SYSK Live: Back When Ford Pintos Were Flaming Deathtraps

For this special live benefit episode recorded in Atlanta, Josh and Chuck go back to the 70s and look at the decidedly ungroovy course of events that led to Ford recalling its Pinto after people started burning up in them.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. We've already made our big tour announcement for
the year, but this is a little different because we
have added a show because Denver sold out, so we
have added a second show in Denver. Nice. Yeah, we're
going to be there on Wednesday. Then we added a
show the day before the same place, Gothic Theater, Englewood, Colorado.
And you can go to s y s K live

(00:21):
dot com to get info and tickets for that show
and all the rest of our shows to Chuck. That's right, Boston,
April fourth, d C April five. St. Louis, May and Cleveland, Ohio.
Come out and see us. Welcome to Stuff you Should
Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey what, Actually,

(00:46):
I shouldn't say that yet, Chuck, because we're going to
start the podcast later. This is like a pre thing,
that's right, a pre welcome to this episode, a very
special episode of Stuff you should Know. That's right because
well it's live, and not only that, where are we live.
We are live in our beloved town of Atlanta's right, Hotlanta.

(01:08):
Well no you don't. No one calls it that everybody,
but we we did this special show at the Buckhead
Theater sold it out by the way, UM, and it
was a it was a benefit show. Yeah, it was
pretty great. We toured this topic in quite a few
cities last year. We had a lot of fun, and
we decided, actually, is your idea, give you full credit. Hey,
let's make this Atlanta local show a benefit show and

(01:31):
give all of the dough to uh charities of our choice.
So mine, Chuck was the National Down Syndrome Society UM,
which is this great organization who advocate for people with
Down syndrome obviously UM, but one of the things that
the National Down Syndrome Society is dedicated to, especially right now,
they have something called law Syndrome uh checkout law syndrome

(01:55):
dot org. And basically they're trying to get the laws
changed that make people with Down syndrome choose between pursuing
like a career and actually being able to support themselves
or uh not in staying at home and living with
their parents but still getting access to the really great
government Medicaid healthcare that they need. So UM, the n

(02:17):
d s S is saying they shouldn't have to choose,
that we should want both of them, uh want them
to have both of them. So that's that's their push
right now. Uh, and you can go to n d
s S dot org and they have all sorts of
ways for you to donate and you can do that
and feel great about yourself. It's great. And they actually
sent people from the society to the show and we
met them and they were just they were wonderful and

(02:39):
what it was a great place to uh to pick
what a great way to donate your money people. Yeah,
shout out to Colleen and Cale for coming to the show,
Thank you very much. And for my charity, I picked
the Lifeline Animal Project right here in Atlanta. They are
a sort of local grassroots see animal rescue organization. Uh.
They have a few locations in Atlanta there to terrific.

(03:00):
They have low costs spaying neuter programs. Obviously you can uh,
you can adopt, you can volunteer. Um. They're they're really
just great and they do it all um not for
fame or glory or money, but because Atlanta has a serious,
serious problem with stray pets. And they're just the nicest people.
So it's great that you guys are supporting them, and

(03:22):
it's uh, it's very worthy cause they are who Emily
and I are charitable with every year on our own anyway,
and it was great to efficiently partner with them, uh
and be able to combine with our regular donating and
write them a big old fat check thanks to Stuff
you Should Know listeners. Yeah, so, so here's the thing.
We donated of our proceeds from that show, and we

(03:44):
twisted every arm involved. Um, how stuff works, got T
shirts made up. Legendary super fan and friend Aaron Cooper
donated his time to design the T shirts. Uh. The
people who made the T shirts donated them for free.
All the proceeds from the T shirts went to National
Down Syndrome Society and Lifeline Animal Rescue. So what we're

(04:05):
trying to say now is we're releasing this episode and
we are hoping that you are beloved Stuff you Should
Know listeners, Well, take the time to go make a
donation yourself in exchange for this free live episode that
we're bringing you. That's right, And if you want to
just donate regular style, you can go to Lifeline Animal
dot org. That would be great, but they made it

(04:26):
super easy and set up a text donation campaign, so
all you have to do is text Lifeline whatever amount
of money. So text Lifeline dollar sign five to five
zero one five, and you have just donated five bucks
or however much money you want to donate. It's really
really easy, right, And you can go to the n

(04:48):
d S S dot org website and you can donate there.
Um and they make it pretty easy on you. I
believe both donations are donations to both organizations are text deductible.
It's got that bonus two. That's right. So one more
time for Lifeline, you can text to the number five,
text the words Lifeline dollar sign and whatever number you

(05:10):
want to donate, and then that's n D S S
dot org and away with the show. Hey, welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Jerry's not here, but we are with all these beautiful
people live at the Buckhead Theater in our own Atlanta

(05:31):
g A good wow. Hey yeah they are not too shabby. Everybody. Yeah,

(05:55):
So let's start. Man, I feel great. So I feel great. Since, uh,
since this is a live podcast and it's actually set
a little further back in time, we thought we would
all get into the way back machine. So for those
of you who have seen us lie before, you know,

(06:16):
The Way Back Machine is made up. It's not a
real thing, you but it does take a twinkle in
your eye and a heartful of magic to get into
the way Back Machine. So I hope all of you
have that going on right now. That was my best
Sarah Silverman impression. It's pretty good. Thanks. So we're all

(06:36):
on the way Back Machine, okay, and we're going back
to Detroit, Michigan, back to like the mid sixties or
something like that. We'll say, yeah, back when people still
wanted to go to Detroit. I'm purpose sorry, ma'am. Yeah,
I told you. And we're gonna fly in does and

(06:58):
we're very small and invisible by the way, So we're
gonna fly in over the shoulder of an up and
coming auto executive with a beautiful head of hair named
Lee I A Coca and Lee Lee. At the time,
he was what you might call a young turk, up
and coming, like ready to take on the world. Great

(07:20):
guy um and he had a lot of cred around
the company that he worked at called Ford Motor Company's
tried his pre Chrysler right, and he had a lot
of cred because he had designed the Mustang right. It
was known as Lee's car even. Yeah. I mean if
you if you are the guy in the lead of
the Ford Mustang project, then you've kind of bought your

(07:42):
ticket in the car industry. If you have a great car,
do you make the car that Vanilla Ice will eventually love,
You've done something quite right with your life, right. Did
he have a Mustang rolling in my five point oh
with the rag top down? That's a Mustang, buddy, is
it sure? I think it's even in the video. I've

(08:04):
never been more ashamed to not know the lyrics of
a song. Yeah, because it's f and Vanilla Ice. So
I don't feel like I should have known it. I
just feel like a stooge. Oh no, it's fine. Now
you've got a Wan shirt on, you probably should know
those lyrics. But I know I know that lyric. Yeah,

(08:26):
I didn't know. It's my understanding, right everybody. Yeah, I
thought it was a Volkswagen Beetle. No. No, but that
does come up starting now because Lee I Coca was
one of the few people in Detroit at the time
who realized that the American auto industry's lunch was being
eaten in the subcompact market, mainly because no American car

(08:47):
company was making subcompacts at the time. Right, we liked
our cars very large, like land yachts. Yeah, okay, so
Li said, the Germans are eating our lunch with their
little Volkswagen Beetle Hitler's car. Look it up, I had
two Volkswagen Beetles. Those were two Hitler's cars. You supported

(09:09):
Hitler in a way. My mom is over there, she
bought that car. She's going like uh. And then the
Toyota Corolla was also killing people, right, killing Detroit, I
should say, And so Lee said, we need to get

(09:32):
a car to market. But I'm not the president. There's
a man who is president. And what is his name, Chuck?
I can't even remember, honestly, Oh no, I do remember.
His name is Bunky Knudsen. If you're the president of
car company and your name is Bunky Knudson, you gotta
know you have a target on your back. Right, nobody's

(09:52):
gonna let that stand for very long, especially not Lee.
I a coca. Yeah. The only thing Bunky Ninson and
that year would have been president of is the the
super secret, super secret Treehouse Playboy magazine club led by
Bunkie News, right or the local Union of the Guys
who sell those like monkeys that play the symbols on
the street, you know, the wind up ones. Alright. So

(10:15):
regardless of that, Bunky Knutson was in charge and Leah
Coca had his eight had sights set on that job.
And so they settle things in the traditional way in
the car industry at the time, which was arm wrestling. Serious.
So Leaa Coca had this thing where um, and we

(10:35):
think this is probably how he rose to power. He
could rip the sleeve clean off of his shirt right
at the shoulder, right before an arm wrestling match, right.
It's very intimidating, and he always kept his arms oiled.
Every morning he would oil him up and very gingerly
put the shirt on over him so the oil wouldn't
show too So it really had like a pronounced effect

(10:56):
when he tore his shirtslee of off and went like that.
So when he did this, the Bunky nuts in and
Bunky saw that oil bicep. He knew his time running
for a company had grown short. That's right, funky news,
and knew what time it was that was totally made up.
You all realized the stunt silence threw me off a

(11:17):
little bit. It was back to the Treehouse for Bunky.
So Leah Coca found himself in charge of Forward, and
he said, we gotta get a subcompact going fast, dudes.
So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get a
project going. I'm even gonna give it a code name,
which is really weird and sort of sman mark, kind
of a Newts and move. But he named it Project Phoenix,

(11:39):
which is very cute and a little ironic once you
know what this is about. And he said, I want
a car I want on the market, and what twenty
four months? Yeah, and normally it took like forty three
months dating car from concept to production. I cocy said, no,
twenty four so super fast, and it can't weigh more
than two thousand sounds and it can't cost a customer

(12:01):
more than two thousand dollars. And he totally should have
called it Project two thousand, so that would have been
a super cool name. In the early nineteen seventies, that
car would go on to be known as the Ford Pinto.
For those of you who aren't going, like a couple
of collaps, a couple of booze, a couple of groans,

(12:22):
and a lot of like we're gonna fill the people
in on this, Okay. Yeah, So the deal with the
Ford Pinto was if you don't know, and you did
grow up in the seventies, um, it had a problem.
We don't know a lot about cars, but we know
that the Ford Pinto had a problem. If you would

(12:44):
hit the Ford Pinto from the rear going very very slow,
sometimes it would burst into a fiery ball. And that
is not a good thing for a car to do.
It's asleep when you're still in the car. Has anyone

(13:04):
seen the movie Top Secret? Remember that one? There's there's
a scene where Valkimer I think, is on a motorcycle.
He's being chased by Germans, and um, he somehow out
maneuvers them and they swerve off the road and slam
on their brakes and almost come to a complete stop
right before hitting hitting a Pinto in the rear, but

(13:27):
don't quite make it. It makes that crystal thing sound
and then boom they just blow up into flames. Right
And this is in the eighties. This was like at
least ten years after the Pinto had this reputation. That's
not that far from the truth, actually, we found from
doing this research, so there's actually a lot of choice

(13:47):
quotes that we found a lot of people love taking
pot shots at the Pinto. Some have written some pretty
great stuff. Um, you want to take the first one? Yeah.
The first one was from Popular Mechanics magazine and they said,
Argue dobably, the most dangerous fuel tank of all time
was a rear mounted vessel installed on the seventy one
through seventies Ford Pinto. It's possibly the best example of

(14:11):
what happens when poor engineering meets corporate negligence. Good quote,
I got one. There was this guy named Dr Leslie Ball.
He was the chief safety officer for NASA's manned Space program.
So this guy new safety. Right. Um, he said that

(14:31):
the release to production of the Pinto was the most
reprehensible decision in the history of American engineering. So there's
a couple of things I wanted to try. A couple
of things to note in this quote. One he said
was the most reprehensible decision, not one of the and
he also qualifies it with American engineering, not automotive engineering.

(14:54):
He's including like, um, easy bake ovens and other stuff
that have killed like millions people. You know, he's including
everything ever built basically easy, big governance or death traps too.
So the Pinto, it was kind of an issue for Ford.
Is we're going to see But there's this one Tippitt

(15:14):
we ran acrost that we just love. There was a
radio spot for the Pinto in the seventies and Ford
had to get there um their agency to get rid
of it because it had the line the Pinto leaves
you with that warm feeling for real, this is this

(15:36):
is a fun one of research, alright. So again I
want to reiterate, we don't know anything about the design
of cars. You know how to drive cars, and that's
about where it ends. But we do know this. The
original design of the Pinto had a gas tank that
started six inches from the rear bumper. I know that's

(15:58):
not a good idea. If I was in Detroit, I
would have said, well, that's weird, and why would you
want to do that, because you know, accidents happen. No
one thought about it. No. That's made even worse by
the fact that a car critic would later call that
bumper a little more than ornamentation, right, like cars supposed

(16:20):
to have a bumper, just put that thing that looks
like a bumper on it. Basically there was a later
improved version of the bumper on the Pinto that could
with stand a five impact. That was the improved version.
And again, this is all happening six inches away from
the gas tank. That's that's just one side of the

(16:41):
fuel tank. There's a whole other side, and it had
like its own issues. Basically, Yeah, there's there's something on
a car called a differential. Uh. The mechanics say, we
don't know what that is, but um, I did some
research and here's what I'm gonna call it. It's the
magic box that makes the car go room. It's pretty accurate.

(17:05):
What's what's so funny is like we pride ourselves like
chasing down every tidbit of information when it comes to cars.
Were just like out no idea. Who would want to
hear a live podcast about a car. So this magic
box on the Ford Pinto had four protruding bolts facing
the gas tank that uh see you're getting it now

(17:31):
that uh in court later on, and this would end
up in court that you see where this is going.
Lawyers would call them can openers, and we're just gonna
call them for this show, flaming death bolts. I wish
we had a sound effect or like a jingle like
Flaming Death Bolts, And we should totally trademark Flaming Death Bolts,

(17:51):
I think so too, or at least that's a band name.
I think we should at least call it out as
that a right do you hear that the Flamings Faults
behind us? That came out uh on the wrong night? So,
like I said, there was there's a lot of good
quotes out there, but probably the best of them, the
best came from this journalist named Mark Dowie who figures

(18:14):
big time into the story, and he probably got across
the problem with the Pinto better than anybody. And if
I may, okay, Mark Daway said, if you ran into
a Pinto you were following it over thirty miles, the
rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion
right up to the back seat, and the tube bleeding
to the gas tank cap would be ripped away from

(18:36):
the tank itself and gas would immediately begin squashing onto
the road around the car. Right the buckle. Gas tank
would be jammed up against the differential housing, which contained
four sharp protruding bolts, likely to gash holes in the
tank and spill still more gas. Now, all you need
is a spark from a cigarette. And this is me

(18:56):
interjecting here. This is the seventies. So every single person
in every single car was smoking every single second of
every moment they were driving. There four lit cigarettes in
every car at all times, with windows up. Barring that
you could also get it from the ignition or scraping metal,
and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If you

(19:17):
gave that pin to a really good whack, say at
forty miles per hour, chances are excellent that it's doors
with jam and you would have to stand by and
watch its trap passengers burned to death. You're let's not
me saying this your additional what do you call that?

(19:41):
Pantomiming acting? Uh, it's it's in the pantomime trade fantastic
reading rainbow with Josh. Give LaVar Burton a run for
his money, all right, So there was one thirty mile
per hour crap dust with the pinto that found that

(20:02):
all thirteen gallons, all thirteen gallons uh spilled out in
less than sixty seconds. So we all drive here in
Atlanta and you all pump gas. You know how fast
when you're pumping gas it's coming out and you're like,
oh my god, that's so fast coming out. It's so
fast you can't pump or take a gas in sixty seconds.

(20:24):
So the Pinto is spilling gas faster than you can
pump gas. Think about that next time you go to
the gas station. Yeah, I think, thank God, I'm not
driving in early seventies Pinto. So the weird thing is this,
despite the Pinto's reputation, whether it's from top secret, you

(20:45):
learned about it from your older brother, who knows where
you heard it from, but a lot most people, I
would even say, know of the Pinto is a flaming
death trap. It turns out in retrospect, the Pinto was
really not much worse than any other car and it's
class at the time, which is not to say that
the Pinto wasn't a flaming death trap, but instead all

(21:06):
cars were flaming death traps. At the time. The idea
of being safe if you got into a crash was
totally lost on Detroit at a time. It wasn't a thing.
So we wondered, okay, well, how did the Pinto actually
get this reputation? And to answer that question, we have
to go to the Great Periodical Room in the sky,

(21:27):
and we have to go back to the ninth we
all have to die. No, No, that's the great part
about it. You can go there alive. Usually when you
say the great thing in the sky, that means you're
totally dead. It's just in the sky. Okay, alright, Great,
we're going to the Great Periodical in the sky and
we're all living. All right, it's great. We're gonna go

(21:49):
back to the nineteen seventy seven section and we're going
to find the nineteen seventies seven year for Mother Jones Magazine.
Has everyone ever heard of? Mother Jones Magazine is still
around today. One might characterize it as slightly left at
center maybe, and it was very much the same back
of the day. And in this in this September October

(22:12):
ninety seven issue of Mother Jones Magazine, there was an
article by Mark Dowie. That's right, it's called Pinto Madness.
You can still read this article today. It was one
of the main sources we used. It's a great deep
dive if you want to read some more stuff about
the Pinto but um. Mark Dowie was the quote you
read earlier, and he was a journalist there at the time,
and uh, this is this is one reason you know.

(22:34):
This is also the seventies when they released this article
in a print magazine, they had a press conference about it,
which is adorable when you think about it, especially through
today's lens. So they even traveled. They went to Washington,
d C. From San Francisco, held a big press conference
there on Capitol Hill about a magazine article, and they

(22:56):
invited Ralph Nader to attend, which, yeah, uh, if you
don't know who Ralph Nader is, he is a great American.
He uh it was a consumer crusader who cared really
about one thing in life, and that is making sure
that corporations didn't screw you over and they kept you safe.

(23:17):
And he it's not like he got rich doing it.
Ralph Nader was a great, great dude, right. He like
lived like a hermit to show that it wasn't being
influenced by one side or the other. He had like
a mattress on the floor of like a studio apartment.
I think he had a hot plate that he lived with. Ironically,
it's very dangerous I think about it. It was like

(23:39):
probably one of the safer hot places. But yeah, I
bet it was the best hot plate on the market,
you think so, but he bought it with his own money,
he did so any Ralph Nader was there, They got
everyone together and they had this big press conference in Washington,
d C. And uh Dowie starts to poke around a
little bit and do a little more research for this article,

(23:59):
and uh say, you know, I need to go to
these need to go to d O T and need
to go what was the other one called the an
h T S A once that stand for nationale man
the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Correct some mouthful because
a lot of common words, but when you put them
together like that, it's tough. Uh So he went and

(24:22):
started doing some investigating and he found out that Ford
had been carrying out well they've been carrying out crash
test in secret. And when you're carrying out crash tests
in secret, that's probably not a good thing, right. It
means that you didn't get the results you were hoping for,
so you you suppressed the results you had. All the

(24:43):
scientists murdered Lee, I coke its totally. Did He's like
you see that He'd probably like it was like go
to sleep forever. But that was just to get the
ball rolling, he had goons kill the rest of uh
and you then you filed the crash tests with the
d O T that was the durable thing. So dawis

(25:05):
sitting there going through all these file cabinets, and you know,
there's all these bureaucrats going like, oh God, why does
he keep saying, Eureka, here's the guy in there with
a spy camera. And he figured out very very quickly
that Ford was well aware of the notion that it's
Pinto's were flaming death traps. Right, And from those forty

(25:27):
crash tests, he found that eleven of them, and this
is really important, eleven of those crash tests had been
carried out before the Pinto, the first one, had ever
rolled off of the production line. Right. He found in
these crash tests that every single one of those forty
crash tests, if it was a Pinto, that had not

(25:48):
been altered, meaning it was the same one that you
would buy it like the dealership, they lost gas and
an impact of twenty miles an hour over Not very good, right,
not good at all. So three of these cars passed
the test, and all three of them had been um
had been tweaked, for safety, like, these aren't the ones
that you would end up buying. They changed three of

(26:09):
them and they all three passed. Yet they still didn't
use it. And here are the three things they did.
They one was a plastic baffle, a little square plastic
that costs one dollar and it weighed one pound and
it went between the flaming death bolts and the gas
sank solve the problem. Did not use it because remember

(26:29):
two thousand pounds two thousand dollars, which I don't know
what that is today. It's a two thousand pounds and
twelve thousand dollars the pounds and change. Okay, gravity has
read relatively the same. The other thing they did, and
this ostensibly was a little heavier, they put a metal
plate to reinforce that ornamental bumper. In other words, they

(26:53):
gave it a bumper and that worked. And then they
finally the final thing they did was they I think
they line that was the inside of the outside of
the gas tank, the inside of the gas to the
inside of the gas sank with a rubber bladder and
that worked. Uh, but no one likes saying the word
bladder head forward. It's too gross. It works, but it's crody,
So we're getting out. The point is they had three

(27:15):
solutions before the ford was being rolled off the line, uh,
and they chose to ignore all three of them, right,
big point here right um. And in addition to this
two thousand pounds two thousand dollar limitation that I Coca imposed,
that radically shortened timeline also created a climate where really
really dangerous engineering decisions were being made. Right. Normally, when

(27:38):
you make a car, you sketch it out, um, somebody
makes a model of it, some dude like works it
in clay, You run it into like a couple of
walls or something like if you figure out how many
like light like a cigarette lighters are going to go
into it. There's a lot of thought put into it.
And then once all this stuff is pre production stuff,

(28:01):
uh is done and you know what the car is
gonna look like, then you begin this process called tooling.
And tooling is where you make the machines that are
going to make the car that you're manufacturing. Right with
the Pinto, they didn't do that. They started designing the
car and at about the same time they started making

(28:21):
the machines that we're going to make that car. Before
they even knew ultimately what the final design was going
to be. So by the time they figured out that
they had a really dangerous fuel tank on their hands,
it was too late. The tooling was underway, two million
dollars worth of machines have been made, and Ford said, yeah,

(28:45):
so when they discovered this, um, we have a couple
of quotes here from actual engineers that worked there at
the time, and they said, did anyone go to Lee
I a coca and say, hey, we have a problem
on our hands with his gas tank? And this one
engineer from the Mother Jones article said hell no. But
if it was like so, we didn't say it like that,

(29:07):
he went like, hell no. Right in my mind he went,
hell no, no, uh, that person would have been fired.
Safety wasn't a popular subject around for it in those days,
and with Lee it was taboo or taboo like if
you're a normal person, if you talk normally, mh to too, taboo, tattoo, taboo. Alright, deletrious,

(29:40):
that's a deep cut. Yeah, it was about twenty people
in here they got that one. That's all right, all right?
So I had Cook had a saying around for it
at the time, which was safety doesn't sell Uh. And
here's another quote from another engineer. Safety is in the
issue trunk spaces. You have no idea how that the
competition is over trunk space. Do you realize that if

(30:03):
we put a safer gas tank in the Pinto, you
can only get one set of golf clubs in the
trunk And that's a real quote. Yeah. And here's something
that you can do when you get home. You can
go and look up Ford Pinto ad and search Google
images or being images is out a thing being Yahoo, Yeah,
doesn't have to be Google. Yeah, go to Netscape and

(30:26):
uh or if you're a paranoid type duck duck go
That even flew over my head. Uh, it's like they
don't like track or use cookies or anything like that.
Oh yeah, so you're creep, I guess. I guess are
you stockpile weapons or something? Gotcha? So anyway, you can
look up Ford Pinto ads and they're all kinds of

(30:48):
great ads from the old days. And there's one where
there's this, uh, well, there's this couple that um, I
guess is unpacking for like a camping trip from their Pinto.
But it doesn't look like anywhere you would want to go. Camping.
It's just kind of like a field for there's like
a ditch. It's kind of weird looking. And it says
this in the text, just split down the runabout's rear seat.
The Runabout was one of the Pinto models. Open up

(31:11):
the big back door, which we call a hatchback these days,
and the big back room makes packing easy back in
your golf clubs, those groceries and those big pieces of
luggage pack it all in. You make it sound really dirty.
There's big room in your little Pinto. I'm the sick oh,

(31:36):
because I'm using duck duck up. It's the sexiest ad
of the seventies, as read by me. I like old
ads in old magazines because like you can smell them afterward,
you know what I'm saying, Like if you go into
Google images, the ads there, but not the smell. But
you know what an old magazine smells like fantastic smell.

(31:58):
You mean, like musty. What magazines are you reading? Just
any old magazine I pick up, just like alright, Jerry
gout that part, shre No, I'm not doing my shot yet,

(32:18):
and everybody calmed down. My niece left to go to bed.
So are there any other kids here. All right, you
have a very deep voice, young boy. Right here. I'm
seven beer me screw. So everybody, I think we can

(32:42):
all agree this is going pretty well. You're not gonna
like this. That means that we need to put an
ad break in here. Calm down, we'll be right back
right after these messages. Alright, Chuck, we're over here listening

(33:04):
and we're doing great. Frankly, this is going really well.
I agreed. So before we go to add break, everyone,
we just want to say, uh, here's a quick reminder.
Go to nd s S dot org to donate to
the National Down Cynder Society, And Chuck, what's the number
for Lifeline. You can text to the number of five
zero one, text the word Lifeline, dollar sign and whatever

(33:27):
amount you want to give. All right, and now we'll
we're from our sponsor. M hm, hey everybody, we're back. Yeah,

(33:57):
magical works. Yeah, thank you, sir. I am wearing me Andy's.
Oh you know what we should say this? That's a
freebee man. Well we'll cut this part out too, but uh,
I have to share this. We got. This is a
legit tangent like you know, like all of them, the
heavily scripted and rehearse tangents. You've heard him that. We

(34:20):
got an email yesterday. You saw it. I did where
a woman This is so weird. A woman wanted to
send a new pair of me Andy's to us for
us to autograph so she could frame the underwear for
her husband's Christmas gifts. Now that is a deep cut.

(34:44):
That's a true fan. At least she wasn't like, and
you wear them first, Yeah, each of you pass it
off to the other one, then mail them back to me.
Both of those are like, oh yeah, send him in
totally do that. I sent smell like an old magazine,
you know. Right when she got that in the mail? Ah, chuck,

(35:11):
uh chuck, I said, I didn't what guys, what why
would you do that? No one else saw that. I
wish you probably edited this part out to jaire this
guy right here. So I send that email to our
head of sales though, and he was so delighted. He's like, oh,

(35:34):
I can't wait to send this to me Andy's. They're
you're autographing underwear. They're not gonna believe it. That's that's
like David Lee Roth level, except we're autographing me Andy's
for a fan, some dude, it's not David Lee Roth right,
all right, everybody, we're back. I'm kind of thinking, sure

(35:58):
you do it again, though, because you just said that, Hey, everybody,
we're back. I think I just stepped on you. And
stop laughing, everybody, we need to clean I said, stop laughing. Hey, everybody,
we're back. Thanks for hanging there on. Thank you. That

(36:19):
was a really long appe. We know where we were. Now, Well,
I got it, I got it right, I got creepy
right before I know that, I know, all right, I
got you. Hey, everybody, we're back. Everyone's gonna be like,

(36:40):
what the hell happened in Atlanta? That's good enough. We're
leaving that in so by now, everybody, you may be saying, Chuck, Josh, wtf,
how how could this possibly be going on? How could
Ford be doing this kind of stuff. We're gonna tell
you w TF. It turns out that back in the sixties,

(37:03):
the American auto industry was like the last great unregulated
industry in the entire country. And the reason why was
because most Americans considered the auto industry the backbone of
the American economy. Right, so everyone said we should probably
just let the auto industry decide what's best for it

(37:24):
and us it's consumers because we don't want to mess
with them. Yeah. Big corporations love to look out for
everyday Americans, all right, But at the time there was
a fatality rate a k A death rate on the
America's highways, reaching fifty thousand people a year. We did

(37:44):
the math. That's a lot. That is a lot. Ralph
Nader had a book called Unsafe at Any Speed That
was a big hit. Uh. He also had one called
hot Plates Unsafe at Any Temperature. So so quite as well.
Has anyone actually read Unsafe in Any Speed? Don't feel bad,
We haven't either, Okay, good? So he released his book

(38:07):
in nine and it was basically like a chapter by
chapter really wonky detailed description of how your car was
ready and willing to murder you, right, not kill you,
murder you. They were like chapters on like the steering
column it's going to impale you, or that dashboard it

(38:29):
ain't padded and your head's gonna open up like a
ripe candle op when it comes in contact with it, right, yeah.
And the reason that this would happen for both instances
because there's no such thing as seatbelts right. So he
goes to the it was your right. And that's how
you knew, like a really dedicated mom in the in

(38:50):
the sixties because she was missing an arm. That's like
her kid was all messed up at a DNA on
his head or whatever because it didn't quite work, because
her arm came clean off when they both went forward,
but he was still alive. She didn't have an arm.
It was a badge of honor back then. So Ralph
Nader makes this makes writes this book, and it gets

(39:13):
released and it becomes like a bestseller almost immediately, and
it has so much of an impact that the next
year Congress passed the Highway Safety Act of Yeah, and
then this is another way you knew. It was a
day from way back in the day. Uh. The House
and the Senate passed it unanimously. That's so coaint. They

(39:35):
all got together and said, well, this is what's good
for the American people. So this is our job to
do this. And that went yeah, pretty sweet, pretty sweet time,
pretty sweet. So they passed this thing. In the upshot
of it was that now the auto industry would be regulated.
It was just the way it was gonna be okay,

(39:57):
and the auto industry said, okay, okay, fine, fine, but
what about this? Why don't we agree to use something
called a cost benefit analysis to decide if we actually
undertake any regulations you proposed? Deal? And the d O
T and n H T s A was like, well
no in the auto industry went like that, And the

(40:17):
d O T was like, all right, fine, fine, we
don't want to arm wrestle over this one. Fine cost
benefit analysis for everybody. Yeah, So if you don't know
what a cost benefit analysis is, we call it the
cruelest of all analyzes because it's basically just a math problem.
You plug in numbers and you say, I plug in this,
I plug in this. Is it worth it to do this?

(40:38):
Which works great in a lot of circumstances if you're
talking about I don't know, like a like what's a
good example, or like, like if you're trying to figure
out whether to go with tire distributor A or tire distributor,
be kind of easy, right exactly, But if you're talking
about replacing a fuel tank because it's killing people, it
gets a little sticky because one of the inputs on

(41:00):
those math problems has to be the value of a
human life. There's no getting around, no way around it. Right.
So the nht s A said, well, I guess we
should go ahead and figure out how to quantify a
human life. They all went home and like kissed their
children and they came back to work. And what they

(41:21):
came up with the actually did it. There was a
nineteen seventy two document that said, everybody, this is the
value of a human life and figured it out two
hundred thousand, seven hundred and twenty five dollars. And what
they did was, yeah, really, I thought mine was half that.

(41:44):
So what they did was they figured out um, the
the average lifespan or the average age I guess of
a person who dies in a car wreck, and then
subtracted it from the average lifespan of of the Americans
at the at the time in the Iraq, such as UM,

(42:04):
and they came up with They came up with thirty
seven years, and those people who die in a car
wreck would have lived thirty seven more years. And then
they say, well, how much would those people make in
that time? And they said, well, two hundred thousand, seven
five dollars. The problem with this is is that it
really what they calculated was the cost to society and

(42:25):
lost productivity if it's just wages, right, They didn't take
into account some very important stuff like the value that
the individual places on his or her own life, or
whether their family wants him to come home after a
car wreck, stuff like that. But they came up with
this dollar amount and they said, there there. We'll get
better at it over time. But here's what it is.

(42:48):
And it's a primitive step exactly again, the cruelest of
all analyzes. So Mark Dowie is sorting through all the
file cabinets of the d OT and the the National
Highway Transportation Safety Administration. It's no faster to say it abbreviated.
I know, I would just mess it up though. Uh

(43:09):
So he's starting through all this stuff. He's going through
file cabinets. Everyone's worried, and he comes across the document
of memo called fatalities associated with crash and duced fuel
leakage and fires. And over the years people come to
think like, this is the smoking gun. This is pinto.
It was about pinto fires from getting hit in the rear,
and that's what it is. It really wasn't that. What

(43:29):
it was was it was about all cars in the
United States and whether they caught on fire when they
rolled over. However, the one damning thing in this memo
was that Ford used that number, well almost that number
to quantify the value of a human life. But Ford
rounded down the rounded down the value of a human life,

(43:55):
just you know, to make the math easier. Yeah, they
made a two d grand. They cut off the seven
five dollars, just made it a straight up two. Right.
So they estimated like a hundred and eighty fatalities and
a hundred and eighty injuries in car fires post collision
car fires every year in the US. And they said, well,

(44:16):
that would cost society, uh, forty nine million dollars in
lost productivity. But if you want us to do this
eleven dollar per car safety improvement that would save those
lives and those injuries, well it cost us the auto
industry a hundred and thirteen million dollars, so I don't
have to do it, right, great, see it Racketball's head.

(44:40):
That was kind of do you guys see fight Club?
Remember Edward Norton's job. That was kind of what he
did right a little bit. Yeah, he had to kind
of calculate whether or not it was worth taking a recall,
and Ford, thanks to Dowie, had just been caught red
handed with one of these submitted in the public record. Alright,

(45:00):
So part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act was was
something in all these bills. This gets a little wonky,
but bear with me. They're all broken down into subcategories,
and one of them was called Vehicle Safety Standard three
oh one. And three oh one was basically our government
getting together and saying, you know what, we feel like,
you should be able to get hit from the rear

(45:22):
at like twenty miles an hour and not explode it
into a fiery ball. We've talked about it. We know
what you're gonna say, Detroit, but we've talked about we
feel very strongly about this. We feel less reasonable. Democrats
pushed for thirty, Republicans pushed for ten. They met in
the middle at twenty. There are people from Cough County here.

(45:45):
They are not happy with you right now. They are
going to let us know via email after this show,
angry that the way you feel about life. So they
settled in twenty miles an hour and that was Safety
Standard three oh one. But here's the here's the rub
for the Ford and the Pinto is they had a

(46:07):
problem on their hands. They knew they couldn't understand twenty
miles an hour. They could barely withstand five. So this
would have meant a complete redesign on the Pinto. So
they come up with a plan basically too shall we
say delay the process? Yeah, I kill it, killed it,
think killed it standard three oh one. I hate it.

(46:29):
And they were happy because they didn't have to kill
a human right for once. So oh yeah, I didn't
even mean to say that. But so here's what they did.
They got the attorneys on the case and they said,
here's what you'll do. You're gonna you're gonna file these
arguments on the last day that you can file an argument,

(46:50):
and you're gonna get all this data together and you're
gonna shove it in their face and say here's an argument.
D o t uh. And now you gotta look through
all the stuff and have to satisfy that argument. So
they may not have even cared if the argument held
up or not. The point was they just wanted to
delay things so they could keep selling the very dangerous Pinto.

(47:10):
So they did this, and they didn't they didn't file
them concurrently all at once, which is sort of what
you usually do in the law in court. Uh, they
would file one, they would go look for them, and
this holds water, it doesn't. They go great, They wait
till the next deadline and file another one, and all
of a sudden, they have delayed this process for nine years.
Nine years. They started arguing against it in nineteen and

(47:35):
standard three oh one went into effect in nineteen seventies seven. Right, yeah,
boom so um. There's kind of like a silver lining
to this whole thing. And that Ford's objections actually forced
the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to study the problem

(47:57):
of car fires to answer Fords the objections and say, no, actually,
you're wrong, they're kind of a problem. Yeah. They were
giving them reams of data and then they went, oh,
we just gave them reads. Right, But the n h
t s A also had to like contract with people
to study this stuff. And what they were finding was
that car fires in America were way way more of

(48:17):
a problem than even Ford I think realized at the time.
They turned up some stats like four hundred thousand cars
were burning up on the American Highway every year, burning
more than three thousand people at death. Is that high?
Four hundred thousand cars. Yeah, maybe it's a little high.
I don't know, but this is what they turned up.

(48:38):
It sounds high. Here's a here's one uh of all
calls to all fire departments in the United States, and
the nineteen sixes were cars on fire. And that nuts
just the last time, you guys, just car on fire.
This would be like an like you would see one
in a couple of miles later, there's another one. Well,

(48:58):
and yeah, and this was people didn't have cell phones,
so you would have to see a car on fire,
have a dime in your pocket, be near enough to
a payphone to report it, right, And that was and
have made the judgment that there was a chance that
the person was going to make it in the time
that you went to the pay phone. You know, there's
a lot of factors here seems high. Like if you

(49:21):
had a Christmas parade in your town, there's a pretty
good chance a couple of those cars were just gonna
catch fire in the middle of the parade. This is insane.
And this is what the nhc s A was finding
from studying this problem. There's a University of Miami study.
They found that rear end impact fires were quote a
clear and present hazard to all Pinto owners. That was

(49:44):
the cane saying that. All right, so wait, wait, wait,
we're going to take another end brake. Everybody, We'll be
right back. Don't get up, we'll be right back right
after these messages. Alright, Chuck, last ad break, it's going
pretty well. Just a hot crowd. You got that straight, buddy.

(50:06):
And before we go to ad break, we just wanted
to remind you again go to n DSS dot org
to donate to the National Down Syndrome Society and Chuck,
that's right. Or you can text to the number five
zero one text lifeline dollar sign and the amount you
want to give. And it's that easy. Yeah, And it
doesn't need to be an ORR proposition. It could be
an and proposition to Speaking of propositions, here's a word

(50:30):
from our sponsor. M hm, hey, everybody, we're back. It's

(50:56):
a lot better live. Huh. They get it now. So
the original draft of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act had
uh had a part that provided it was very controversial.
It provided for criminal sanctions, criminal sanctions against executives of
auto companies and these uh, well, let's be honest, these

(51:18):
white dudes that were executives that these auto companies said, well,
I I think I don't think you really mean that, right,
but that means we could go to prison, you understand,
I like, I think we should. Uh, we have some
lobbyists on the case. And so they they put the
lobbyists on the case and they did get that lobbied
out of the Safety Act. Unfortunately. Yeah, I say unfortunately,

(51:42):
that's me talking, and well, you're speaking for both of us, buddy, um.
And they end up with like five or ten thousand
dollars yea in seven money, which today translates to like
forty grant. So if you were an auto executive who
knowingly put a dangerous car out on the American market,
you could facifying a forty dollars And from what we understand,

(52:04):
that's like once one time. Fine, that was it. So
it would be up to the media and the courts
to force forward to do something about It's Pinto and
and boy did they ever The drumbeats started, isn't that right? Yeah?
It started with Dowie, right, Like Mark Dowie gets this
gets a lot of credit for um for the Pinto article,
and definitely he definitely had a big impact, but he

(52:26):
gets some undo credit for getting Standard three oh one
to come into effect because it came into effect pretty
shortly after the Pinto madness article came out. It turns
out later research turned up that UM, the n h
T s A had said, Ford were so sick of
you arguing against standard three oh one. How long will

(52:47):
it take for you guys to get your cars up
to standard three oh one level, which again is a
twenty mile an hour rear impact that doesn't lead to
fuel loss, and for its like, I don't know, it
seems like a big job, right, uh four years And
the n h T s A was like, you know,

(53:08):
it took you two years to design the car from scratch, right,
They're like, yeah, this is huge, massive improvements to make
it safe. So four years. So the NHTSA said, fine, fine,
in seven it'll come into effect. So it was just coincidence.
But Dawi's article did have a big impact in the
way of like shaping public opinion. Yeah, for sure. So

(53:28):
what happens is they're they're starting to be uh some
lawsuits people that are getting burned alive in Pinto's and
other cars, UM say well maybe maybe we could see
somebody and that is that a ducka duck in the house. Well, okay,
let's get back on tracks. Back on track works, doesn't it.

(53:56):
You're all charmed? Thank you for can that one for us?
Chuck Jerry cut cut that art? Alright? So, uh, why
that's delicious, it's good. Yeah, bullet bullet brand bourbon. It's
called buzz marketing everyone. They don't even pay us for

(54:16):
that yet. So uh. There are these people that have
this job where they recreate accidents, um for sometimes it's
for court, for attorneys for the state, sometimes it's for
insurance companies. But they recreate these accidents kind of show
what went down. And some of them started to say,

(54:38):
and again it was a radical notion, started to say,
wait a minute, I think that if you get in
a car wreck, you maybe should be able to live
through it. It's a radical idea, but like maybe they
should make cars safer. Yeah, they're never going back to
San Diego, hippie. Well the notion from from America. Everyone

(55:02):
sort of agreed to this thing where like, if you
get in the car wreck and die like you got
in the car wreck, it's your fault. It was the
driver's fault. It's a driver's fault. You can't make cars
safer in the case of an accident. It seems weird
now because it's all we think about as auto safety,
but it was just not on the radar. Lea Coca
was not the only one, but that was thanks to Detroit,
like saying, it's your fault, you're a dummy. But everyone

(55:25):
agreed to it. Everyone But in in Detroit's defense, at
the time, everybody was wrong while they were driving. It's
way more than today, so they kind of had a point.
But still they could still make the cars safer and
should have even even more back then. Yeah, for sure.
So these I don't know what we call them, accident recreationists,

(55:48):
reconstruction reconstructionists. Recreationists are the Civil War dudes? Does anyone
here do that? Any Civil War reenactors. There's three who
are just sitting there like that's right now, all right?
Quicksidebar Emily and I went hiking at you guys ever
go to Sweetwater State Park see local show. Emily remember this.

(56:13):
We went hiking and Sweetwater and there were some Civil
War reenactors, but it wasn't like what I know about
Civil war reenactors is is that they throw a big
battle party or whatever it's called, and they act like
it's a big war and they go bang you die
or don't die and bang bang, and then that's sort of,
uh what happens. I have no idea what they do,

(56:36):
but it's a big show, like on a field, like
I went to one when I was a kid. I
remember that. But these dudes were just hanging out in
the woods at Sweet Quarter State Park. They were like
they had a fire going and it was it was
like three or four people. It was a couple of
dudes and a couple of ladies in in their outfits
and they were cooking like I guess, like a squirrel

(56:57):
on a spit. That's Huckaby style. It was no organized thing,
and I was just hiking buy it was like a
year ago. I was like, well, that's weird. Did you
guys just like back slowly into the way, don't make
eye contacted. I guess I approved because it wasn't war,
so that's kind of cool. It was they were prepping

(57:18):
for war, so okay, they were gathering their strength from squirrels.
Feint very strange. Don't go to Sweetwaters by the way,
don't go there. No, not after that, Okay, I didn't know.
If there's something else, like there's a lot of abandoned
tires in the ravine or something. All right, cut that

(57:40):
cut that whole story. I don't know. I think it
was a good story. I think we should keep it. Jerry,
is she dead? The great period? This guy? All right,
so this recreationists, That's where I was. You are saying, uh,
maybe you should sue the car company, like because cars

(58:03):
should be safer, And people went, oh, well, that's not
a bad idea. Yeah, because every revolutionary idea these guys
were saying. With the pentol in particular, I'm starting to
notice a lot of charred bodies that are otherwise in
perfect shape look great aside from the charred part, right,
Like they don't have any contusions, they don't have any
broken bones. So like these accidents are happening at really

(58:24):
low speed. Maybe it's actually a design flaw with Ford.
And so the lawyers are like, that sounds great, and
they started circling the courthouses like the flying Monkeys and
the Wizard of Oz and dropping lawsuits down on the
Ford's head. And at first forwards like bring it. We're forward.
You know, juries are made up of like upstanding registered voters, Right,

(58:47):
we're gonna be just fine. And Ford one a couple
at first, and then they started losing them. Um and
Ford was still kind of like, we're still we're still
taking the jury trial on. But the whole thing turned
earned on this one trial in ninety seven in Orange County, California,
Um and Ford lost big time actually in a Pinto case. Yeah,

(59:10):
they lost, and this was in seventy seven. They lost
a hundred and twenty five million dollars and damages to
a boy named he's thirteen years old, Richard Grimshaw was
it's very sad. He's burned very badly and the driver
of the car died and a hundred million bucks back.
I mean, it's a lot of money now, but back then,
it's a ton of money. And it's what they call,

(59:32):
you've heard of like a symbolic award, where they'll just
hit a company with a ton of ton of money
and it later gets reduced. But all they care about
is that the media knows that they got hit with
this ton of money. That was sort of the case here.
It got reduced to what three and a half million bucks.
Just still it's still pretty still a lot of money
back then, of course. Um, but that initial figure like

(59:54):
really made a point and sent shock waves through the
auto industry, and so Ford changed its tactics. They're like, okay,
well maybe we'll start settling. And we got another quote
and Chuck reads it way better than me, So if
you don't mind, Yeah, this was an attorney for Ford. Um,
and I'll read it in the voice of Lionel Hunts

(01:00:16):
of the Simpsons, the great Phil Hartman. Uh, here we go.
We'll never go to a jury again. Not in a
fire case. Jerry is a just too sentimental. They see
those charred remains and forget the evidence. No, sir, will settle.

(01:00:40):
Thanks for that. That is a He wasn't overheard saying that, right.
A TV reporter stuck up a microphone in his face
and he said that that was his quote. That like
Amazon Alexa didn't overhear him saying that to his wife
at home later exactly. So Ford was like, Okay, kill

(01:01:03):
that guy, that lawyer. We're gonna start settling. And so
they did start settling. There's some benefits to settling, well,
there's some drawbacks to One is that it tells the
entire world that you know, your case is terrible, but
it says, um, while there's gonna be lower payouts to
the lawyers, um, and there's going to be lower payouts

(01:01:23):
to the defendants. And it also cuts down on discovery.
So discovery, if you go to jury, the plaintiff, the
person filing the case, has of legal access to any
in all documents that you have that proved their case
against you. Right, So with all these jury trials, there
was this steady trickle or flow even of Yeah, it

(01:01:45):
wasn't even a trickle. It was a flow of damning
evidence coming out of Ford going into the hands of
lawyers who were happily turning it around and handing it
to the media who were reporting on this stuff, which
was getting the public just good. And and that drum
that Chuck was talking about it started to really pick up,
and like people were really looking at Ford like in

(01:02:05):
this weird, like unsettling, non blinky way. You know, everyone
took their shirts off and they put like war paint on,
and just forbus starting to get a little nervous. They
were like like us America said you so that got

(01:02:27):
a little weird, Yeah, thank you. Thank you, buddy. You
get a shirt that bordered on uh performance art, did it?
I think had I taken my shirt off and would
have been perfect, Oh my god, do it out of
your mind, cheer until blood comes out of your mouths.

(01:02:49):
And I still wouldn't take my shirt off. There's nothing
you can do to make me take my shirt. Actually,
I would probably be like my off, which would be
uh yeah, that does feel good. Though, now we've reached

(01:03:09):
David Lee roth level. I wish I had another shot.
Oh my god, alright, so shy. That's just having common values.
Not taking your shirt off in public when people tell
you too. That's normal stuff. Man, you well you did good.
Is one of thank you Jerry cut out the last

(01:03:31):
shame on all of you. Hometown show. Alright. So finally
in ninety seven, UH safety three o one came into effect.
What we talked about, would you should be able to
hit a car from twenty miles an not be a
flaming death ball And the nineteen seventy seven new Pinto

(01:03:53):
debuted with a very brand new safety feature that one
dollar one pound piece of plastic in between the flaming
death bolts and the gast egg that they've known since
night would save lives. Boom, thank you, so um lea Coca.

(01:04:15):
By this time in Ford in general were scared to
death of the PR crisis that had been growing and growing,
and the whole thing again was started by Dowie's article.
Not only did he get the Mother Jones readership involved,
he really kind of awakened the mainstream media to the things.
So everybody was reporting on this. People were suing Ford.
It was a huge, big problem, and I had Coca

(01:04:38):
told everybody clam up. That's actually a direct quote from
his book, his book. I used to think in a
happier time that was called straight talk. But that's a
Dolly Parton movie. It's called talking Straight. I gotta say,
you sent me this initial Josh said this wrote this show,
and he sent it and he said straight talk. And

(01:04:59):
I was like that Dolly Parton play les. It's still
it's still said that. I never corrected it. I never
saw the movie that would be great. You never saw
a straight talk. I don't know. It's shamed. Is that
gonna be your movie? Crush pick? Oh? Maybe that's buzz marketing.

(01:05:21):
Now I have to do with no, no, no no.
So yeah, it was called talking straight in the end,
I think straight talk might have been the working title. Okay,
but then he says, like we were so afraid of um,
the this PR crisis bankrupting forward. If you could imagine
that that they just said, no one talked, don't talk

(01:05:42):
to anybody, just clam up. And they thought that if
somebody said something the wrong way and like there was
a scary turn of phrase or something that I was
just taking the wrong way, it would be seen as
an admition of guilt. The problem was to the public
um that the fact that they weren't talking was seen
as an admission of guilt more than anything. Yeah, it

(01:06:03):
was a big deal. Like sixty Minutes was literally knocking
at the door, like Morally safer? Was it Ford knocking
at the door And he said, I'm Morley Safer and
if you're not intimidated, now, I got ed Bradley with me.
We've sent two of our best dudes, so you should
be pretty worried. And Ford was crouched down under their

(01:06:26):
window there. It's so funny, is I used to love
sixty minutes but when when I was like thirteen, it's
so such a weird show to watch as a kid.
It's sophisticated. I was not sophisticated. Apparently you were. That
was not I don't know what I like a little right,

(01:06:46):
And then after that you're just like all right, I'll
turn the channel. Well. And and also another thing about
I think it came on after either like the Wonderful
World of Disney or that was great or Wold Kingdom
or something, and I don't know what that is, sir.
That was like Full House was on that that was

(01:07:07):
like the nineties. You're way off. Yeah, I'm so old.
Do you see this? Beard? So much gray? Like the
Davy Crockett Story Hour? Was that one? Well, I'm not
that old night writer. That was a good that had

(01:07:28):
a good theme song that this is devolved into like
shout out your favorite old thing. And we're almost done.
Everybody called them all right, we're hit in the end.
So uh. In June, um they started their own recall
proceedings in sixty minutes, was on the on the door,
they're knocking, they're knocking, and Ford says, you know what,

(01:07:52):
We're gonna undertake a voluntary recall if anyone believe that,
they'll they'll make us look so good of one point four.
And I don't know if we mentioned the Pinto was
a big, big seller, Like, despite all this, it was
a super super popular car. It was like the best
selling subcompact of the seventies. It very much was. It
was It's Winona Writer's car and Stranger Things too. Oh yeah,

(01:08:17):
I haven't seen it. I don't was it her car
and Stranger Things? Why? I don't remember, but they featured
the Pinto and Stranger Things too, night Rider spoiler thanks
a lot, right now, I know what car she drives,
all right, So they undertake a one point four million

(01:08:41):
car recall on just the Pencil alone, but also another
car they had, right, the Mercury Bobcat, which was it's
like more luxurious but equally deadly twin. And we're not
quite sure, like what made it so luxurious. Maybe it
had like an onboard like blow dryer brush to like

(01:09:01):
feather your hair with while you're going home. What we're
the back You sit in the back seat and they
just have the thing from the hair place. They just
lowers over your That is the pinnacle of luxury that
we can think of for the god the seventies. Alright.
The bad news is, though this is very sad to
stop laughing, between the time four decided to undergo that

(01:09:22):
recall in June and the time it told consumers like
internally and they said, all right June, we'll do this
September we announced it to the public. In those few months, uh,
there was a very very sad crash rear rear rear
end you need another shot, No, a rear end impact

(01:09:45):
where uh where some young women died. And there was
a prosecutor in Indiana named Michael Constantino that said, uh,
you know what, I've had it, I've done, I know
the deal. I'm gonna bring these dudes on trial for murder. Murder,
Like he filed criminal homicide charges against the executives that

(01:10:06):
Ford for that crash. Yeah, very big deal. Yeah so um,
And that it wasn't just like a flash in the
pan like this trial actually or these charges went to trial.
It was over like three years. And over the three years,
everybody was reporting on Ford executives on trial for murder
every day and they the charges got dismissed, but the

(01:10:27):
public criminalizing of Ford's executives were it was huge. Like
it was a bad PR crisis before that. It couldn't
get worse than that your executives on trial for murder, right, yeah,
for sure. So, um, despite all this, despite the fact
that the Pinto wasn't flaming death trapped to a certain extent,
when you look at the numbers today and when you

(01:10:48):
look at the real statistics, uh, it was not much
worse and sometimes better than other cars on the market
at the time that would kill you from fire, like
the Vega or the Gremlin. They would kill you, right,
So we tried to figure out and actually, it turns
out there was this article in Harvard Law Review where

(01:11:13):
this guy said, Um, I've done the math. I've actually
figured it out, and here's the number I came up with.
It was seven twenty seven people is probably the number
of people who died in low speed rear collision impact
fires in Pintos. And it's over like ten years, like
millions of cars. Twenty seven it's not that bad, actually, right, Um,

(01:11:38):
it was way less than I think Mother Jones said
like five hundred and nine hundred. And this is so
Mother Jones. They said that was a conservative estimate that
we just made up. And then I think sixty minutes,
Chuck's beloved sixty minutes said, like, thousands of people had
died in Pinto's no one knew, so they were just
making up numbers. But this article said, no, it's probably

(01:12:00):
twenty seven actually exactly. So uh. In the end, we
look back and the Pinto was even though it could
have been a flaming death trap, what it really was
was a very bad victim of pr Yeah, you know, yep. So,
like the problem was is that the way you could
die in a Pinto was just too bad to be

(01:12:23):
allowed to continue. Right. The idea that, like, if you've
got an a rear end collision and the passenger compartment
filled up with gas, that's bad enough. But the idea
that it could happen at such a low speed that
you would still be conscious when you caught fire and
burned to death. The American public said, dope, that can't happen.
It doesn't matter, and so thanks to Dowie's article, um

(01:12:46):
and sixty minutes, eventually the Pinto was basically laid to
waste as far as the American public was concerned, and
still has a bad reputation today. That's right. In the end,
the pins it took the real impact, but not not
in the good way, not in the good way, in

(01:13:07):
every kind of bad. You know, that's true. I never
thought about that. Yeah. Uh so Indian Mr Lee I A.
Coca would go on to write his legend with the
christ Or Corporation by bringing them back from um kind
of the brink of bankruptcy into huge success in the

(01:13:30):
nineties and the eighties. And uh he was named I
think by Portfolio magazine as the eighteenth gradest CEO of
all time, just ahead of Oprah, which is both yes
Team Oprah up here. I wrote a couple of books,

(01:13:53):
wrote that biography that Josh talked about that Dolly Parton
did not star in, and another call where how have
all the Leaders Gone? And Mr Iacca is still alive today,
The Rifled Age of ninety two and bel Air neighborhood
of Los Angeles, California, where there is nary a Pinto
to be found. That's right, and that is the story

(01:14:13):
of the Ford Pinto. Yeah. Thanks, ye, well that one
pretty well, chuck. Yeah. If you want to get in
touch with us for any reason, you can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. I'm at Josh

(01:14:35):
um Clark and I also have a website called are
You Series Clark dot com. Chuck's on Facebook at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, or at Stuff you Should Know. UH. You
can email us and Jerry to stuff podcast at how
stiff Works dot com and has always joined us at
Home on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com

(01:14:57):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how staff works dot com. M