Did any of you cunts ever own a Pinto in the 1970s?

My sister had one for a while, and riding in it was like being in a toy car. I was glad she got rid of it.

No, but our neighbor did. What a piece of shit. When you rode around in it you thought you were riding in an empty soda can with wheels. Cheap as fuck. Ugly, too. Possibly the only car that was uglier in the 70s was the AMC Pacer, but at least that one didn't explode when you were parallel parking it.

I was too cool for Pintos, I don't think I've ever been in one, nor a Chevette

No my mother traded in our Ford for Datsuns!

My family had a ‘71 Pinto and a ‘67 Mustang at the same time. I mostly drove the Mustang, and my sister drove the Pinto. My sister often said our parents liked me better, and perhaps the cars were an example of that!

I spent a large part of my childhood with my single mom and 2 sisters in a Pinto.

The Maverick also had that gas tank problem.

my DAD owned one

I did.

My Dad had one too for a short while, an early 70s white model.

After he upgraded to a decent family Buick, he kept if for some reason as a 2nd car. Mistake. I remember driving around in it, in the back seat looking down at the floorboards in front of me and seeing PAVEMENT whiz by underneath. The bolts holding the front seat had rusted out and punched through the floor, leaving small openings.

As far as pieces of shit go, nothing beat a Chevy Vega.

Pinto was my first car as a senior in high school.

My brother had one. It may have been a fire hazard, but I don't see what's supposedly so ugly about the body (shape) of the car. It's pretty classic in shape for a 2-door coupe. Seems like it's just popular now to rag on it, in hindsight. I think it's a nice-looking car.

I was just a kid but my mom and I got rear ended in a bank drive-thru while sitting in her Pinto. I know she messed up her neck but I was fine. Not sure how. We both weren't wearing seatbelts.

Charlie was so cheap he made some of us drive Pintos while others (Jill) got Mustangs

I think my dad owned one in the mid 80s. I don't remember a lot about it but I remember the seat belts in the back seat wouldn't latch, so there was that. But I actually remember it being a really cool, sporty looking car for the 70s/80s. It was orange and had a nice look to it. It's really too bad it had the problems it did because (again, from what I can recall), it really wasn't any worse or better than the two door cars marketed today. My boyfriend drives a two-door BMW and it actually doesn't feel that much different than the pinto.

[quote]Cheap as fuck. Ugly, too.

The original Pinto was an attractively styled car. One of the best looking small cars to come out of the US.

As the years went on, Ford had to add safety bumpers and what not and it really compromised the design.

Hot as hell!

My sister had a Pinto and it was like riding in a Barbie car.

I learned to drive a manual transmission on an early 70s Pinto. I’ve owned manuals ever since.

My family had a Pinto and before that a Covair. I'm surprised my family isn't covered in 3rd degree burns.

1976 Pinto Hatchback in green.

R13 - My parents had that exact car on the top right: the yellow one with fake wood panelling.

Some woman had a “medical incident” and smashed her car into it on the highway while my parents were driving, totalling it. Fortunately, it didn’t explode!

It put the potato in CHiPs.

I had a Gremlin, which was apparently safer in collisions. Mine was grossly overpowered (304 V8) and was a handful, though.

My father had a yellow Pinto with a black top, but I don't think he had it very long. I believe it was a '76, but may have been a '75. I knew someone very knowledgeable about cars who had a Pinto when I knew him in the late 80's to mid- 90's, and he said they were good cars. He fixed the gas tank issue in his.

I lived in Goshen Indiana when those three girls burned to death in the Pinto crash that ended in Ford going to trial for reckless homicide. The trial was held in another town because of the publicity. I drove that road many times, it has curbs for miles that didn't allow you to pull off the road if you had car trouble, they later installed pull off areas.

Chevrolet pickup trucks would also become fireballs on impact.

This woman in our neighborhood in Minneapolis made a nasty bean casserole she called "Fjord pintos."

According to her kids it was canned pinto beans, tuna helper, and pickled herring.

I thought they were making it up, but she also served it to guests so there was corroboration.

Meanwhile, the mom was pulled over for a routine traffic stop and they found a shit ton of Quaaludes baggies stashed all around her car.

It was a Pontiac station wagon.

The whole thing was like an episode of the Frugal Gourmet, The Gong Show, and Mary Hartman! Mary Harman! all mashed together.

With a Pontiac commercial wedged in there somewhere.

Never a Pinto, but at one time our family had three Gremlins in front of our house.

At the time, we were all terribly ashamed. I actually think they're cool cars now.

After those cars, my dad had an AMC Concord. Which was not a cool car and was one of those early 80s hideous K car type of cars. (I mean it wasn't a K car but it was as ugly as one.)

Yes, we had a blue Pinto when I was a kid. I liked to ride around in the hatchback with no seatbelt. I liked it better than our neighbors VW Bug because his car was really freaking loud, and the trunk was in the front. We eventually upgraded to a Ford Granada. It was quite square, in shape and stye.

.,.,

I had a Pinto in my 20s. My father was in the car biz and regularly gifted us with all sorts of used cars. I was side swiped, rear-ended, and broadsided in every one. Rear-ended badly in the Pinto but it had been made safe with an interior "bladder" lining in the gas tank. It did not explode and soon after bought a car of my own. Dad was pretty eccentric and for a while owned a limousine, MG Roadster, Mustang, Camaro, but he always picked the boring crap for the kids.

^^^^Cray Cray is back and she's off the meds again!!!

Such an incredibly impractical car.

The driving position was low, with the driver barely off the ground. The rear seat was tiny and uninhabitable for adults. These were not practical subcompacts; they were 3/4 scale Mustangs.

The car weighed several hundred pounds more than a similarly sized Toyota, necessitating the use of engines that were larger than other small cars. As a result, gas mileage was low-V6 Pintos couldn’t get 20 miles to the gallon.

As safety regulations required bigger, heavier bumpers, power steering became a virtual necessity on post 1975 Pintos, unheard of at the time (the only imports at the time that were available with Power Steering were luxury cars like Mercedes).

And Ford kept the damn thing in production for almost 10 years, until 1980, 2 years after the gas tank problem became public. Even after the gas tank problem became a big story in 1978, Ford managed to produce n average of 190,000 Pintos annually.

When you compare a 1980 Pinto to a 1980 Civic or Rabbit, it is amazing the US auto industry still exists.

And despite this, the Pinto still seems to have a better reputation than the Chevrolet Vega, the car that rusted on the showroom floor.

My sister had an orange one. I drove it once, and the gear stick broke off in my hand.

If we did, we wouldn't be here OP!

R36 Would have loved to have seen your reaction to that. LOL.

One of the fun scenes from Top Secret featuring a young and incredibly cute Val Kilmer

One day in 1979 I was driving back up from LA to SF in my Pinto, happily booking up the highway at abut 85 mph on an empty road (you don't see that anymore). Zooming along in a hurry to get home I realized there were flashing lights on the road behind me. I pulled over and the Chippie said "didn't you notice how long I've been following you?" and in my excitement that my Pinto could go so fast, I exclaimed, "No, I'm too amazed how fast this thing went, I don't get it over 65 at home!" He laughed and said, "I'm letting you off this time but slow down."

My neighbors had a light blue Pinto that they traded in for an orange Le Car.

Nothing was better than my Fjord Fjairlane.

Didn’t have a Pinto, but did have a fabulous orange Chevette. The floorboard in front of the driver’s seat rusted entirely through, leaving a big hole. One winter I was driving to work through heavy snow. I hit a dip in the road and POOF the car suddenly became a snow globe.

LOL R43

Had a Pinto all through High school. I loved it.

I saw a show about the Pinto and it was made with about a thousand dollars worth of parts. That is why they were death traps. I have only ever bought Toyota cars because they are 100000000% superior to garbage American cars. Toyotas can get a million miles, just like DLers asscunts. LOL.

I know the Ford Pinto was a DEATH TRAP. The automakers in those days didn't car about small cars. They put all of their efforts into mid sized and especially full sized cars because that's were all of the profits were.

In December 1975 my parents bought a 1975 Hornet Sportabout. It was a clunker. My mother would be making a left turn onto a main road from a side street and that Sportabout would always stall as she was making that turn - which was dangerous.

The car only got 15 miles per gallon which was atrocious mileage even in ca. 1977. The car did not have air conditioning either.

It was the color of this car but did not have a vinyl roof.