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Ford Pinto Essay

613 Words3 Pages

The Ford Pinto case.

Lukasz Glura, B00066080
BN903 Higher Certificate in Engineering in Mechatronics
Institute of Technology Blanchardstown
20th November 2014

Introduction

On 11th of September 1970 Ford released a new compact car – Ford Pinto. The car was designed to compete with small, compact cars that have been imported to USA from Europe and Japan. The Pinto was expected to cost only 2 000 dollars. But this is not the price of the vehicle or a friendly name that drew the attention of the media. It turned out that Pinto has a fatal design flaw.
Ford Pinto - bad design

The Pinto was brought from the drawing board to the production in the extremely short time of 25months (compared to 43 months as a standard average). In addition to the time pressure, the design engineering team was set the target not to exceed $ 2000 in cost and 2000 pounds in weight [1]. Any decisions that threatened these targets or …show more content…

The main design issues were:
• The tank was located behind the rear axle, instead of above it.
• The gas tank and the rear axle were separated by only nine inches.
• Incorrectly positioned bolts that threatened the gas tank.
• In the event of an accident the fuel filler pipe would to disconnect from the tank, causing fuel spillage that could lead to dangerous fires.

Engineering Ethics

It soon turned out that the company knew about this defect in the design phase, even before Pinto went on sale. Ford requested an internal cost analysis carried out. The specialists from Ford Motor Company showed that the improvement of the structure of the tank will cost $ 11 per car, and the carrying out all the repairs and modifications will cost the total sum of $ 137 million [2]. The breakdown of the risk-benefit

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