Avanti Gas Tank

[psdenno]

The Avanti’s gas tank placement was used as an example in the case of national litigation involving what car.?

[Gunslinger]

While there's a span of years between the two, it sounds like you're speaking of the Ford Pinto.

[plwindish]

Has to be the Pinto litigation. About the only other litigation involving gas tank placement was GM's placement on the sides of the vehicle outside the frame rails.

[Gunslinger]

GM's placing the gas tank outside the frame rails plus NBC's addition of explosives to make their point (without saying so). Calling Brian Williams!

[plwindish]

Maybe BW got it wrong, it was a GM gas tank that went whizzing by him and caused him to fill his pants!

[brad]

Originally the spare tire well was to be the fuel tank. They couldn't come up with the fuel proof liner and decided to "re-arrange" things

[psdenno]

While there's a span of years between the two, it sounds like you're speaking of the Ford Pinto.

It was the Ford Pinto. Lawyers used the Avanti tank placement as an example to show that a safer tank location was already "state of the art" by the time the Pinto was designed.

I remember seeing a political cartoon of a B-52 dropping Pintos, instead of bombs, on North Viet Nam at the time of the law suits.

[1963r2]

I'm sure I saw a movie where a butterfly lands on a Pinto and it explodes.

pb

[Gunslinger]

During the same time period as the Pinto debacle there were several crashes of DC-10 airliners due to improper sealing of rear doors. When the Pinto assembly lines were being shut down in California Ford was helping employees being laid off transition to new jobs with Douglas Aircraft not far away.

One evening Johnny Carson in his monologue quipped "Can you believe that? The same people that built the Pinto will now be building DC-10's!"

I about fell on the floor laughing.