“Friends down the street were not so lucky, theirs exploded into a ball of flames on the Ford lot at the exact moment they were trying to negotiate a trade in.”
I think you are confused.
A really big piece of journalistic fraud, now mostly forgotten, was the “exploding Ford Pinto” reportage of the 1970s which, before it was exposed as fraud, spawned journalistic attacks on other car companies ( http://www.fordpinto.com/index.php?page=228 ). Man, they all climbed aboard! NBC, CBS, and ABC. Dateline. 60 Minutes. 20/20–all the major nooze shows were accusing auto manufacturers of selling cars they knew to be death-traps.
And they had exploding car video to prove it. Exploding car video obtained by installing incendiary devices in cars and blowing them up on purpose, sabotaging brakes, drilling holes in the transmission–all sorts of little journalistic tricks designed to get the kind of video the noozies wanted.Even the National Highway Traffic Safety Board chided the alleged journalists for basing their reports on, at best, “abnormal test conditions and unrealistic maneuvers.” And that was when they weren’t hiding rockets in the trunk.
https://leeduigon.com/2016/12/09/vintage-fake-news-the-ford-pinto-scandal/
Nope not confused. Really happened. One off? Who knows.
Pintos had a definite crash design problem.
When rear ended, the gas filler tube would be pulled from the gas tank, spilling copious quantities of fuel to catch on fire.
A retro fitted longer tube minimized the issue.