• Lee Iacocca, who made the decision to let people die rather than implement a fix that would have cost as little as $1, never paid a penalty for his actions. He went on to become the chairman of Chrysler, a business celebrity in the 1980s, and publish multiple bestselling books.
If you ever wonder if corporations will kill you for money, this man did it--and even got away with it. The elite protect their own.
And if they put governors on every car limiting top speed to 55mph they would save even more lives.
btt
So the jab is Pinto 2.0.
Just imagine what the Pinto would have been like had Ford been exempt from all liabilities.
What did we learn? We learned that many MBA types will run over the rainbow to get to the pot of gold, meaning they will destroy a company for a short term profit.
I think the car industry is one of those industries where absolutely ruthless men get ahead and nice guys get shown the door. Iacocca was a product of his time and perfectly suited to the environment. Great smile but keep a watch on both hands and don’t let him get behind you.
There is nearly as much hate in this article as at a BLM riot.
Iacocca was no saint, but he was not the bloodthirsty demon portrayed herein either. It was the board, not one man, that made the poor decision on the spring bolt/fuel tank issue.
The starting post in this thread would be right at home on Democratic Underground.
Unless, of course, injured or killed by a vaxxine which Congress has thoughtfully immunized against liability even as the vaxx destroys the immune systems of those who have been vaxxed.
“Ford’s accounting team calculated that it would be cheaper to settle lawsuits with the public than repair the problem.”
They aren’t the only company to do that.
“Yup – that’s not a typo. Ford spent millions to lobby against car safety.”
Now they simply RUBBER STAMP everything the government tells them, even when it’s stupid - like selling electric cars that no one wants.
You don’t have to go back that far
Gm did the same thing with the ignition locks that failed in late 2000s gm cars.
Many times the addition of forced ‘safety improvements’ wind up killing more people than not doing them. For example, the national building codes now mandate sprinkler systems in all new (and substantially remodeled) housing. What happens next is that the cost of major renovations and rebuilds gets that much higher...so many people hang on to their old units without ever upgrading (look at some of the apartments in NYC if you want to see an extreme example of where that leads).
And since new housing, even without sprinklers, is FAR SAFER than very old housing...those few people who are saved by sprinklers are far outnumbered by those who die from fires or electrocution in old houses.
Safety is a BALANCE...extreme/costly measures forcing ‘safety improvements’ are often as counterproductive (and deadly) as not forcing very cheap improvements (like GFCI receptacles).
Not as reprehensible as the GM key problem. Death toll was lower, but they left on girl to rot in prison as part of the cover up. The senior GM execs should have been left to rot in a Texas prison, but they all sailed free with their years of huge bonuses.
Ford never could make a gas tank that was safe according to my grandfather people were blowing themselves up because they were lighting a match to see if there was gas in the tank.
We’ve learned thst bean-counters can easily ruin a car design.
CC
Car companies make these calculations all the time. The Pinto was a great little cheap car. Want a safer car? Pay more. The Pinto case taught us that Americans want media and government to determine who should manufacture what, and how, and what people should buy. It was: Burn up in a Pinto? Sue Ford. Ford won’t make products for long that lose money or embarrass the brand. Now it’s: no Pintos. No cheap cars. No fast cars. Speed governors. Thousands of regulations. Outrageously complicated injection systems. A whole car industry uilt on the debt Americans incur to drive a Gov-mobile.
I’m on my second car, a Honda Accord, just like my first car.
If and when my 1999 Accord finally is done, even if Honda no longer makes any more Honda’s with combustion engines, my third Honda Accord will be ... borrowed...after the collapse hits.
THAT is how much I trust Honda over any other auto companies.
Some years after this fiasco, I read a blip buried in the middle of the newspaper that after testing, NTSB(?) determined that the Pinto was actually safer than competing Japanese cars of the time in case of rearend collision.
Of course they buried it and mentioned it only one time so as to not spoil the narrative the American companies are evil.