Yesterday’s Fiesta: The 1970 Ford Pinto
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One of the very first commercial for what was to be the first small Ford in the US.
40 years later we will be getting the all new Fiesta.
Last Updated:
One of the very first commercial for what was to be the first small Ford in the US.
40 years later we will be getting the all new Fiesta.
Had a friend in high school who had an old 70s Pinto. I think from the early 70s – the thing was cool and fun to drive. The dude spent the money to rice up a Pinto, which sounds like a joke, but it was so different it was awesome.
Didn't the fuel tanks in these explode in a rear end collision??
Safety first in the 70's.
Recall wasnt even a word back then.
Please Vince – don't disgrace the Fiesta by comparing it to the Pinto. The Pinto was a piece of shit. It was cheap and it rusted quickly and I won't go into the whole fuel tank "lets cut corners" debacle. My brother had one and its entire option list consisted of an AM radio.
Now I know that there were a lot of problems with the pinto hatchback. The bad publicity was well deserved. My family had a 74 wagon. It was mustard yellow with fake woodgrain and it was ugly as hell and slow as hell. It was even slower if the A/C was on. I hated it. But we had it twelve years, 150,000 miles and drove it cross country twice. It was one of the only small cars that was available with steel beams in the doors which protected my mother from being t-boned at an intersection during the vehicle's last ride. No small Datsun or Toyota or Honda or Chrysler of the same vintage had this safety feature even in the mid 80s when we went to replace it. For us, our Pinto was a great car.
Adjectives like "care free" and "frisky"….not to mention Sept. 11th. I hope you didn't just jinx the poor Fiesta that we haven't even gotten yet! Ford was wise enough to learn their lessons before it was too late. Look at where they are now!
It wasn't an unattractive looking little car in its day, it was just so woefully underdeveloped, both in concept and execution.
"It wasn't an unattractive looking little car in its day, it was just so woefully underdeveloped, both in concept and execution."
That could be said about every small car back in the 70s. Remember the Datsun B210? Ugh! Those rustbucket crap cars were everywhere and were far worse than the Pinto. Corolla was held together by a dozen welds. Crash test… hardly. It wasn't until the 80s that Japanese cars quickly surpassed the domestics in both style and quality.
1) had a good friend with a Pinto wagon – liked it a *lot*
2) never personally knew anyone whose blew up
3) maybe someone could look up sales figures for the Pinto & its competitors? …bottom line!, ya know?
I forgot what a piece of sh*t this car was. It might have been durable, but it was crude and second-rate.
Competition? The Vega, and some British Hillmans sold as Plymouth Crickets. Not exactly halcyon days for small cars in the US, fuel crisis notwithstanding.
Coming Sept 11? A car that explodes? Wow that is very creepy!