Car filled beach in Daytona Beach, Florida

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Car filled beach in Daytona Beach, Florida


Image by State Library and Archives of Florida
Persistent URL: floridamemory.com/items/show/30786

Local call number: RC07719

Title: Car filled beach in Daytona Beach, Florida

Date: ca. 1925

Physical descrip: 1 photoprint – b&w – 8 x 10 in.

Series Title: Reference Collection

Repository: State Library and Archives of Florida
500 S. Bronough St., Tallahassee, FL, 32399-0250 USA, Contact: 850.245.6700, Archives@dos.myflorida.com

Cars I Have Owned: 1971 Ford Pinto 3-Door Hatchback Runabout — Photographed in 1973 at Montgomery Village, Maryland, One of Time Magazine’s 50 Worst Cars of All Time (The Photo is Not Great but It’s One of the Few I Have of the Car)


Image by France1978
I purchased the car in May 1971 for 00. I was initially unsure of the model year, but I found the original purchase papers dated May 25, 1971.

From Time Magazine Online: They shoot horses, don’t they? Well, this is fish in a barrel. Of course the Pinto goes on the Worst list, but not because it was a particularly bad car — not particularly — but because it had a rather volatile nature. The car tended to erupt in flame in rear-end collisions. The Pinto is at the end of one of autodom’s most notorious paper trails, the Ford Pinto memo , which ruthlessly calculates the cost of reinforcing the rear end (1 million) versus the potential payout to victims ( million). Conclusion? Let ‘em burn.

Read more: www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1… #ixzz2O1slKvcv

From the Top 20 Dumbest Cars of All Time posted September 25, 2012 on the AOL Autos website: No. 1 Dumbest Car: Ford Pinto

Fewer cars hurt America's perception of hatchbacks than the Ford Pinto, a car that debuted with a 75 horsepower four-cylinder engine.

Back in the 1970s, Ford Motor Co. needed something to compete against the Japanese compact cars and Volkswagen Beetle that were growing in popularity. Ford's answer was the Pinto, a pudgy two-door hatch with low riding bucket seats. Worse yet, the Pinto spent the entire Me Decade accused of being an exploding death trap. Those are never the words any company wants to be associated with.

Why it’s so dumb: It’s the hubris Ford executives brought to the table. There is a paper trail leading to a memo in which Ford brass weighed the cost benefit analysis of changing the engineering of the car to make it safer versus paying our injury and death claims it knew would come. Worst of all, the Pinto, in part because of its budget pricing, were scooped up by many a college student and was one of the cars that ultimately decreased sales and popularity of the VW Beetle. So, this car was aimed at the least experienced drivers in America, and most prone to be in accidents. And after the truth came out, it soured a lot of those kids and their parents on buying more Fords just as the Asians were rising, and redefining quality in America.

Note From France1978: The car was photographed in Montgomery Village, Maryland (Mills Choice apartment complex in the background). The site is now covered by housing.

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