Tim Wescott wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:


J. Clarke wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:



J. Clarke wrote:

snipity

Ditto for the Pinto, except I think Ford came closer to the mark than
Chevy, particularly in the engine compartment (but the styling sucks,
IMHO).


And then there was that annoying bolt next to the gas tank.


Drive anything into anything else that fast and one of them will burst
into flames.


You've been watching too many action movies. "Burst into flames" is not
the normal outcome of a vehicular collision.

I know. But I still think that both the Pinto and the Chevy side-tank
issues were way overblown.

The "Chevy Side Tank Issues" were shown to be a fabrication of an
unscrupulous journalist who purposely set out to get one to light and
didn't quit until he managed it--google "gm nbc rigged". NBC ended up
paying GM 2 million dollars in damages over that one.

Different animal from the Pinto gas tank where it was proven in court that
Ford knew that there was a problem, that they had evaluated an alternative
design used in another Ford product that has been shown to be safe in 60
mph impacts and rejected that, that it would have cost less than $12 per
car to correct the problem with the design that they chose, and that they
ran a cost analysis and found that it was cheaper to pay off the victims
than to fix the problem.

Further, an NHTSA study showed that at the time 24% of cars on the road wer
Fords but 42% of the collision-ruptured gas tanks occurred in Fords.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)