t do the smog test thing until well into the 1980s at which point I moved from Virginia back to Calfornia and had my 49 state Slant Six Dodge truck tested so I could register it.
“Pun of the Year right there!”
Beat me to it!
Laugh all you want, but if you couldn’t afford a BMW 1600 or 2002 for SCCA B-Sedan autocross back in the early ’70’s, the answer was to get a Pinto with the 2.0liter engine, manual transmission, then add stiffer shocks and sway bars. In the local mall parkling lot Sunday autocrosses, they could almost hold with the BMW’s, were a dead even match with the Alfa GTA, and outpowered (but were slightly outhandled) by the Vega GT.
Pintos were taken seriously in that format back then.
I made that pretty clear in the CC I linked to. I used to drive lots of ’71s at the Ford dealer, and the 2.0 with stick was a fun drive indeed. Body structural integrity left something to be desired. I suspect a Cortina GT with the same engine would likely have felt even better, but I could be wrong.
My ’72 was a blast to drive, but the whole car was made of pot metal and put together with sheet metal screws. Sort of a Dearborn Fiat, meant to teach us to buy a real car next time.
Betcha some of those autocrossing Pintos were flexible flyers after awhile. I worked with a guy in Boston who had a Pinto the same age as mine. After having it five years he saw sunlight shining through the inside door panel one day, from holes appearing in the door. Five year old car with 60K miles and doors rusted right through, that was the new car experience in the ’70s.
Ditched the Pinto in ’77 for the 5-speed Civic CVCC we were all driving then. Which I sold when we moved west in ’80. Didn’t keep either one long enough to get into the terminal rust they both became known for. That sounds sage but it’s just fortune. Good fortune to avoid the rust, bad fortune to stop driving the Honda. I’d married a Peugeot.
Pintos get a bad rap, probably because of Ford’s advertising that they had 300 pounds of “road hugging weight” on the competition. But get rid of that weight, slap on a set of Hoosier racing tires, and the 2.3 liter Limas were very fast. In the DC area they raced in the GT Pinto class. GT Pinto was not a national SCCA class, but various areas set up their own regional series. At our local track, Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia, a fairly fast 2.5 mile (4.0 km) road course, the lead cars in the class were lapping in the high 1:28s, about the same time as a Showroom Stock Corvette. Since it was a bastard class, the SCCA had the Pintos start a half a lap back on the GT 1 cars which included Porsche 911s. The Porsche drivers complained that the Pintos were too slow and should not race in GT 1. These were probably the same guys that were getting lapped after two or three laps. I asked one of the owners of a particularly fast Pinto why the GT Pintos were so fast. Answer-brakes, the analog of the loud pedal. At one point I designed a paint/marking scheme for my friend who drove in the series. Shown below. Click to enlarge.
I don’t remember Ford saying that anywhere. In the 1971 CD comparison test, the Pinto weighed in at 2030 lbs, only 70 more than the VW. The Vega was almost 300 lbs more; maybe you’re thinking of it?
In fact, Ford’s drive to keep the pinto light led to complaints about structural integrity; in 1974, the Pinto’s body was substantially strengthened for that reason.
Can’t find a Ford print ad that makes this assertion, but Frank Williams in the Aug 10, 2006 TTAC states “The EPA recently announced that America’s vehicle fleet is the heaviest it’s been since Ford touted the Pinto’s “road hugging weight” as a safety feature.”
Glad I bought a ’73.
Well, not GLAD….just happy to have avoided these bumpers.
And +1 about the stuff in between getting worse. I’ve always marveled at how Ford, once it’s paid for the tooling, starts taking stuff out of its cars…and the things it can’t just lose it replaces with inferior versions of the same.
In the same way that buying a first-year GM car is Russian Roulette, buying anything past year 4 of a FoMoCo product is asking for it.
This reminds me of the car I learned to drive in– my brother’s 1974 Nova Hatchback. The bumpers were similarly huge, and were dang near indestructable. They really came in handy for a stupid, nervous kid with questionable depth perception. I managed to get my driver’s license without putting a scratch on that car, which is much more of a testament to those bumpers than my driving ability. It also makes me think of a high school acquaintance whose parents bought him a Pinto, and paid a pretty penny for it, two days before the story about exploding gas tanks came out. Talk about depriciation!
Likewise, I bought a ’74 Nova Hatchback from my best friend after getting T-boned in a ’65 VW Bug. That really shook me up, all that Detroit iron felt better for awhile.
(Drove to work today in a Miata, so the effect wasn’t permanent 😉
Commuting in a Miata? I imagine you take the long way home from time to time.
Definitely. An old Miata is the most fun per dollar of anything on four wheels.
Mine is a ’93 with 100K miles I picked up last fall, right after the Portland CC/TTAC get-together got me going. Somehow it just puts me in a good mood.
I must say that similarly, although I see lots of folks swap out the huge 5-mph bumpers on pre-90 E30s, living in nyc I couldnt be more grateful for the ‘diving boards’ on my own ’89. They certainly take abuse.
Those bumpers seem to look less hideous on the wagons. A little.
We went through not one but two ’74 Pintos in my family. My mother had a yellow sedan (bought used in ’77, got rid of in ’82), and my grandmother had a dark green wagon (don’t remember the exact timeframe she had it, but it was late ’70s/early ’80s, probably both bought and disposed of after the point where my mother bought/disposed of hers). For some reason, whenever I hear the word “Pinto”, it pulls up memories of digging the yellow sedan out of the snow after the Blizzard of ’78. Parked in a driveway that ran between a retaining wall and a house, it had completely disappeared under the white stuff — we dug down and eventually hit the trunk lid.
Wow, that is GHASTLY!! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a PInto in real life – they were a little before my time and pretty much gone from the roads by the time I started noticing cars. My parents supposedly had two of them, but I was too young to remember. Maybe I’ve caught a glimpse of one sitting behind a fence or rotting in some far corner of a junkyard, but I’ve never noticed they had such a bodacious bootay hanging off the rear. When I first saw the preview picture I thought this was going to be a funny “look at this redneck who bolted an F-150 bumper onto his Pinto!” post. It really makes you wonder – who was more insane… the people who designed this, or the people who bought them? The original 1971 version was a good looking little car, what a shame.
You can just imagine, the clock is ticking towards when they have to go on sale, and eventually someone has to decide “well what on earth else can we do?” and call it done…
We didn’t have 5mph requirements so were largely spared, but bumpers did generally get bigger. And I think Volvo just used the same battering rams everywhere.
My Dad bought a 4 speed hatch new in 1974. It was an odd shade of yellow, and I do remember those bumpers vividly. I was 14, and spent some time behind the wheel when we’d go to the country to see my Grandfolks. It was faster than the ’68 Beetle that it replaced, but not by a lot. I know that it wasn’t put together nearly as well as any of the Bugs that Dad had owned up to that point. He traded it in on a new F-150 4×4 a couple of years later, and still drives Ford pickups today. The earlier cars were much easier on the eyes than the ’74-on Pintos were.