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First-generation American subcompacts, left to right: AMC Gremlin, Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Vega. American automakers had first countered imports such as the Volkswagen Beetle with compact cars including the Ford Falcon, Ford Maverick, Chevrolet Corvair and Plymouth Valiant, although these cars featured six-cylinder engines and comprised a larger vehicle class.
Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Company (119 Cal.App.3d 757, 174 Cal.Rptr. 348) was a personal injury tort case decided in Orange County, California in February 1978 and affirmed by a California appellate court in May 1981. The lawsuit involved the safety of the design of the Ford Pinto automobile, manufactured by the Ford Motor Company.
The Ford Pinto engine was the unofficial name for a four-cylinder internal combustion engine built by Ford Europe. In Ford sales literature, it was referred to as the EAO or OHC engine and because it was designed to the metric system, it was sometimes called the "metric engine". The internal Ford codename for the unit was the T88-series engine.
The first major accident, resulting from the design of the Ford Pinto automobile, happened near Barstow, California. Mrs. Lilly Gray and her teenage son, Richard Grimshaw, were severely burned after the gas tank in their 1972 Pinto exploded after the car stalled and was rear-ended on Interstate Highway 15. Mrs.
A 1977 article in Mother Jones alleged Ford was aware of the design flaw, refused to pay for a redesign, and decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits. The magazine obtained a cost-benefit analysis that it said Ford had used to compare the cost of repairs (Ford estimated the cost to be $11 per car) against the cost of settlements ...
Several popular Ford products were manufactured there, such as the Ford Mustang, Ford Ranger, and the Ford Pinto. When the plant opened, it manufactured the new Mercury branded and Lincoln vehicles. It was one of three Ford manufacturing facilities in New Jersey and was built two years before the Mahwah Assembly plant was opened in 1950.
The Ford Pinto received widespread concern when it was alleged that a design flaw could cause fuel-fed fires in rear-end collisions. [5] Recent developments in automated safety systems have reduced the number of rear-end collisions. [6] [7] [4]
The Ford River Rouge complex (commonly known as the Rouge complex, River Rouge, or The Rouge) is a Ford Motor Company automobile factory complex located in Dearborn, Michigan, along the River Rouge, upstream from its confluence with the Detroit River at Zug Island.