Ford Pinto
It's from 1971, before you were born.
- Iconic generation
- 1971 Pinto (the original)
- Origin
- USA — launched September 11, 1970 (for the 1971 model year)
- Championed by
- Lee Iacocca, who set the '2,000 lbs / $2,000' target
- Engine
- 1.6L inline-four (base); 2.0L OHC inline-four optional
- Power
- 75 hp (1.6L); 100 hp (2.0L)
- Price when new
- Just under $2,000 (about $1,919 base)
- Production
- Over 3 million built, 1971–1980
- Infamous detail
- Rear-mounted fuel tank; ~$11/car fix Ford declined — recalled 1978
About
As of 2026, it's 55 years old.
The Ford Pinto is the lovable disaster of the automotive world — the car so eager to please it would occasionally combust to make a point. Lee Iacocca, fresh off the Mustang triumph, wanted a subcompact under 2,000 pounds and under $2,000 to fight the Japanese imports, and he wanted it yesterday. Ford rushed it from blank sheet to showroom in just 25 months, a record that turned out to be foreshadowing.
On paper, it worked. The Pinto was cheap, sold like crazy, and put millions of Americans into their first new car. As basic transportation it was perfectly fine — a tidy little economy hatchback doing an honest job for an honest price.
There was, however, the small matter of the fuel tank. Mounted right behind the rear bumper with little protection, it could rupture in a rear-end collision and turn a fender-bender into a fireball. The car earned a grim reputation it has never fully shaken — and decades of affectionate gallows humor about Pintos and matches.
What sealed the legend was the paperwork. A leaked internal Ford analysis weighed the roughly $11-per-car cost of a fix against the projected cost of deaths and injuries — and the math came out the wrong way around. A 1977 Mother Jones exposé and the 1978 Grimshaw verdict made the 'Pinto memo' a permanent business-ethics cautionary tale, and Ford recalled 1.5 million cars that year.
And yet we still love it. The Pinto is a folk hero of bad ideas — proof that you can build 3 million of something, get one detail catastrophically wrong, and somehow become more memorable than half the cars that got everything right. Affectionately combustible, eternally meme-able, gone but never forgotten.
Ford Pinto through the years
Crash program
Designed in a record 25 months to hit Iacocca's sub-$2,000 price and beat the imports.
Pinto arrives
The combustible compact hits showrooms and sells by the hundreds of thousands.
The memo leaks
Mother Jones publishes Ford's cost-benefit math on the fuel tank — and the legend ignites.
Grimshaw verdict
A landmark lawsuit and a 1.5-million-car recall make the Pinto a business-ethics parable.
Final flame-out
Production ends after 3+ million cars — but the memes burn eternal.
