The Ford Pinto is a 2-door Sedan (automobile) / sedan / 2-door sedan delivery / 2-door station wagon / 3-door hatchback from Ford, built from 1970 to 1980, as the oil crises and the first emissions rules rewired the industry. Under the bonnet: 1.6 L Ford Kent engine. Robert Eidschun (1968) drew it.
The background
The Ford Pinto is a subcompact car that was manufactured and marketed by Ford Motor Company in North America from 1970 until 1980. The Pinto was the first subcompact vehicle produced by Ford in North America. The Pinto was marketed in three body styles across its production: a two-door fastback sedan with a trunk, a three-door hatchback, and a two-door station wagon. Mercury offered rebadged versions of the Pinto as the Mercury Bobcat from 1975 until 1980 (1974–1980 in Canada). Over three million Pintos were manufactured over its ten-year production run, outproducing the combined totals of its domestic rivals, the Chevrolet Vega and the AMC Gremlin.
Along with the Pinto, approximately 224,000 Bobcats were manufactured from 1975 until 1980, at Edison Assembly in Edison, New Jersey, St. Thomas Assembly in Southwold, Ontario, and San Jose Assembly in Milpitas, California. In the 1970s, the safety reputation of the Pinto became a point of controversy. The design of the car's fuel tank attracted intense media and government scrutiny after several deadly fires following fuel tank ruptures associated with rear-end collisions. Subsequent analysis of the design's overall safety suggested it was comparable to other 1970s subcompact cars. The safety issues surrounding the Pinto and the subsequent response by Ford have been cited widely as business ethics and tort reform case studies.
The engineering
Power comes from 1.6 L Ford Kent engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 2015 –. It shifts through a 4-speed manual / 3-speed Ford C3 transmission / C3/"Selectshift/Cruise-O-Matic" automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 94.0 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Ford Cortina (captive import); its successor was the Ford Escort / Mercury Lynx; assembly was at Edison, New Jersey. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Chevrolet Impala, the Renault 5, the Suzuki Jimny — show what else the money bought that year. Its Ford stablemates include the Ford 021C and the Ford Escort.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Ford Pinto — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.