In five pages corporate and consumer arguments are examined in a discussion of Ford Motor Company's product safety management with regard to the flawed Pinto fuel tank design. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MBpinto.rtf
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hand, the manufacturers could redesign the fuel tank so that upon impact the car would combust, or for a lot less money, they could simply settle out of court with
those who might actually end up in a serious wreck where this design flaw would come into play. Now, several decades later, this question of product safety and corporate negligence
are still being debated. Even today the Ford Pinto case is being studied and researched to determine and apply what was learned to big business and the public today. In
the 1970s the Ford Pinto was a hot car in more than one sense of the word. In a fiery trial and an even hotter investigation, it was found that
Ford knew how to design the car safely but deliberately disregarded the safety of millions of Americans in an effort to save money(Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co, 1981). In fact,
an investigation of the sales figures for that year show that even after paying over one hundred million dollars in punitive damages due to the design flaw in the Pinto,
Ford still managed to turn a very good profit on the sale of the Pinto. In one quarter it appears that Ford earned twice that amount from the sale of
this car alone (Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co, 1981). Mother Jones Magazine, August 1977 issue, blew the lid off of Fords deceit by citing various secret documents that had come
into their possession, and that showed rear-end crash tests had been failed by the Pinto on nearly every occasion. The article used phrases such as "time constraints" and "loss of
profit", which in effect meant that, though Ford knew about the design problems, their anxiety and competitiveness in the marketplace outweighed the concern for public safety. Investigative reporters aside, there