The Ford Pinto burned in rear-end crashes — and a memo put a price on each death

The Ford Pinto, launched in 1970, was a subcompact car built quickly and cheaply to compete with small imports. Its design placed the fuel tank behind the rear axle, with little protection, making it vulnerable to rupture and fire in rear-end collisions. Crash tests showed the problem before the car went on sale, but Ford proceeded with production.

The case became infamous because of an internal cost-benefit analysis (the 'Pinto memo') that weighed the cost of an $11-per-car fix against the estimated cost of deaths, injuries and lawsuits from the fires — and concluded it was cheaper to pay for the casualties than to fix the design. Whether or not that memo drove the decision, it came to symbolize a cold calculation that put a price on human life.

After deaths and injuries from Pinto fires became public, and a 1977 Mother Jones article exposed the issue, Ford faced a wave of lawsuits and a criminal prosecution (it was acquitted). In 1978 Ford recalled 1.5 million Pintos to fix the fuel system. The Pinto became a landmark case in engineering ethics and product liability — a lasting lesson in the danger of treating safety as a line item in a cost-benefit spreadsheet.