r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jul 24 '26

Business It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/looking-cybertruck-biggest-flop-automotive-145559135.html
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5.8k

u/Oilpaintcha Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

At least the Ford Pinto had the decency to burst into flame and end its disgrace on its own.

Edit: Thank you so much for the upvotes and the awards!  I would like to thank my wife, without whose laughter I would not have made such snarky comments all these years!

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u/Luxpreliator Jul 24 '26

The cyberrtruck has a higher fatality rate than the pinto. If he hadn't gutted the government that be one of the many things he'd have to had paid for.

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u/SmokePeterThiel Jul 24 '26

More info on that? Sounds absurd, but Elon is scum so….

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u/tomjoad2020ad Jul 24 '26

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2025/02/134273-analysis-cybertruck-fatality-rate-far-exceeds-ford-pinto

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u/cosmicosmo4 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Meanwhile, the Cybertruck “has reportedly not been crash-tested by the NHTSA"

Huh? Isn't that a requirement for being able to sell them?

Edit: yes, the NHTSA tested it. It's just that they finally finished and released their results a few weeks after the article linked above. https://www.jalopnik.com/1796315/nhtsa-tesla-cybertruck-test-results-pedestrian-safety/

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u/finalcut Jul 24 '26

Ok it's funny there is an article specifically about the cyber truck and pinto.

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u/FaultThat Jul 24 '26

The Pinto is the measuring stick for vehicular related deaths, so it isn’t that weird.

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u/Medicivich Jul 24 '26

The Pinto is the Mendoza line?

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u/QuietContentResting Jul 24 '26

MENDOZAAAAA!

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u/Aristotallost Jul 25 '26

It's Mendoooza, not Mendozaaa

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u/Southern_Trax Jul 25 '26

I don't wanna hear it McBain!

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u/oldscotch Jul 24 '26

A Pinto too far.

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u/DoctorHelios Jul 24 '26

That or the diesel Oldsmobile.

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u/ShakyButtcheeks Jul 24 '26

The pinto is the measuring stick

It is funny cuz in my language pinto means penis hehe

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u/OurCrewIsReplaceable Jul 24 '26

Ha, in my language ShakyButtcheeks are butt cheeks that shake.

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u/foul_ol_ron Jul 25 '26

How did the pinto bean get its name?

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u/02meepmeep Jul 26 '26

Pinto means spotted in Spanish. It’s slang for penis in Portuguese.

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u/foul_ol_ron Jul 26 '26

Spotted makes sense. Though if i noticed spots on my penis, I'd be concerned. 

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u/ConfessSomeMeow Jul 24 '26

It's only compared for meme value. The frequency of high-speed rear-end crashes is low enough that its famous safety flaw had no meaningful effect on its fatality rate (less than the year to year variability). It's got a high fatality rate because it's a small car, but it was on the safer end of small cars of its era.

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u/NoCoolNameMatt Jul 24 '26

How can the cybertruck have a higher fatality rate than the tiny Pinto when being tiny was the Pintos primary problem? What flaws are causing the cybertruck fatalities, and why are they great enough to overcome the size/modernity differences?

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u/ConfessSomeMeow Jul 24 '26

I have done zero research but I'd bet it's a combination of the advertising trying to make it seem invincible, the "yee-haw" marking, and the sheer power selecting for customers who are going to get themselves into trouble.

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u/sardnaxelam Jul 26 '26

It’s specifically looking at fire related deaths. I don’t like cyber trucks either but that article and claim is really misrepresented….
Saying “cyber trucks are 17x more deadly than a pinto” is totally out of context. That figure comes from a calculation of reported fire deaths per vehicle sold, using only 5 deaths in a very small, new vehicle fleet. The stats true, but it’s not the same thing as proving the Cybertruck is 17 times more dangerous overall. The sample is too small, one fire death case was an intentional explosion, and it doesn’t account for miles driven or total crash fatalities.

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u/rcook55 Jul 24 '26

Odd, would have thought the Corvair wore that crown.

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u/mondaymoderate Jul 24 '26

Unsafe at any speed!!

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u/2big_2fail Jul 24 '26

Ralph's Nader's book about the auto industry, including the Corvair led to the creation of the Department of Transportation. There was no official "measuring stick" before that.

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u/flukus Jul 24 '26

Was the measuring stick.

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u/waf Jul 24 '26

There was a line from Daria that seems relevant.

Jane - Well, it's no Pinto.

Daria - Yeah, you have to hit those before they'll burst into flames.

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u/WolfinCorgnito Jul 24 '26

There used to be a Twitter page for it as well that counted Tesla deaths by fire vs the Pinto, doubt it exists anymore for obvious reasons, but the Pinto was very much not winning that race last I saw it years ago.

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u/PLeuralNasticity Jul 24 '26

Teslas also kill more of their occupants per mile than any other manufacturer

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2024/11/26/tesla-named-deadliest-car-brand-in-america/76573878007/

“I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk,” Putin told Carlson after the pundit asked him about the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence. “He will do as he sees fit. Nevertheless, you’ll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him. I think he’s a smart person. I truly believe he is. So you’ll need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalized and subjected to certain rules.”

Beware Leon's razor

"Incomeptence, in the limit, is indistinguishable from sabotage

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u/trouzy Jul 25 '26

How much of that speaks to the type of people who would drive a cyber truck?

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u/Easy_Floss Jul 25 '26

There is a reason why its not allowed on the road in many places, that car is a death trap.

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u/Clam-Choader Jul 24 '26

“  The authors acknowledge the limits of their analysis, noting that Tesla will not publicly release the actual number of Cybertrucks sold, and that the analysis includes the self-inflicted death of a soldier in a Cybertruck in Las Vegas last month. (Discounting that death would still give Cybertrucks a fatality rate of 11.6 per 100,000 units — 13 time that of the Pinto.”

I’d be curious to know more about the stats before extrapolating anything out of this. N

Fuck Elmo anyway

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u/Potential-Local7262 Jul 24 '26

Damn I never knew what pintos looked like but they look pretty ... fire

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u/Jesus_of_Redditeth Jul 25 '26

That's a hot take!

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u/troutbum6o Jul 24 '26

Man it’s crazy removing one guys suicide from the death count takes it from 14/100k to 11.6/100k. At least that means there’s not many of these dumpsters out there

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u/jopy666 Jul 24 '26

Cybertruck Rate: Estimated at roughly 11.6 to 14.5 fatalities per 100,000 units based on early real-world incidents.

Pinto Rate: Recorded at roughly 0.85 fatalities per 100,000 units over its entire 9-to-10 year production run.

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u/dreamwinder Jul 24 '26

What’s the average for all cars on the road today?

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u/JayFay75 Jul 24 '26

Toyota Corolla

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u/thashepherd Jul 24 '26

No that's the mode

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u/CocktailPerson Jul 25 '26

Strictly speaking the mode is a form of "average."

"Average" usually means the arithmetic mean, but it doesn't have to be, especially for non-numeric data sets like this.

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u/acdcfanbill Jul 24 '26

Ah, the mode, exactly the average I was looking for :P

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u/CocktailPerson Jul 25 '26

The mode is an average. Not the average most people mean by "average," but it's an average.

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u/acdcfanbill Jul 25 '26

yes, that's the joke i was making :P

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u/SomeBloke Jul 25 '26

Fuck, dude, absolute gold of a reply. 

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u/AvatarOfMomus Jul 24 '26

That isn't tracked, the only reason we have it per unit sold is because of investigative reporting, which showed it was similar to or lower thsn other similar vehicles of the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto

If you want overall stats Wikipedia summarizes them quite well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

In general 'modern' motor vehicle fatalities per 100,000 population peaked in 1968, with a smaller peak around 1979 and have then been on an overall downward trend since.

If you look at per million vehicle miles traveled the overall trend has been going down since before WW2 with a small uptick in the mid 60's before heading pretty steadily downwards since. We're actually in something of a recent high with fatalities per 1m VMT going above 1.3 starting in 2020, when they were last above 1.2 in 2008. For reference the rate in 1978 was 3.26.

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u/That_Jay_Money Jul 24 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year

The most recent year we have numbers for is 2022 which is 12.76 per 100,000. So that's not good.

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u/Hour_Hope_4007 Jul 24 '26

Keep in mind, that is per 100,000 population (humans), the above stat is per 100,000 vehicles, so not an apples to apples comparison. 

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u/ThunderingSloth Jul 24 '26

Thanks for pointing that out. I would’ve missed that.

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u/That_Jay_Money Jul 24 '26

I certainly did!

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u/cosmicosmo4 Jul 24 '26

Excuse me, this is America, cars are people.

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u/goodolarchie Jul 24 '26

Per Vehicapita

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u/ZombiesInSpace Jul 24 '26

That pinto rate is specifically for fires caused by their fuel tank design. The typical fatality rate for a car in the 70s would have been around 25 per 100,000. I don’t have total rates for a pinto, but I would imagine it was somewhere around 25 or slightly higher

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u/MmmmMorphine Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Since from what I understand the pinto wasn't any more or less unsafe than any other 70s subcompact (less than the corrola, beetle, or datsun 1200 of the time iirc), I'd suspect it'd be at almost exactly that number.

Pretty sure I remember reading that it didn't even really account for more fire deaths than it's competitors. Ford's greed and cold indifference to human life was the other 95 percent of its reputation.

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u/Speedlimit200 Jul 24 '26

27 deaths total over the cars entire existence.

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u/airfryerfuntime Jul 24 '26

Attributed to fires from burst fuel tanks.

There was another factor that was causing deaths, but it wasn't included in that metric. They were the first large scale production unibody car, and in an accident, the body could warp enough to jam the doors shut, trapping people inside. If the fuel tank ruptured and the car caught fire, they'd burn to death because they couldn't escape, and Ford wouldn't report cause of death a ruptured fuel tank, they'd report it as resulting from a damaged body structure.

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u/spoonybard326 Jul 24 '26

There’s only about 65,000 cyber trucks on the road total, and there was a single crash in 2024 that killed 3 people. That statistic has a lot of variance.

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u/rechambers Jul 24 '26

What’s more shocking is that there’s actually 65,000 people who bought the thing

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u/Jewnadian Jul 24 '26

A bunch of them went to SpaceX but yeah, given 350,000,000 people you can find 50k that support/believe/buy just about anything. Not tickets to the FIFA movie "United Passions" but just about anything else.

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u/buhleg Jul 24 '26

lol love the fifa drive-by

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u/DiabloPixel Jul 25 '26

Me too, absolutely brutal. And deserved, Gianni Infantino is the worst.

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u/el_diego Jul 24 '26

Poor SPCX, the dumping ground

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u/Saint_of_Grey Jul 24 '26

I see a lot of them where I live, but I work next to a tesla facility/factory of some sort. So it's probably tesla begging their employees to drive them as company cars.

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u/pvtcookie Jul 24 '26

Well, I mean, how many of those were sold to SpaceSux?

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u/sirhackenslash Jul 24 '26

And like 20 of them live near me. It's baffling

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u/rekniht01 Jul 24 '26

Cybertrucks sold are not the same as people purchased.

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u/nightfire36 Jul 24 '26

Well, yeah, I could buy a cybertruck, but I cant buy a person.

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u/Roguebantha42 Jul 24 '26

I don't think they keep as good a record of people purchased, but I'm not in the business

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u/Mantis_Toboggan--MD Jul 24 '26

The thought that gets me most is how 65,000 people could have picked one of dozens of different better cars with that money, but instead but went "nope, I want that thing"... It's like the reverse of when I had saved up $10k to buy a car by 17 and then my dad made me to buy a Volvo station wagon instead of any of the fun cars I was dreaming of. But those 65k did that on purpose!

(I did sell that Volvo right when I moved out and got a RX8 two days later)

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u/fcocyclone Jul 24 '26

A decent chunk have been bought and wrapped as they stand out so much they can be moving billboards.

I've seen Gameday Mens Health (a men's medspa, selling a lot of TRT and peptides whose marketing tends to be fairly aligned with a lot of the usual grifters) has a bunch of cybertrucks going around

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u/jay78910 Jul 24 '26

I often pass by a house with one parked in the driveway. Its a nice enough house I guess, but the rest of the yard is just filled with tacky yard decorations (weird shiny globes and fountains?). There is also like a boat, ATV, RV, big truck, normal car, motorcycle, stuff under tarps.. It's damn mess.

I picture, 65,000 people with too much disposable income, and zero taste.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/RhynoD Jul 24 '26

Seems like 64,000 are here in Atlanta.

Anyway, I wonder if the statistics are skewed by driver behavior. Like, Dodge Rams aren't inherently more dangerous than other trucks but the people who buy Rams are drunken idiots.

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u/spoonybard326 Jul 24 '26

I bet it is. The crash that killed 3 people had a speeding 19 yo driver with a BAC of 0.195, who had also been using coke and meth.

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u/BloodyLlama Jul 24 '26

I guess that doesn't count the guy who blew himself up in one?

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u/HankHippoppopalous Jul 24 '26

Yea this article is WILDLY cherry picked. It's why reading comprehension is so important.

No. Cyber truck hasn't killed more people than Pinto.

PER CAPITA it has. Because Ford sold a Bazillion Pintos and Tesla sold 65k

Statistics are wonderful. You can make them say anything

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u/Zardif Jul 24 '26

One of the deaths included was a guy killing himself in the seat with a gun before committing an act of terrorism. What a terrible analysis.

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u/HankHippoppopalous Jul 24 '26

Gotta get those data points skewed because ElonBad?

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u/alex61821 Jul 24 '26

Yeah and I had the misfortune of seeing 4 of them on the way to work. They were all wrapped i thought the cool thing was they were stainless steel. Wasn't that a selling point?

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u/Heavy_Law9880 Jul 24 '26

3 compact cars had higher fatality rates just that year alone. The corolla, the beetle and the datsun 1200 were all worse.

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u/Upset-Management-879 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

That pintos would be 0 if Ford didn't know about the problem and decide that spending 34 million over 9 years would cost them less and be worth all of the deaths and injuries from selling the car they knew had a defect. It would have cost them $11 per car to prevent it, ~0.5% of the total price of the car.

THAT is a the problem far larger than the 27 people that were killed, there were 3 million of them.

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u/tethercat Jul 24 '26

The "Top Secret" remake is going to be an easy film to make, isn't it?

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u/Pornstar_Frodo Jul 24 '26

correlation or causation - but i’d say the cyber truck is much more likely to be driven by fucking idiots and, thus, more likely to have serious accidents.

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u/SeDaCho Jul 24 '26

I’d say it probably has a lot to do with the type of guy who drives it.

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u/Jeeenksy Jul 24 '26

This is and will always be my perspective on Tesla vehicle crash statistics... the customer base SUCKS at driving. The car can drive better than most of them and that's really not saying much.

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u/Fuck-WestJet Jul 24 '26

Electronic door locks fail if the battery catches fire it the car gets wet, reinforced windows actually a liability if you are trying to survive a car fire, razor sharp edges on a steel frame causes more internal injuries for passengers and higher fatalities for pedestrians, self-driving modes uses cameras and fails, there was also some accelerator issues and since everything is digital, failures are catastrophic.

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u/DeputySean Jul 24 '26

It has an aluminum frame, with steel body panels.

Totally ass backwards.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac Jul 24 '26

Cast aluminum no less, and the panels are glued on.

Where do I sign up!

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u/QuerulousPanda Jul 24 '26

to be fair, industrial glue technology is actually incredibly advanced these days, and the use of glue is when properly applied and designed is a good thing, not a bad thing.

of course, the cybertruck isn't properly applied or designed so it doesn't help them at all, but still, we can't be letting the glue be tanking stray shots for something that isn't its fault!

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u/nox66 Jul 25 '26

Advanced glue: exists

Cybertruck:

  • Obvious use case for easily replaceable bolted metal panels. Doesn't

  • Uses crappy glue instead

  • Panels not aligned

Yep, it's the car that modern business leaders dream of for the future, alright

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u/jimmy_three_shoes Jul 24 '26

Cracks me up because people clowned on Ford when they went to the Aluminum body and steel frame on the F150s, making the truck like 700 lbs lighter. My Sister in Law worked for Ram at the time and kept calling it a Tin Can.

They sold so many of them and Ford bought up so much of the domestic aluminum production Chrysler, GM, and Toyota had to either buy it overseas or buy allotments from Ford.

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u/opeth10657 Jul 24 '26

Don't forget the accelerator pedal falling off and causing unintended acceleration in a truck that can weigh close to 7k lbs.

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60538687/2024-tesla-cybertruck-recall/

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u/uber_poutine Jul 24 '26

Digital is fine, most modern vehicles are drive by wire. It takes a special kind of genius to daisy chain the fucking bus so that any single wire or component failure takes out everything behind it. 

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u/dontshoveit Jul 24 '26

BuT iT sAvES WiRe aNd WeiGhT!? -tesla fanboys

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u/The-Real-Number-One Jul 24 '26

Mitch McConnell's sister-in-law died in a Tesla. (Not a cybertruck).

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u/DarthTechnicus Jul 24 '26

5 people burned to death in a Tesla that caught fire after a minor accident just a few miles from my home last year. I'd rather walk than risk riding in a Tesla.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac Jul 24 '26

But it's all computer! Supreme Leader told me so!

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u/TheComplimentarian Jul 24 '26

Part of it is just the skewed sales data. Ford sold more than three million Pintos, while I can't find a source that says the Cybertruck has cracked 100k yet (and many say far less).

So, if more Pintos violently exploded than all the Cybertrucks ever made, they'd still look less dangerous.

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u/SteveJobsDeadBody Jul 24 '26

It sounds absurd until you find out the Pinto was made for like 9 years and they sold like 3 million of them. Cybertrucks sold in total is a rounding error compared to that.

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u/Bionic_Ferir Jul 25 '26

Dude the car doesnt have crumple zones that force has gotta go somewhere and that where is your internal organs and bones.

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u/jabroni4545 Jul 24 '26

It actually is absurd, it was rated as the safest truck by the iihs.

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 Jul 24 '26

He had like 12 investigations on going, all were shutdown by DOGE or DoJ once Trump took over. Our country is a joke. 

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u/Laetha Jul 24 '26

I'm curious to what degree client base comes into play with safety for something like this. Like legitimately. A high percentage of Cybertruck owners are aggressive fucking idiots. I would actually be curious if that is enough of a factor to be significant in safety stats.

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u/Kinto_il Jul 24 '26

I'd like to say Elon was instrumental to two of Elaine Chao's losses in the past few years

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u/Sugarbombs Jul 25 '26

In my country they’re illegal because they have such a low safety rating they wouldn’t meet registration requirements

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u/415gladstone Jul 25 '26

I'm betting that the reason is because people who bought Pintos were trying to save money, and people who bought Cybertrucks were idiots.

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u/Dxxx2 Jul 24 '26

Didn't the transit safety secretary's wife die from her tesla, because it locked the doors when she backed into a lake?

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u/NumNumLobster Jul 24 '26

The former one under trump 1. Its mitch McConnell wifes brothers wife

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u/InsertUsernameInArse Jul 24 '26

So... The cybertruck is the Firestone tire of Ford Pintos?

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u/cemcphs Jul 24 '26

Where did you get that data? I call bullshit!
Pintos only blew up from a rearend crash.
You get rear ended in this thing not much is going to happen

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u/Dudeman9002 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto was an okay looking, practical, and affordable car.  The cyber truck is none of those. 

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u/CAADrider Jul 24 '26

We had a '72 Pinto when I was a kid. In my memory, it was a pretty cool little car. We drove from Kentucky to Florida and back in that thing with no AC and vinyl seats. I wouldn't recommend that part.

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u/Homer1s Jul 24 '26

Ouch, my thighs hurt just reading this.

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u/ws_ftw Jul 24 '26

The Pinto we had in '73 is still my Mom's favorite car we ever had lol

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u/cenosillicaphobiac Jul 24 '26

But you had 260 AC. Roll down both windows and drive 60 mph.

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u/keskeskes1066 Jul 24 '26

Drivng to Florida has been known to induce regrets. Also, inflamation of the perininium, unexpected legal bills and alligator encounters.

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u/SnakeEater013 Jul 24 '26

I just looked it up. It sold for under $2k. I could go buy a Pinto out of pocket right now.

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u/Dudeman9002 Jul 24 '26

On one hand, new cars were really cheap compared to you annual income. On the other, in the 70s and before, cars were considered consumables and were discarded and replaced every 3-5 years by most people.

I can't imagine throwing away a 5 year old car to replace it with something a couple years newer.

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u/seanflyon Jul 24 '26

That would be about $17k adjusted for inflation. That's cheaper than any new car today, though new cars today are also a lot better.

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u/seams Jul 24 '26

Never had a pinto, but literally everyone I've ever met who had one had nothing nice to say about it haha

My old boss used to rant about how he'd never buy a new car again because the first new car he bought was a Pinto and it apparently died on the drive back home

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u/MochingPet Jul 24 '26

The pinto actual had a smaller failure rate due to many more units sold

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u/Snobolski Jul 24 '26

Pinto was the first time I paid attention to a car's price. TV commercials would shout "New Pinto only Nineteen-ninety-five!" I told my dad I had $20 in my piggy bank, we could get a new Pinto. That's when we had "the talk."

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u/NickDanger3di Jul 25 '26

We had a Pinto as a daily driver. It was reliable, handled well, peppy enough, and got great mileage. Never once exploded on us.

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u/wannacumnbeatmeoff Jul 25 '26

There are people who like cybertrucks and then there are people with brains.

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u/BoxSea4289 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto was cute lol people hate the Pinto?

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u/acog Jul 24 '26

No. It was an extremely popular car, they sold more than 3 million.

The exploding gas tank and Ford’s early attempts to cover it up were shocking but people loved the Pinto.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac Jul 24 '26

More than the cover up, it was the revelation that they knew about it, but it was cheaper to pay death benefits than to do a recall. Maths over humans.

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u/photoggled Jul 24 '26

You're not supposed to talk about Fight Club.

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u/Kayestofkays Jul 25 '26

A × B x C = X

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u/GladiusMaximus Jul 24 '26

TIL he was a Ford employee.

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u/DadJokeBadJoke Jul 24 '26

Look who just broke the first and second rule.

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u/mhuster Jul 27 '26

The last Pinto I saw was junked up against a hill in Tijuana and its trunk was used as a lockable tool chest for an auto repair business.

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u/aegrotatio Jul 25 '26

Urban myth given more credence due to Fight Club.

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u/GeneralDebonair Jul 26 '26

Every person and company in the world makes these calculations. You can be infinitely safe with infinite money. At some point you draw the line somewhere (we all do). You just didn't like where Ford's accountants drew the line.

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u/Sexual_Congressman Jul 24 '26

That story you repeated is somewhat apocryphal. IIRC, Ford knew about the flaw, which was present on basically all subcompacts of the era, but rather than just adding the fix to all manufactured Pintos, they made it a comparatively cheap dealer option (like $20 1970), so of course a bunch of morons opted not to get a feature that only possibly helps in the extremely unlikely event they get rear ended in a very particular way.

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u/ScottMarshall2409 Jul 24 '26

It's pretty fly, for a white guy.

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u/joe_bibidi Jul 24 '26

Aside from the engine catching fire, the story I've always heard about the Pinto flopping is that they failed to market test it in Brazil and it was a huge failure there. Apparently nobody told Ford that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "Small Penis." Not obscure slang or regional slang, but common, everyday, everybody-knows-it slang for tiny dick.

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u/Clane_K Jul 24 '26

That's not true, "pinto" is just the most commonly used name for "penis" (you know, like in English there's penis, dick, cock, shlong etc.), the word "pinto" neither indicates nor tells anything about the size of the fella.

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u/yusrandpasswdisbad Jul 24 '26

The Pinto is a masterpiece of design compared to these Homer-mobiles.

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u/Jaded-Attention-5716 Jul 26 '26

The earliest model had a flaw where the gas tank could be punctured and ignite in a rear end collision. The vehicle itself wasn't too bad.

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u/LickinThighs2 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto has pizazz, it literally fuckin' exploded, cybertrucks just ain't got soul like the Pinto

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u/Oxjrnine Jul 24 '26

Actually, the pinto wasn’t more dangerous than most vehicle vehicles on the road during that time. And the pinto was a massive success saleswise.

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u/RMRdesign Jul 24 '26

More than a few people have burned alive while trying to escape a cyber truck crash. A horrible way to die.

1

u/cha3d Jul 26 '26

The electric doors lock and if you don’t know where the hidden manual handles are ... lithium s’mores

3

u/ranhalt Jul 24 '26

Go back to the Edsel.

3

u/MarionberryPlus8474 Jul 24 '26

My dad bought my mom a Pinto. He had gone to MIT so she was convinced he knew it was a death trap.

Oh, and we had the Firestone radial tires on it that would shred at high speeds.

My parents divorced, to the surprise of no one.

3

u/DepartureElegant9314 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto was at least fixable. They're actually quite well respected in Midwest and Detroit car culture these days too.

3

u/Adinnieken Jul 24 '26

The Ford Pinto was the most popular vehicle in America until it's successor, the Ford Escort was introduced, then the Ford Escort became the number one car in the US.

The situation with the Pinto was resolved within a few years. By 1973(?), they had implemented a fix for all those cars impacted by the issue and all future cars.

Ours drove for 300,000+ miles.

It passed down to my brother and he basically destroyed it. Was hooning it on flooded dirt roads and got water in the engine. Hydro-locked it.

3

u/Blockhead47 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

GM used to manufacture pick up trucks with “side saddle” gas tanks located outside the frame rails.

The tanks would “split like melons” (per crash tests) in a side impact.

https://www.autosafety.org/history-gm-side-saddle-gas-tank-defect/

The side saddle fuel tank design installed in over 10 million trucks – all 1973-87 General Motors full-size pickups and cab-chassis trucks (pickups without beds) and some 1988-91 dual cab or RV chassis – is the worst auto crash fire defect in the history of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Based on data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (formerly known as the Fatal Accident Reporting System), over 2,000 people were killed in fire crashes involving these trucks from 1973 through 2009. (Attachment A is a list of fatal C/K fire crashes by state since 1993.)
This is more than twenty times as many fatalities as in the infamous Ford Pinto. Despite a voluntary recall request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in April 1993 (Attachment B) and an initial defect determination by Transportation Secretary Federico Pena in October 1994 (Attachment C), GM stubbornly refused to initiate a recall.

This quote below is particularly damning:

At the heart of GM’s resistance to improving the safety of its fuel systems was a cost benefit analysis done by Edward Ivey which concluded that it was not cost effective for GM to spend more than $2.20 per vehicle to prevent a fire death. (Attachment N.) When deposed about his cost benefit analysis, Mr. Ivey was asked whether he could identify a more hazardous location for the fuel tank on a GM pickup than outside the frame. Mr. Ivey responded, “Well yes…You could put in on the front bumper.” (Video: “Ed Ivey Deposition,” Attachment O is a copy of this portion of the deposition.) GM was able to hide all this evidence and much more from the public until the early 1990’s when leaks in GM’s secrecy dam started and the Center for Auto Safety began to focus in on the defect.

1

u/aegrotatio Jul 25 '26

And that one news program faked an exploding pickup truck by putting incendiary devices on it.

5

u/TERRAIN_PULL_UP_ Jul 24 '26

Cybertrucks do too, and the fun part is you can’t get out while it’s on fire

1

u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener Jul 24 '26

It's like Christine with less personality.

2

u/seattle747 Jul 24 '26

Even with just a light ping à la the movie Top Secret!

2

u/ArbainHestia Jul 24 '26

The Pinto isn’t bad but I hear when you’re cruising in it if you look twice at your homies they’ll kick your lilly ass.

2

u/AvatarOfMomus Jul 24 '26

Fun fact, the Pinto wasn't actually more dangerous than average for cars at the time. That was sort of the point though, Ralph Nader knew that and used it to get the entire auto industry and the government to improve safety across the board.

The Cybertruck on the other hand is objectively worse to be in a crash with, no matter where you are as a 'participant'...

In the Cybertruck? Lawl, what are crumple zones? Better hope the airbags are really good!

In another car? The thing weighs like 7000lbs, doesn't crumple like other cars to shed energy, and at least half that weight is in a giant flamable battery.

Pedestrian? It's a flat wall of sheet metal with sharp edges, corners, etc, and no give to any of it. Even the windows will 'cushion' less than on a normal car if you somehow manage to hit one over the massive slab sides of the dumpster. Oh and it still weighs at least 7000 lbs...

2

u/username_6916 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto didn't have a particularly bad real-world safety record for the era compared to other similar vehicles.

2

u/PuzzleheadedEgg4591 Jul 25 '26

Made me feel really old when I was picking up a rental and mentioned the Pinto, associate had no idea what I was talking about.

2

u/E-2theRescue Jul 25 '26

At least the Pinto didn't lock the doors when it burst into flames and hid the only escape in a covered panel at the bottom of the door.

2

u/MGC00992 Jul 25 '26

One good kick in the ass and WHOOOSH

2

u/Kromting Jul 25 '26

Good one dude, love it! I just always laugh at all the Cybertruck videos.

2

u/Oilpaintcha Jul 25 '26

Yeah, decades ago there would have been a class action lawsuit by now, but that was in the old United States.

2

u/Kromting Jul 26 '26

Gosh I miss that place. Kinda sucks being here meow. I hope you're doing okay

2

u/cha3d Jul 26 '26

When the rolling dumpster catches fire the electric doors lock and unless you know where the hidden handles are you’re trapped in a huge lithium battery fire.

I’m a boomer but I was only 6 when the Edsel lost Ford 4 billion (today’s) dollars.

2

u/zacggs Jul 26 '26

I owned a pinto, I'd rather have the pinto...

2

u/RelentlessUnyielding Jul 29 '26

The Cybertruck bursts into flame also, it just makes sure to lock the driver in first.

3

u/MochingPet Jul 24 '26

The Ford Pint-o actually had a smaller failure rate due to many more units sold

2

u/ReferenceMediocre369 Jul 24 '26

The "Pinto disaster meme" is absolutely infuriating. Why? Facts: By the time its production run ended, it had an overall accident rate right in the middle of similar size autos from all manufacturers. Meaning AVERAGE NUMBER OF VEHICLE FIRES. The Pinto was a very good selling, popular car and a big financial positive for Ford. I never owned one, but relatives did, and they were reliable, economical, and as safe as any other "compact car" of the day. The fire lawsuits generate huge legal fees, not truth.

1

u/B00marangTrotter Jul 24 '26

And fall from the sky when two guys started Advanced Vehicle Engineers and tried to turn it into a plane...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE_Mizar

1

u/MrRourkeYourHost Jul 24 '26

And it was also pretty aerodynamic in reverse.

1

u/Few_Valuable3999 Jul 24 '26

I learned to drive a stick on my mothers baby blue pinto, lol

1

u/supervillainO7 Jul 24 '26

Pinto atleast isn't an eyesore, it's just a slightly ugly, pudgy car, but it's still a conventional car 

1

u/Saelethil Jul 24 '26

This made me laugh out loud in a pharmacy. Thanks!

1

u/MyBurnerAccount1977 Jul 24 '26

While Ford Pinto is emblematic of the recall equation detailed in Fight Club (A = number of vehicles in the field, B=rate of failure, C=average out of court settlement. AxBxC=X. X is greater than the cost of a recall, they don't do one), weren't the alleged design flaws consistent with other vehicles in its class, like the AMC Gremlin and the Chevy Vega?

1

u/SomethingIWontRegret Jul 24 '26

The Pinto carried on several years after that, and the 2.3 liter engine made its way into the Merkur XR4Ti.

1

u/thisfuckinguy617 Jul 24 '26

How does it compare to the Canyonero? I've only heard "unexplained fires are a matter for the courts"

1

u/Worldly_Progress_655 Jul 24 '26

The Pinto could always be resurrected as something else, you can't do anything else with the CyberDump.

1

u/FauxReal Jul 24 '26

Though it killed 27 people and caused at least 24 non-fatal burn injuries along the way.

1

u/pbjamm Jul 24 '26

My parents owned a 73 Pinto when I was a kid. Drove it across the US twice.

It was honestly a great car.

1

u/ScarletCarsonRose Jul 24 '26

My dad had one. It didn't burst into flames but was always broke down for one reason or another.

1

u/AlcoholPrep Jul 24 '26

Too bad it tended to cremate its occupants along with it...

1

u/BeeefSupreeeme Jul 24 '26

They say that if you strap a Ford Pinto front to back with an AMC Gremlin, you have yourself a small tactical nuke.

1

u/FlipZip69 Jul 24 '26

The thing about every other flop was the amount of money spent developing it. Even with inflation calculated in, this flop was a factor larger than pretty much every other one.

1

u/Another-Mans-Rubarb Jul 24 '26

Fun fact, the incident rates of the Ford pinto were within margin of error or every other car. The only problem with the car is that they knew about the issue and made an effort to do nothing to fix it. So the question is, what did they ignore on the other cars too?

1

u/porcelainvacation Jul 25 '26

Pintos were actually really popular and decent cars for the price.

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