I was down in Georgia over the weekend visiting my grandmother, who turned 103 last week, as well as my Dad, who turned 80 last Christmas. Today’s subject car is getting on up there, too…
This very base-model Pinto Wagon is either a 1977 or 1978 version; they were virtually identical except for paint and decal/trim options. This car transitioned to “end-of-life care” status some time ago, I suspect…
A white 1973 Pinto Squire Wagon passed briefly through my hands a number of years ago. It had been my uncle’s car for about ten years, and I acquired it from him when its original engine died. Four hundred dollars and one junkyard engine swap later, it (barely) made the trip from Atlanta to East Commerce, Texas, where my brother used it to move out so he could live with Dad for a while.
I remember it only as buzzy and underpowered.
If this car isn’t the perfect definition of a beater, I don’t know what is—note the ‘upgraded’ roof rack! I’ll bet this Pinto has a few stories of its own to share…
Was there a black and white 1974 Dodge Monaco nearby?
I hate Illinois Nazis.
I want all party memembers in the tri-state area to monitor their CB’s…….
He’s all over the computer like a rash. AND he’s a Cath-o-lic.
Gruppenfuher!!!
“I’ve always loved you…”
I’d love to have an old Pinto wagon. It’d need to be in a little better shape than this — at least all one color — so I don’t torque off my neighbors. But it would be the perfect little around-town beater.
I guess as long as you don’t get rear-ended I guess it would be okay.
Actually…the Pinto WAGON didn’t have the problems the sedan/hatch had. Gas tank was in a different position; and the rear end is longer anyway.
Nonetheless…I had a gasoline placard on my Squire. Today I’d get ticketed for it; but back then LE had more of a sense of humor.
Even if it isn’t a wagon as long as the technician at the dealership didn’t go a take a nap then the car was retrofitted with a shield that stops the differential bolt from puncturing the tank and a retainer to keep the filler pipe from pulling out of the tank.
The reason I say the tech wasn’t napping was I worked with a guy who was a mechanic at a Ford dealership when the recalls were being done. One day someone was cleaning up the shop and found a pile of the shields and hardware hidden somewhere. Turns out the tech wasn’t installing them just getting the parts filling out the paper work and taking a nap in the back room.
The Pinto got a bad rap. It was no worse than any subcompact at the time…..and better than many.
“In 1991, A Rutgers Law Journal report [PDF]http://www.fordpinto.com/index.php?page=230 showed the total number of Pinto fires, out of 2 million cars and 10 years of production, stalled at 27. It was no more than any other vehicle, averaged out, and certainly not the thousand or more suggested by Mother Jones.”
27 out of 2 million!
Whatever charm the Pinto had was lost with the 1974 bumpers, which appeared to make up about 20% of the car’s weight. The combination of the bumpers, the tightening emissions regs and some clumsy front end restyling just killed the Pinto for me.
The wagon was my favorite bodystyle too. An early Pinto Squire would be a fun car, as long as it was not an automatic. During the 1970s, my younger sister had a major thing for Pinto wagons. Funny, today she drives either a Jetta wagon or a diesel Jeep Liberty.
Had one! A 1973 Pinto Squire, with a manual and the 2.0.
Had extra sound deadening as part of the Squire package…it was really reasonably quiet. And not a bad road car…not practical; and not that easy to get in and out of; but for the time, a good 28-mpg economy hauler.
I also had a ’73 Pinto Squire wagon with the 2000 and the 4 speed in high school lin the early 80’s. It was already beat up then and burned just a little bit of oil but it had the exact same seats, carpet and shifter as my step-mom’s horrid little ’74 Mustang Ghia. I actually enjoyed that little car a lot for the year I had it. I used to see how many people I could stuff into that thing and go to lunch. I think the record was like 9 very uncomfortable but laughing high-schoolers
A friend of mine had a base-model Pinto with a 4-speed manual and he got almost 300K miles out of it. It was the most elemental car that I have ever seen. It was so basic that if you removed any part of it, something stopped working! The fan blade was a single piece of rectangular steel, with five holes punched in the middle, and slightly twisted on each end – you can’t get much simpler than that!
The wagons do seem to have been kept on the road longer I will admit.
The Pinto 2.0 will work fine, better, without the fan.
BUT…you need a temperature gauge; and to be sure to shut the engine off at long stops. OR…today…an electric fan would be a good upgrade; but there was no such thing in those days.
Maybe not when the 2.0 was new, but not too many years later as I switched to an electric fan on my 73 to free up a little HP. I actually still have the electric fan as I saved it when I sold the car.
When I had mine, I was too poor even to shop for an electric fan.
I took the fan off when I had to change out the water pump…thought I’d gain a little power. I did.
I put full gauges in, same time…you know, non-electronic, a panel that fit on a flat surface. Temperature with a copper sensor wire, all the way to where it screwed in the block. Amazingly, it worked; it was consistent and seemed pretty accurate…the “red zone” corresponded to that rumbling in the block that told me I’d idled fanless too long.
But, funny thing was, I never really missed the fan. On a long stop, I could just put the heat on and it would control the temperature. Otherwise…even at around 20-25, it kept cool.
A better gauge than on today’s cars, which are an idiot light with a needle (ie output supplied from the computer)
No those capillary tube temp gauges are notoriously inaccurate more so the cheaper they are. The engine management temp sensors are much more accurate and there isn’t anything wrong with just having one and having the computer send a signal through the CAN bus to the gauges. Looking at the data through a scan tool on a modern car you can actually watch the temp rise and fall as little as 2 or 3 degrees as the thermostat opens and closes.
True enough. But back then, we lived in a world so much cruder…so much more friendly to the shade-tree mechanic with a Crescent wrench and Auto Zone parts…
That may be true, but my experience is a good quality car made in the last ten years will give anyone very low maintenance motoring for years to come. There’s hardly a bad one on the market now.
Old cars are fun if you have the time and space to play with them, though and there are still loads around if that’s your pleasure.
I know the sensors work, years ago I would switch my instrument panel into its diagnostic mode which would show all sorts of parameters, even the speed without the adjustment below the actual speed shown on the speedo.
I was just referring to gauges that aren’t actually gauges.
I remember seeing the temp gauge rise a bit on a trip in the Flinders Ranges about 10 years ago, on a 110+ day. I stopped to check it out and found the grille clogged with locusts (even found 5-6 in the air cleaner housing). I wonder whether a computer-gauge would have waited until it got properly hot before it showed anything?
Mentally wandering the cobweb-entangled synapses within my eroding brain I recall the late 1980s newspaper story appearing in a local newspaper that was written about the Bank of America fleet manager.
The article described his duties and included a Q & A section.
One question asked him how many different brands, types, etc. cars were in the fleet.
Many types from pick-ups, vans, sedans; full-size to small.
He was asked which particular vehicle during his 20 or so years in the firm’s fleet operations had been the most generally cost-efficient.
He unequivocally declared that the Pintos were the most cost-effective and that their reliability, ease of maintenance, easy repair, etc. led to his conclusion.
It was an interesting article.
My mom had a ’75 Pinto Squire wagon, that was the first car I remember being shuttled around in. I still remember how low to the ground that car seemed compared to our other family car (a ’78 Mercury Monarch and, later, an ’81 Pontiac Phoenix…man oh man, my parents knew how to pick some craptastic cars, huh?).
My best friend at UC Berkeley in the late ’70’s had a ’75 baby blue auto wagon. To make matters worse, his mom made curtains to hang in the rear windows…poor guy.
What do you mean poor guy, unless of course they were a flowery print or some thing like that. If they were a nice dark solid blue then they would have been great in my opinion. That makes for a conversion from grocery getter to poor man’s camping/sin bin pseudo cruising wagon.
On the 62 Econoline I had I personally made some curtains for the back windows just for that purpose. Of course I went the easy way out and purchased some thick dark blue towels slightly larger than the window. Folding over one end, a little hand stitching, a couple of screen door springs and some self drilling screws and I was good to go.
Of course there isn’t all that much room in the back of a Pinto Wagon but it is better than a sub compact sedan or the typical hatch back of the era.
haha – yes those were the days of the party van. On the Pinto though, between the powder blue and curtains like you would put in a kitchen, it did not exactly convey Chick Magnet. We were all brutal to him and he deserved it. Although he still nice enough to drive us around since most of us did not have cars at all,
You know…I never got guff for my Pinto Squire Po-Boy Sin-Bin.
I never got any comment at all. Given the times, early 1980s, I received silent acknowledgement that I could afford a car at all…but it was to nobody’s taste that i knew.
It was handy a couple of times as a camperette; and once or twice more as a privacy pocket for R-rated adventures. Beyond that…well, it was part of growing up, I guess.
2nd car I owned was a 79 Pinto wagon. It cost me $150 in 1988 gave me one year of trouble completely trouble free driving. Trouble free other then my feet getting wet every time it rained! The brakes went and I gave it to my sister who fixed them and got another year out of it. I have to admit, I miss it.
I remember a newspaper* article in late 80’s about a Post Office somewhere that still had a fleet of 1979-80 Pinto wagons, still running. Fleet Manager said the wagons were “bullet-proof” and “Ford had the bugs worked out by then”. Was planning to keep them a bit longer.
* No WWW then.
It’s true. The Postal Service had a HUGE fleet of gofer Pintos they bought around 1980. Where I was, most of them kept their window-stickers, even. It was an answer to the high price of Postal Jeeps…they stopped ordering LHD Postal Vehicle jeeps in 1974, instead buying regular cars for about half the price.
What struck me, when these were being sold (I was at the sales lot looking for a Postal Jeep to buy) was, even though rusted and clapped-out they were, they had those manufacturer’s stickers in the left-hand rear window.
Jeez, I remember those. They had black plastic grilles and square headlights. Kinda the same deal as Domino’s buying the last Chevettes in ’87 or so.
The USPS also bought a large order of final 2008-09 Chevy Uplander minivans. I think that kept GM’s van plant in Georgia open a bit longer than planned.
In the rust belt, that would not be an end of life car. A skilled bodyworker could get those dents out of the rear fender and a front could be sourced. A respray later, and it would be a solid little thing. That has to be one of the most cancer-free pintos I’ve seen. In the late 90s, I worked as a union organizer for various unions and went from a campaign in Flint, Michigan to New Orleans. The thing that struck me is that rotten heaps loaded with filler and frilly edges would sell for good money in Michigan, while very solid ’70s cars would be only a few hundred in New Orleans. I thought if I had one of those car carriers, I could load up six cars, drive them up north and sell $800 cars for $5000 in the Detroit area, where people were starting to pay silly money for what I always thought were beaters- Pintos weren’t the thing yet, but Torino and other big wagons, Dusters, and the like were seriously undervalued. Granted, those were the days before ebay which rather levelled the playing field. The same thing is true here in Europe. My beautiful ’79 Volvo is worth about £2000 here in the UK, but in the Netherlands where they are stupidly popular, and there is no tax on cars over 25 years old, I could sell the same car for £5000, even with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
Guys used to do that. Load up rust-free clapped-out cars to sell in the North; and then take rust-buckets with solid mechanicals South.
Money both ways. Unfortunately, rust-prevention; and complexity of electronic systems; and the cost of used cars generally…preclude this today.
In fact, I have done just that several times and made good money at it. The first time I did it I drove a mint, loaded 1985 Delta 88 Royale with FE3. I paid $2500 during the oil price rush in the first Gulf War. I drove it a while and then took to Toronto, where I got $5200 for it the first day I had it in the paper. That was in 1991 and it paid for my trip. I have done it many other times, too, usually ferrying cars to Alberta or Saskatchewan. My friends out there know I know cars and when the are looking for a nice ride for a good price, they call me. The climate in Vancouver is very mild and there is almost no road salt. Since there is nowhere to go, there area loads of good cars around. Especially since there is loads of money around here there are lots of older, low km luxury cars. Last July I took a 2002 Infiniti Q35 which had 50,000 km on it, to Saskatoon an flew back. My friend got a clean, low km car for cheap, I made a few buck and got to dive a nice car across the mountains!
You rang?
Best flame job EVER 🙂
LOL!
Never saw a ‘back to front’ flame job before!
I’ve seen it on lots of Pintos.
I’ve heard that these were independently tested and found to be no worse, or in some cases better, than its competition in terms of safety in its day. I guess it’s just a classic case of mere accusations causing more damage than actual facts.
In terms of likelihood of “blowing up” if rear ended they are about the middle of the pack according to data of the era. A Honda Civic was about twice as likely to catch fire and the B210 sedan with it’s gas tank between the back seat and the trunk was the least likely. So yes the facts were blown out of proportion.
What wasn’t blown out of proportion was the fact that Ford knew exactly what would happen before it did through their testing and they decided not to make it better since it exceeded the gov’t requirements and it would have added to the cost meaning they couldn’t hit their profit margin and $1971 price point targets.
Statistics show that the engineers were about right in risk assessment – the Pinto turned out no more dangerous statistically than any other small car. It was just when hit ONE CERTAIN WAY the gas-tank would be split open and fuel spilled out onto the exhaust.
Other cars had similar risks. Imagine a VW Beetle driving into a lamppost? The tank was over the driver’s legs; and if the trunk area were collapsed it would be in his lap.
And if it split open, there was all those wiring junctions and appliances…a hot light off the speedometer cluster could touch off the gas. Never MIND about that gas-fired heater…what if THAT were running?
But the ambulance-chaser lawyers got twelve ignorami on the jury and a nice judgment against Ford.
The famous Pinto trial took place in Winimac, Indiana in Pulaski County. Although I have not looked it up, I recall reading something some years later that indicated that the car involved did not have a gas cap on it at the time it was hit, and was in generally horrible condition. I also recall some tests done that indicated that at the same speed, lots of other cars would have ruptured their fuel systems as well, including some much larger.
The sidesaddle gas tanks on my deathtrap Chevy trucks haven’t ‘sploded yet either. Of course I don’t detonate the model rocket engines duct-taped to the tanks whenever I choose to T-bone my trucks with my Chevy Citation either!
Where are the fuel tanks on every big truck that’s built? That’s right…behind the cab just outside the frame rails. No further comment necessary.
I thought it was a big advance when pickups no longer had their gas tank in the cab behind the seat.
The early Mustang where the drop-in fuel tank served as the trunk floor also had an issue. The fuel system may not have ruptured more frequently than average, but IF it did, there was no trunk floor sheetmetal to keep the fuel out of the passenger compartment. Similar in effect to the pickup tank behind the seat.
There are companies now offering a bolt in steel bulkhead to go behind the back seat for those Mustangs.
our 77 would sometimes not start … The battery to Nut “Crust” needed to be sanded down then re connected… and the buzzy 4 cyl would start back up. I Hated Shifting in that Position and Im avg Male 5’10”.
it was drive that or nothing in my dads house after i went to college. so i drove it to albany till he steered my to a closer nightspot id enjpy. it was capable, warm,but a test for your driving skills to be sure, getting up hills at 40 mph etc. takes practice.