When lives are cheaper than financial losses: Ford Pinto’s chilling lesson

“It’s important that you and your family feel safe in your car,” reads the advertising blurb for a certain car.

“The Ford Kuga incorporates some of the most advanced safety features available,” it continues. “Not only to help protect you. But to help prevent the need for protection in the first place.”

Those words must surely be echoing in the heads of Ford executives, as reports of spontaneously combusting Kugas continue to come in daily.

“When the data indicate a safety recall is needed, we move quickly on behalf of our customers,” Ford stated late last year.

What constitutes “quickly”, and how much data is necessary for a tipping point to be reached? Ford’s recall of its vehicles this week, it has emerged, was the result of an ultimatum from the National Consumer Commission.

Meanwhile, a Times investigation found that insurance companies had been informing Ford of issues related to the Kuga since 2014. It took until December 2016 – again after being summoned by the National Consumer Commission – for Ford to warn Kuga owners about the potential fault. That was also two months after the US recall of almost 300,000 similar vehicles – the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariners – due to fuel leaks. (Ford has said that this recall is unrelated to the Kuga situation.)

The public has yet to hear a definitive cause of the Kuga combustions. The current line is that an ineffectual cooling system on the affected models means that cars overheat in the South African sun, causing cylinder heads to crack and oil to leak.

Motoring historian Dr Hans Heese expressed scepticism to Daily Maverick about the overheating theory: “Prototypes are normally tested in all possible conditions around the globe,” he points out.

Complicating the situation is the fact that the fiery death in a Kuga of Reshall Jimmy in 2015 was determined by two forensic reports to be the result of an electrical fault.

Another aspect is that only one specific model is affected: the 2012-2014 EcoBoost 1.6 derivatives.

“None of the revised Kugas, launched in 2014, have self-immolated, nor any of the 2012-2014 cars powered by engines other than the 1.6 turbocharged petrol,” writes motoring journalist Lance Branquinho. “If Ford knew of this issue, its inaction is perverse corporate negligence. Or worse: wilful ignorance.”

A look at Ford’s past is a reminder of the risks car manufacturers have taken with passenger safety in the past. Lee Iacocca, a former president of Ford, used to say: “Safety doesn’t sell”. Company founder Henry Ford lobbied passionately against the 1966 Safety Act in the USA, legislating motor industry safety.

One of the most notorious episodes in Ford’s history occurred in the 1970s, involving a model called the Ford Pinto; 27 people were killed as a result of fuel explosions when Pintos were rear-ended. Ford had to hastily drop the unfortunate advertising slogan for the car, which was: “Pinto leaves you with that warm feeling”.

A Pulitzer prize-winning Mother Jones investigation found in 1977 that Ford engineers knew that the Pinto’s petrol tanks would rupture extremely easily if the cars were rear-ended at a specific angle, and continued to manufacture them anyway because assembly-line machinery had already been produced. This was despite the fact that Ford owned the patent for a safer form of fuel tank positioning.

Mother Jones wrote at the time: “Internal company documents in our possession show that Ford has crash-tested the Pinto at a top-secret site more than 40 times and that every test made at over 25 mph without special structural alteration of the car has resulted in a ruptured fuel tank.”

The reason why Ford opted to go ahead with producing a car which the company knew might explode was as a result of a particularly chilling calculation.

A leaked company memorandum titled Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires was summarised by Mother Jones as follows: “The memo argues that there is no financial benefit in complying with proposed safety standards that would admittedly result in fewer auto fires, fewer burn deaths and fewer burn injuries”.

Reinforcing the rear of Pintos in a way that would prevent fuel tank explosions on impact was judged to cost around $121-million, while the potential payout to victims was calculated at $50-million. This was arrived at by estimating that not changing the car’s design could result in 180 deaths, 180 burn victims and 2,100 burned vehicles. $200,000 was the value put on each fatality – a figure set in 1972 by America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Ford’s calculation, then, was that it would be cheaper to pay compensation than to fit the cars with the necessary safety features.

Popular Mechanics once termed the Pinto debacle “possibly the best example of what happens when poor engineering meets corporate negligence”.

There is as yet no evidence to suggest that anything as nefarious may be afoot with Ford’s inaction on the Kuga. It may be worth noting, however, that Ford’s net earnings fell 56% in 2015. One contributing factor was a $500-million bill for the recall of 850,000 vehicles as a result of faulty airbags. Recalls spell bad financial news for car companies.

“Ford slipped up on the Kuga, finish and klaar,” Heese says. “After the very first incident they should immediately have had a serious investigation.” DM

Photo: A burning Ford Pinto after a rear-end collision.

Read more:

• Pinto Madness, on Mother Jones