Ford Pinto Case

August of 1970 marked the explosively criticized release of the mass-produced Ford Pinto. An American car of its time, the Pinto's engineered design paralleled its competitors with compact design and fuel efficiency. The rushed production of this model was in response to the viable Volkswagen Beetle, designed in Germany, which quickly caught the attention of consumers in the small-car market. Do to the unusual quick release of the Ford Pinto, many standard safety designs were overlooked, as time would tell, as countless accounts of personal injury and deaths were reported. Most notorious, the Pinto was known, even by the Ford Motor Company, for having a faulty fuel tank design that caused the tank to be ruptured during very low speed impacts. The flawed Ford Pinto exemplified an ethical dilemma which resulted in an outcry from consumers for Ford to tank responsibility for its defective design that took the lives of nearly 500 people.

Who's responsible?

The Ford Motor Company, mostly impacted by the unfortunate flawed Ford Pinto, had a lot of explaining to do. 50 lawsuits were brought against the company in the seven years following the release of the Pinto (Ladenson, 1995). As an example of a Cost-Benefit analysis, the company purposely delivered a known defective model even after numerous failed tests. Previous testing of the Ford Pinto concluded, in all but three tests, that rear impacts at 25 mph and faster would result in puncturing of the fuel tank from the rear bumper. Earlier design concepts included safer, more reliable alternatives which were cost effective and lightweight. However, Ford Motor Company, with hopes of competing with the VW Beetle, elected to mass produce the Pinto anyway. More troubling information was detailed by a Ford engineer, commenting on the "product objectives" of Ford Motor Company regarding the Pinto design. He went off record to state that "this company is run by salesman, not engineers; so the priority is styling, not safety" (Engineer, 2006). His remarks, anonymously, suggested that safety was not a "popular subject" within the company. The company's perspective about safety was evidently just as flawed as the constructive design of its blemished product. Its cost-benefit analysis was an apparent process to get rich at the expense of human life.

Cost-Benefit analysis: Benefit and harm.

Several articles, following the aftermath of a botched production by Ford Motor Company, deemed the Ford Pinto as unsafe, clearly pointing out the flawed gas tank. Time Magazine's article of "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time," labeled the Pinto as a fiery death trap that only benefitted the makers; "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