From a particularly fascinating post by Shay Eden on Facebook.
Every time a big company does a recall, I remember this case. The lowest in the history of recalls. This is a case that illustrates how low business ethics can go and a case that needs to be repeated and recalled again and again, in order to maintain moral boundaries in the business world, the temple of our profits.
The Ford Pinto was a flashy family car that was marketed in 1971 intensively. A vehicle that was a great success with over 320,000 cars already in the first year in the US alone.
Um, it was a car with a fatal safety failure.
Little by little, reports began to arrive about exploding fuel tanks that claimed human lives. 900 people died from exploding Fords! Some immediately, some in the following years from severe burn damage, and hundreds more injured.
It turns out that if you rear-end your Pinto at an angle, the gas tank burns within seconds and your chances of getting out of it are slim.
But Ford continued intensively advertising the Pinto under “the most comfortable family car”, while the correct slogan should have been “drive to your death, the keys are inside”…
So tell me, it happens that there are failures, even tough ones. But then came the investigation that stunned the world:
- It was revealed that Ford executives knew about the malfunction as early as the crash test phase. But because of the competition at that time for family vehicles, they chose to continue marketing it according to the schedule they set for themselves. In the comments below I put a link to a video that shows the crash test – the car explodes!
- When the first reports arrived, Ford management “insisted” that they were not related to a structural problem with the vehicle and that it was an unfortunate coincidence and “relied” on fabricated documents, even though they knew about it from day zero… ugh, eh?
- An internal document that constituted a “smoking gun” and was leaked to the media revealed that Ford managers, not only knew, but they actually made calculation tables according to which the cost of a recall (repair of the tank) is higher than the cost of legal treatment of lawsuits following a death! And they defined it as “calculated risk”…
I’m sure they found a table in which it was recorded in one column – the expected number of deaths from the accident with the cost of legal treatment in front of the column of the cost of repair. The management chose the compensation path with cold consideration. Let them die, the price of death is lower than recall…
But karma is a beach, and the disclosure of the cases caused not only a hysterical recall of 1.5 million vehicles (which continued to be sold for another decade) but also that the Pinto dropped from the production line, Ford paid astronomical compensations of hundreds of millions in 117 civil lawsuits and was on the verge of liquidation. The company received heavy image contempt that has stuck with it to this day. (There are people, like me, who don’t want to forget and will never buy a Ford).
And of course, thousands of families whose lives were ruined because of… a family car.
For me, as a marketing and business person, who likes to sleep at night with a moral sense, this case is a guiding spotlight. It illustrates human cynicism in its full force, the cold calculation that businessmen sometimes have according to which profit comes first, is the introduction to all the phrases “money has no smell”. And unfortunately for all of us, he is not the only one. Add the cigarette companies that denied the harms of smoking and all the Erin-Brockovich style polluting companies, and more and more…
By the way, the Pinto was mentioned in Fight Club in a particularly strong scene (there is a link in the comments) and also in the comedy “Top Secret” (link below).
So Strauss is doing a huge recall today because of suspected salmonella. Great for all of us. I only hope that the delay (which was allegedly reported in the media) was not due to business considerations…
Do ethical business!
