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Speaker 1: Hi friends, It's me Josh, and for this week's select,

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Speaker 1: I've chosen our episode live show really from twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 1: back when Ford Pintos were flaming death traps. Now, this

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Speaker 1: episode actually came out with an intro from me and Chuck,

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Speaker 1: so it seems foolish to do an intro to an intro,

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Speaker 1: even though that's what I'm doing.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: That's why I'm going to stop and just say, hope

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Speaker 1: you enjoy.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 4: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's not here,

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Speaker 4: but we are with all these beautiful people live at

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Speaker 4: the Buckhead Theater in our own Atlanta, GA.

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Speaker 5: Good. Hey, yeah they are.

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Speaker 4: Not too shabby, everybody. Yeah, So let's start.

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Speaker 2: Man. I feel great.

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Speaker 3: So I feel great.

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Speaker 4: Since this is a live podcast and it's actually set

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Speaker 4: a little further back in time, we thought we would

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Speaker 4: all get into the Wayback Machine. So for those of

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Speaker 4: you who have seen us live before, you know the

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Speaker 4: Wayback Machine is made up. It's not a real thing,

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Speaker 4: but it does take a twinkle in your eye and

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Speaker 4: a heart full of magic. To get into the wayback machine.

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Speaker 4: So I hope all of you have that going on

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Speaker 4: right now. That was my best serious Silverman impression.

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Speaker 5: It's pretty good.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

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Speaker 4: So we're all on the way back machine, okay, and

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Speaker 4: we're going back to Detroit, Michigan, back to like the

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Speaker 4: mid sixties or something like that.

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Speaker 3: We'll say, yeah, back when people still wanted to go

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Speaker 3: to Detroit.

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Speaker 2: On purpose.

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Speaker 3: Sorry man, Yeah, I told you.

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Speaker 2: And we're gonna fly in. That's the sounds, and.

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Speaker 4: We're very small and invisible, by the way, So we're

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Speaker 4: gonna fly in over the shoulder of an up and

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Speaker 4: coming auto executive with a beautiful head of hair named

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Speaker 4: Lee Aya Coca.

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Speaker 2: And Lee Lee.

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Speaker 4: At the time, he was what you might call a

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Speaker 4: young turk, up and coming, like ready to take on

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Speaker 4: the world. Great guy, and he had a lot of

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Speaker 4: cred around the company that he worked at called Ford

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Speaker 4: Motor Company.

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Speaker 5: I tried its pre Chrysler right, and he.

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Speaker 2: Had a lot of cred because he had.

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Speaker 4: Designed the Mustang right. It was known as Lee's car.

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Speaker 3: Even yeah, I mean, if you if you are the

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Speaker 3: guy and the of the Ford Mustang project, then you've

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Speaker 3: kind of bought your ticket in the car industry. If

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Speaker 3: you have be a great car, do you make.

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Speaker 4: The car that Vanilla Ice will eventually love, You've done something.

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Speaker 2: Quite right with your life, right.

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Speaker 5: Did he have a Mustang.

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Speaker 4: Rolling in my five point oh with the rag top down?

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Speaker 4: That's a Mustang, buddy, is it sure? I think it's

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Speaker 4: even in the video.

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Speaker 5: I've never been more ashamed.

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Speaker 2: To not know the lyrics of a song.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's f and Vanilla Ice. So I don't

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Speaker 3: feel like I should have known it. I just feel

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Speaker 3: like a stooge.

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Speaker 4: Oh no, it's fine. No, you got a Wean shirt on.

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Speaker 4: You probably should know this. But I know I know

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Speaker 4: that lyric though. Yeah, I didn't know a five point.

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Speaker 2: Five point him? All right, it's my understanding, right everybody.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I thought it was a Volkswagen Beatle.

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Speaker 4: No, no, but that does come up starting now because

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Speaker 4: Leik Coca was one of the few people in Detroit

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Speaker 4: at the time who realized that the American auto industry's

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Speaker 4: lunch was being eaten in the subcompact market, mainly because

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Speaker 4: no American car company was making subcompacts at the time.

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Speaker 3: Right now, we liked her cars very large at time.

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Speaker 2: Like land yachts.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so Li said, the Germans are eating our

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Speaker 4: lunch with their little Volkswagen Beetle Hitler's car.

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Speaker 3: Look it up, I had two Volkswagen Beetles.

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Speaker 2: Those were two Hitler's cars.

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Speaker 4: You supported Hiller in a way.

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Speaker 5: My mom is over there. She bought that car. I

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Speaker 5: don't know.

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Speaker 2: She's going like that.

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Speaker 4: And then the Toyota Corolla was also killing people, right,

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Speaker 4: killing Detroit. I should say, yeah, And so Lee said,

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Speaker 4: we need to get a car to market. But I'm

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Speaker 4: not the president. There's a man who is president. And

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Speaker 4: what is his name, Chuck?

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Speaker 3: I can't ever remember, honestly, Oh no, I do remember.

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Speaker 3: His name is Bunkie Knudsen.

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Speaker 4: If you're the president of a car company and your

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Speaker 4: name's Bunkie Knudsen, you gotta.

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Speaker 2: Know you have a target on your back.

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Speaker 4: Right, Nobody's gonna let that stand for very long, especially

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Speaker 4: not Leyah Coca.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: The only thing Bunkie Muson in that year would have

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Speaker 3: been president of is the super Secret, super Secret Treehouse

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Speaker 3: Playboy Magazine club.

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Speaker 5: Led by Bunkie Knutson.

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Speaker 4: Right, are the local union of the guys who sell

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Speaker 4: those like monkeys that play the symbols on the street.

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Speaker 2: You know, they wind up once, all right.

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Speaker 3: So regardless of that, Bunkieknutson was in charge and Leah

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Speaker 3: Coca had his sight set on that job, and so

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Speaker 3: they settle things in the traditional way in the car

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Speaker 3: industry at the time, which was arm wrestling.

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Speaker 5: It's a little crazy serious.

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Speaker 4: So Leiah Coca had this thing where we think this

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Speaker 4: is probably how he rose to power. He could rip

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Speaker 4: the sleeve clean off of his shirt right at the shoulder,

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Speaker 4: right before an arm wrestling match.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: It's very intimidating, and he always kept his arms oiled.

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Speaker 4: Every morning he would oil him up and very gingerly

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Speaker 4: put the shirt on over him so the oil wouldn't

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Speaker 4: show too So it really had like a pronounced effect

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Speaker 4: when he tore his shirts leeve off and went like that.

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Speaker 2: So when he did this, the Bunkie Nudsen and Bunkie

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Speaker 2: saw that oil bicep. He knew his time running four

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Speaker 2: Company had grown short.

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Speaker 5: That's right, Bunky Newton knew what time it was.

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Speaker 2: All that was totally made up. You all realized, right.

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Speaker 2: The stun silence threw me off a little bit.

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Speaker 5: It was back to the treehouse for Bunkie.

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Speaker 3: So Leah Koka found himself in charge of Ford, and

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Speaker 3: he said, we got to get a subcompact going fast, dudes.

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Speaker 3: So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get a

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Speaker 3: project going. I'm even gonna give it a code name,

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Speaker 3: which is really weird and sort.

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Speaker 2: Of Simon Mark, kind of a Nudsen move.

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Speaker 3: But he named it Project Phoenix. Very cute and a

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Speaker 3: little ironic once you know what this is about. And

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Speaker 3: he said, I want a car, I want to on

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Speaker 3: the market and what twenty four months?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and normally it took like forty three months dated

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Speaker 4: car from concept to production. Iakoka said, nope, twenty four.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty four so super fast and it can't weigh

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Speaker 3: more than two thousand pounds and it can't cost a

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Speaker 3: customer more than two thousand dollars. And he totally should

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Speaker 3: have called it Project two thousand, so that would have

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Speaker 3: been a super cool name.

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Speaker 5: In the early nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 4: That car would go on to be known as the

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Speaker 4: Ford Pinto. For those of you who aren't going, like, oh, colaps.

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Speaker 3: Couple of booze, a couple of groans, and a lot

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Speaker 3: of like what we're going to fill the people in

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Speaker 3: on this Okay, Yeah, So the deal with the Ford

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Speaker 3: Pinto was if you don't know, and you did grow

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Speaker 3: up in the seventies, it had a problem. We don't

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Speaker 3: know a lot about, but we know that the Ford

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Speaker 3: Pinto had a problem. If you would hit the Ford

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Speaker 3: Pinto from the rear going very very slow, sometimes it

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Speaker 3: would burst into a fiery ball. And that is not

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Speaker 3: a good thing for a car to.

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Speaker 2: Do, especially when you're still in the car.

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Speaker 5: That's right.

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Speaker 2: Has anyone seen the movie Top Secret?

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Speaker 5: Remember that one? There's Alkilmer.

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Speaker 4: There's a scene where Valcimra, I think, is on a motorcycle.

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Speaker 4: He's being chased by Germans and he somehow out maneuvers

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Speaker 4: them and they swerve off the road and slam on

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Speaker 4: their brakes and almost come to a complete stop right

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Speaker 4: before hitting a Pinto in the rear, but don't quite

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Speaker 4: make it. It makes that crystal thing sound and then

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Speaker 4: boom they just blow up into flames.

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Speaker 3: Right, And this was in the eighties, This was like

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Speaker 3: at least ten years after the Pinto had this reputation.

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Speaker 3: That's not that.

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Speaker 4: Far from the truth, actually, we found from doing this research.

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Speaker 4: So there's actually a lot of choice quotes that we

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Speaker 4: found a lot of people love taking potshots at the Pinto.

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Speaker 4: Some have written some pretty great stuff. You want to

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Speaker 4: take the first one.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the first one was from Popular Mechanics magazine, and

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Speaker 3: they said, arguably the most dangerous fuel tank of all

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Speaker 3: time was a rear mounted vessel installed on the seventy

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Speaker 3: one through seventy six Ford Pinto. It's possibly the best

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Speaker 3: example of what happens when poor engineering meets corporate negligence.

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Speaker 3: Good quote, I got one.

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Speaker 4: There's this guy named doctor Leslie Ball. He was the

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Speaker 4: chief safety officer for NASA's manned Space program.

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Speaker 2: So this guy knew safety, right.

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Speaker 4: He said that the release to production of the Pinto

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Speaker 4: was the most reprehensible decision in the history of American engineering.

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Speaker 4: So there's a couple of things I want your right.

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Speaker 4: A couple of things to note in this quote. One

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Speaker 4: he said was the most reprehensible decision, not one of

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Speaker 4: the and he also qualifies it with American engineering, not

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Speaker 4: automotive engineering. He's including like easy bake ovens and other

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Speaker 4: stuff they have killed like millions of people.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 3: He's including everything ever built basically, Yeah, easy bake ovens

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Speaker 3: or death traps too.

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Speaker 2: So the Pinto.

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Speaker 4: It was kind of an issue for Ford is we're

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Speaker 4: going to see but there's this one tibit we ran

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Speaker 4: a cost that we just love. There was a radio

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Speaker 4: spot for the Pinto in the seventies and Ford had

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Speaker 4: to get their their agency to get rid of it

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Speaker 4: because it had the line the Pinto leaves you with

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Speaker 4: that warm feeling for real, this is this is a

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Speaker 4: fun one of research, all right.

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Speaker 3: So again I want to reiterate, we don't know anything

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Speaker 3: about the design of cars. You know how to drive cars,

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Speaker 3: and that's about where it ends.

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Speaker 5: But we do know this.

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Speaker 3: The original design of the Pinto had a gas tank

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Speaker 3: that started six inches from the rear bumper. I know

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Speaker 3: that's not a good idea. If I was in Detroit,

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Speaker 3: I would have said, well, that's weird, and why would

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Speaker 3: you want to do that? Sure, because you know, accidents happened, right,

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Speaker 3: No one thought about it.

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Speaker 4: No. That's made even worse by the fact that a

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Speaker 4: car critic would later call that bumper little more than ornamentation, right, like,

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Speaker 4: car's supposed to have a bumper, just put that thing

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Speaker 4: that looks like a bumper on it. Basically, there was

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Speaker 4: a later improved version of the bumper on the Pinto

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Speaker 4: that could with stand a five mile an hour impact.

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Speaker 2: That was the improved version.

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Speaker 4: And again, this is all happening six inches away from

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Speaker 4: the gas tank.

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Speaker 2: That's that's just one side of the field tank.

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Speaker 4: There's a whole other side, and it had like its

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Speaker 4: own issues.

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Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, there's there's something on a car called a differential.

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Speaker 2: Uh, we mechanics say it.

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Speaker 3: We don't know what that is, but I did some

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Speaker 3: research and here's what I'm gonna call it. It's the

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Speaker 3: magic box that makes the car go room.

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Speaker 2: I think it's pretty accurate.

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Speaker 4: What's what's so funny is like we pride ourselves on

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Speaker 4: chasing down every tidbit of information when it comes to cars,

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Speaker 4: We're just like, that's out.

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Speaker 2: No idea.

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Speaker 3: Who'd want to hear a live podcast about a car? So, uh,

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Speaker 3: this magic box on the Ford Pinto had four protruding

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Speaker 3: bolts facing the gas tank that uh see you're getting

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Speaker 3: it now that uh in court later on, and this

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Speaker 3: would end up in court that you see where this

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Speaker 3: is going. Lawyers would call them can openers, and we're

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Speaker 3: just gonna call them for this show, flaming death bolts.

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Speaker 4: I wish we had a sound effect or like a

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Speaker 4: jingle like Flaming Death Bolts.

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Speaker 3: And we should totally trademark Flaming Death Bolts.

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Speaker 4: I think so too, or at least that's a band name.

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Speaker 4: I think we should at least call it out as that.

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Speaker 5: Oh right, do you hear that?

251
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Speaker 3: Are they're Flaming Death Faults behind us?

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Speaker 2: That came out?

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Speaker 5: Uh, we're here on the wrong night.

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Speaker 4: So, like I said, there there's a lot of good

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Speaker 4: quotes out there, but probably the best of them, the

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Speaker 4: best came from this journalist named Mark Dowie who figures

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Speaker 4: big time into the story and he probably got across

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Speaker 4: the problem with the Pinto better than anybody. And if

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Speaker 4: I may please okay, Mark Dowie said, if you ran

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Speaker 4: into a Pinto you were following it over thirty miles

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Speaker 4: an hour, the rear end of the car would buckle

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Speaker 4: like an accordion right up to the back seat, and

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Speaker 4: the tube bleeding to the gas tank cap would be

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Speaker 4: ripped away from the tank itself and gas would immediately

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Speaker 4: begin squashing onto the road around the car. Right the

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Speaker 4: buckle gas tank would be jammed up against the differential housing,

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Speaker 4: which contained four sharp protruding bolts, likely to gash holes

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Speaker 4: in the tank and spill still more gas. Now all

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Speaker 4: you need is a spark from a cigarette.

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Speaker 2: And this is me interjecting here. This is the seventies.

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Speaker 4: So every single person in every single car was smoking

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Speaker 4: every single second of every moment they were driving.

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Speaker 3: There are four lit cigarettes in every car at all

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Speaker 3: times with the windows.

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Speaker 2: Up barring that.

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Speaker 4: You could also get it from the ignition or scraping metal,

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Speaker 4: and both cars would be engulfed in flames.

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Speaker 2: If you gave that pin to a.

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Speaker 4: Really good whack, say it forty miles per hour, chances

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Speaker 4: are excellent that its doors would jam and you would

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Speaker 4: have to stand by and watch its trapped passengers burn

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Speaker 4: to death.

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Speaker 3: You're that's not me saying this.

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Speaker 5: Your additional what do you call it? Pantomiming acting?

285
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Speaker 2: It's in the pantomime tradition.

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Speaker 5: Fantastic, Thank you.

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Speaker 3: Reading Rainbow with Josh give LeVar Burton a run for

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Speaker 3: his money. All right, So there was one thirty mile

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Speaker 3: per hour crash test with a pinto that found that

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Speaker 3: all thirteen gallons, all thirteen gallons, spilled out in less

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Speaker 3: than sixty seconds. So we all drive here in Atlanta

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Speaker 3: and you all pump gas. You know how fast when

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Speaker 3: you're pumping gas, it's coming out and you're like, oh

294
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Speaker 3: my god, that's so fast. Hole coming out so fast.

295
00:15:41,800 --> 00:15:44,720
Speaker 3: You can't pump take a gas in sixty seconds. So

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Speaker 3: the Pinto is spilling gas faster than you can pump gas.

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Speaker 5: Think about that next time you go to the gas station.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, thank god, I'm not driving an early nineteen seventies Pinto.

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Speaker 4: So the weird thing is this, despite the Pinto's reputation,

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Speaker 4: whether it's from top secret, you learned about it from

301
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Speaker 4: your older brother, who knows where you heard it from,

302
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Speaker 4: but a lot most people, I would even say, know

303
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Speaker 4: of the Pinto is a flaming death trap. It turns out,

304
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Speaker 4: in retrospect, the Pinto was really not much worse than

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Speaker 4: any other car in its class at the time, which

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Speaker 4: is not to say that the Pinto wasn't a flaming

307
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Speaker 4: death trap, but instead all cars were flaming death traps.

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Speaker 4: The idea of being safe if you got into a

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Speaker 4: crash was totally lost on Detroit at the time.

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Speaker 2: It wasn't a thing.

311
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Speaker 4: So we wondered, okay, well, how did the Pinto actually

312
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Speaker 4: get this reputation?

313
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Speaker 2: And to answer that question, we have.

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Speaker 4: To go to the Great Periodical Room in the sky

315
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Speaker 4: and we have to go back to the ninth.

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Speaker 5: We all have to die.

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Speaker 2: No, No, that's the great part about it. You can

318
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Speaker 2: go there alive.

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Speaker 5: Oh.

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Speaker 3: Usually when you say the great thing in the sky,

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Speaker 3: that means you're totally dead.

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Speaker 2: Just in the sky.

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Speaker 3: Okay, all right, Great, we're going to the Great Periodical

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Speaker 3: in the sky.

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Speaker 2: Why and we're all living?

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Speaker 5: All right, it's great.

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Speaker 4: We're gonna go back to the nineteen seventy seventh section

328
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Speaker 4: and we're going to find the nineteen seventy seven year

329
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Speaker 4: for Mother Jones Magazine. Has everyone ever heard of Mother

330
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Speaker 4: Jones Magazines still around today? So on one might characterize

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Speaker 4: it as slightly left of center maybe, And it was

332
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Speaker 4: very much the same back in the day.

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Speaker 5: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: And in this September October nineteen seventy seven issue of

335
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Speaker 4: Mother Jones Magazine, there was an article by Mark Dowie.

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Speaker 3: That's right, it's called Pinto Madness. You can still read

337
00:17:40,359 --> 00:17:42,880
Speaker 3: this article today. It was one of the main sources

338
00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:45,240
Speaker 3: we used. It's a great deep dive if you want

339
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:48,359
Speaker 3: to read some more stuff about the Pinto But Mark

340
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:50,440
Speaker 3: Dowie was the quote you read earlier, and he was

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Speaker 3: a journalist there at the time.

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Speaker 5: And this is this is one reason you know. This

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Speaker 5: is also the seventies.

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Speaker 3: When they released this article in a print magazine, they

345
00:18:00,560 --> 00:18:03,560
Speaker 3: had a press conference about it, which is adorable when

346
00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:07,800
Speaker 3: you think about it, especially through today's lens. So they

347
00:18:07,960 --> 00:18:11,040
Speaker 3: even traveled. They went to Washington, d C. From San Francisco,

348
00:18:11,560 --> 00:18:14,800
Speaker 3: held a big press conference there on Capitol Hill about

349
00:18:14,800 --> 00:18:22,720
Speaker 3: a magazine article, and they invited Ralph Nader to attend, which, yeah, yeah,

350
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Speaker 3: if you don't know who Ralph Nader is, he is

351
00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:29,320
Speaker 3: a great American. He was a consumer crusader who cared

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00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:31,679
Speaker 3: really about one thing in life, and that is making

353
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Speaker 3: sure that corporations didn't screw you over and they kept

354
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Speaker 3: you safe. And it's not like he got rich doing it.

355
00:18:40,080 --> 00:18:42,520
Speaker 3: Ralph Nader was a great, great dude, right.

356
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Speaker 4: He lived like a hermit to show that he wasn't

357
00:18:45,320 --> 00:18:47,760
Speaker 4: being influenced by one side or the other. He had

358
00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:51,040
Speaker 4: like a mattress on the floor of like a studio apartment.

359
00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:53,360
Speaker 2: I think he had a hot plate that he lived with.

360
00:18:54,240 --> 00:18:59,000
Speaker 3: Ironically, it's very dangerous how they think about it.

361
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:01,640
Speaker 4: It was like probably the safer hot plates, but yeah.

362
00:19:01,480 --> 00:19:03,120
Speaker 5: I bet it was the best hot plate on the market.

363
00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:04,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you would think so. But he bought

364
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:06,120
Speaker 2: it with his own money.

365
00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:08,480
Speaker 3: He did so anyother Ralph Nader was there. They got

366
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:12,400
Speaker 3: everyone together and they had this big press conference in Washington, DC,

367
00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:17,760
Speaker 3: and Dowie starts to poke around a little bit and

368
00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:21,040
Speaker 3: do a little more research for this article and say,

369
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:22,800
Speaker 3: you know, I need to go to these need to

370
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:24,640
Speaker 3: go to dot and need to go what was the.

371
00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:28,719
Speaker 4: Other one called NHTSA ones that stand for National Man

372
00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:34,840
Speaker 4: the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Correct, it's a mouthful,

373
00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:36,800
Speaker 4: very good, so a lot of common words, but when

374
00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:38,879
Speaker 4: you put him together like that, it's tough.

375
00:19:41,800 --> 00:19:44,240
Speaker 3: So he went and started doing some investigating and he

376
00:19:44,359 --> 00:19:48,600
Speaker 3: found out that Ford had been carrying out well, they've

377
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:52,040
Speaker 3: been carrying out crash tests in secret. And when you're

378
00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:55,360
Speaker 3: carrying out crash tests in secret, that's probably not a good.

379
00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:55,720
Speaker 2: Thing, right.

380
00:19:56,119 --> 00:19:58,119
Speaker 4: It means that you didn't get the results you were

381
00:19:58,160 --> 00:20:03,919
Speaker 4: hoping for, so you you suppressed the results you had.

382
00:20:03,960 --> 00:20:05,680
Speaker 2: All the scientists murdered.

383
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:09,200
Speaker 3: Lea totally. Did He's like you see that?

384
00:20:09,280 --> 00:20:09,680
Speaker 2: Sure?

385
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:15,439
Speaker 4: He probably like was like, go to sleep forever. But

386
00:20:15,520 --> 00:20:17,280
Speaker 4: that was just to get the ball rolling. He had

387
00:20:17,359 --> 00:20:20,520
Speaker 4: goons killed the rest of them. Oh sure, and you

388
00:20:20,680 --> 00:20:22,920
Speaker 4: then you filed the crash test with the dot.

389
00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:25,000
Speaker 2: That was the normal thing.

390
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:28,119
Speaker 4: So Dowy's sitting there going through all these file cabinets,

391
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:30,640
Speaker 4: and you know, there's all these bureaucrats going like, oh God,

392
00:20:30,680 --> 00:20:36,560
Speaker 4: why does he keep saying Eureka.

393
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:35,800
Speaker 5: Here's the guy in there with the spy camera.

394
00:20:36,320 --> 00:20:38,879
Speaker 4: And he figured out very very quickly that Ford was

395
00:20:39,119 --> 00:20:44,400
Speaker 4: well aware of the notion that its Pintos were flaming

396
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:49,280
Speaker 4: death traps. Right, And from those forty crash tests, he

397
00:20:49,400 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 4: found that eleven of them, this is really important, eleven

398
00:20:53,600 --> 00:20:57,400
Speaker 4: of those crash tests had been carried out before the Pinto,

399
00:20:57,800 --> 00:21:01,280
Speaker 4: the first one, had ever rolled off of the production line.

400
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 2: Right.

401
00:21:02,400 --> 00:21:05,280
Speaker 4: He found in these crash tests that every single one

402
00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:08,080
Speaker 4: of those forty crash tests, if it was a Pinto

403
00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:10,560
Speaker 4: that had not been altered, meaning it was the same

404
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:13,480
Speaker 4: one that you would buy at like the dealership, they

405
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:16,120
Speaker 4: lost gas and an impact of twenty miles an hour

406
00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:18,960
Speaker 4: over Not very good, right, No, not.

407
00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:19,960
Speaker 5: Good at all.

408
00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,840
Speaker 3: So three of these cars passed the tests, and all

409
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:26,400
Speaker 3: three of them had been had been tweaked for safety

410
00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:28,600
Speaker 3: like these aren't the ones that you would end up buying.

411
00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:31,240
Speaker 3: They changed three of them and they all three passed.

412
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:33,199
Speaker 3: Yet they still didn't use it. And here are the

413
00:21:33,200 --> 00:21:36,640
Speaker 3: three things they did. They one was a plastic baffle,

414
00:21:36,960 --> 00:21:39,119
Speaker 3: a little square plastic that costs.

415
00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:41,200
Speaker 5: One dollar and it weighed one pound.

416
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 3: And it went between the flaming death bolts and the

417
00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:44,960
Speaker 3: gas tank.

418
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:47,600
Speaker 5: Solved the problem pretty sensible.

419
00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:52,040
Speaker 3: Did not use it because remember two thousand pounds two

420
00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:54,719
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, which I don't know what that is today.

421
00:21:54,920 --> 00:21:57,919
Speaker 2: It's a two pounds and twelve thousand.

422
00:21:57,720 --> 00:22:00,280
Speaker 3: Dollars the pounds and change.

423
00:22:00,600 --> 00:22:03,160
Speaker 2: Okay, gravity is read relatively the same.

424
00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:07,320
Speaker 3: The other thing they did, and this ostensibly was a

425
00:22:07,359 --> 00:22:10,679
Speaker 3: little heavier, They put a metal plate to reinforce that

426
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:12,240
Speaker 3: ornamental bumper.

427
00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:16,879
Speaker 5: In other words, they gave it a bumper and that worked.

428
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 3: And then the finally, the final thing they did was

429
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:21,240
Speaker 3: a I think they lined that was the inside of

430
00:22:21,280 --> 00:22:21,760
Speaker 3: the outside of.

431
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:23,880
Speaker 2: The gas tank, the inside of the gas tankah.

432
00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:25,360
Speaker 5: The inside of the gas tank with a rubber bladder.

433
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:26,520
Speaker 5: And that worked.

434
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:29,520
Speaker 3: But no one likes saying the word bladder head forward.

435
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:31,200
Speaker 3: Be honest, it's too gross.

436
00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:33,840
Speaker 2: It works, but it's crony, So we're getting rid of

437
00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:34,159
Speaker 2: that one.

438
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 3: The point is they had three solutions before the Ford

439
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:39,560
Speaker 3: was being rolled off the line, and they chose to

440
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:41,000
Speaker 3: ignore all three of them, right.

441
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:42,040
Speaker 2: Big point here, right.

442
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:46,520
Speaker 4: And in addition to this two thousand pound, two thousand

443
00:22:46,560 --> 00:22:51,880
Speaker 4: dollars limitation that I Coca imposed, that radically shortened timeline

444
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:56,520
Speaker 4: also created a climate where really really dangerous engineering decisions

445
00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:57,200
Speaker 4: were being made.

446
00:22:57,280 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 5: Right.

447
00:22:57,960 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 2: Normally, when you make.

448
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:03,199
Speaker 4: A car, you sketch it out, somebody makes a model

449
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 4: of it, some dude like works it in clay. Yeah,

450
00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:09,800
Speaker 4: you run it into like a couple of walls or

451
00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 4: something like that. If you figure out how many like

452
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 4: light like cigarette lighters are going to go into it,

453
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:18,440
Speaker 4: there's a lot of thought put into it. And then

454
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:22,600
Speaker 4: once all this stuff, this pre production stuff is done

455
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:24,679
Speaker 4: and you know what the car is going to look like,

456
00:23:25,040 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 4: then you begin this process called tooling. And tooling is

457
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:31,960
Speaker 4: where you make the machines that are going to make

458
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:36,160
Speaker 4: the car that you're manufacturing. Right with the Pinto, they

459
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:39,479
Speaker 4: didn't do that. They started designing the car and at

460
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,879
Speaker 4: about the same time they started making the machines that

461
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,439
Speaker 4: were going to make that car. Before they even knew

462
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 4: ultimately what the final design was going to be. So

463
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:51,640
Speaker 4: by the time they figured out that they had a

464
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:55,720
Speaker 4: really dangerous fuel tank on their hands, it was too late.

465
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,440
Speaker 4: The tooling was underway, two hundred million dollars worth of

466
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:01,040
Speaker 4: machines had been made, and Ford.

467
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 3: Said, yeah, so when they discovered this, we have a

468
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 3: couple of quotes here from actual engineers that worked there

469
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 3: at the time, and they said, did anyone go to

470
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 3: le Ayacoca and say, hey, we have a problem on

471
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 3: our hands with his gat stank And this one engineer

472
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:22,680
Speaker 3: from the Mother Jones article said hell no.

473
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 4: But if it was like nineteen seventy seven, so we

474
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:29,040
Speaker 4: didn't say it like that, he went like, hell no.

475
00:24:29,440 --> 00:24:34,560
Speaker 3: Right in my mind he went, hell no, hell no.

476
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:37,440
Speaker 5: Uh, that person would have been fired.

477
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 3: Safety wasn't a popular subject around Ford in those days,

478
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 3: and with Lee it was taboo.

479
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 2: Or taboo, like if you're a normal.

480
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 3: Person, if you talk normally, tattoo, taboo, tattoo, taboo. All right, deletrious,

481
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 3: it's that's a deep cut. Yeah, there's about twenty people

482
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,560
Speaker 3: in here that got that one. That's all right, all right,

483
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 3: So I had a cocata saying around Ford at the time,

484
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:15,800
Speaker 3: which was safety doesn't sell. And here's another quote from

485
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:19,359
Speaker 3: another engineer. Safety is in the issue trunk spaces. You

486
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 3: have no idea how stiff the competition is over trunk space.

487
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 3: Do you realize that if we put a safer gas

488
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:26,880
Speaker 3: tank in the Pinto, you can only get one set

489
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:28,399
Speaker 3: of golf clubs in the trunk.

490
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 5: And that's a real quote. Yeah, And here's something that

491
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:33,800
Speaker 5: you can do when you get home.

492
00:25:33,840 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 3: You can go and look up Ford Pinto ad and

493
00:25:37,160 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 3: search Google images or being images? Is that of thing?

494
00:25:41,800 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 2: Yahoo?

495
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to be Google. Yeah, go to netscape.

496
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 4: And or if you're a paranoid type, duck dut gout.

497
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 5: That even flew over my head.

498
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 4: Uh, it's like they don't like track or use cookies

499
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 4: or anything like that.

500
00:25:58,080 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so you're creep.

501
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:04,359
Speaker 4: I guess. I guess are you stockpile weapons or something?

502
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 5: Gotcha?

503
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 3: So anyway, you can look up four Pinto ads and

504
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 3: there are all kinds of great ads from the old days.

505
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 3: And there's one where there's where there's this couple that

506
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 3: I guess is unpacking for like a camping trip from

507
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,440
Speaker 3: their Pinto. But it doesn't look like anywhere you would

508
00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:20,159
Speaker 3: want to go camping. It's just kind of like a field.

509
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:21,639
Speaker 2: There's like a ditch.

510
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:24,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of weird looking. And it says this

511
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 3: in the text. Just slip down the Runabout's rear seat.

512
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:31,479
Speaker 3: The Runabout was one of the Pinto models. Open up

513
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 3: the big back door, which we call a hatchback these days,

514
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 3: and the big back room makes packing easy. Pack in

515
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 3: your golf clubs, those groceries and those big pieces of luggage,

516
00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:44,840
Speaker 3: pack it all in.

517
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 2: You make it sound really.

518
00:26:46,760 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 3: Dirty, there's a big room in your little Pinto.

519
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 2: I'm the sicko because I'm using Duck Duck.

520
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,960
Speaker 3: It's a sexiest out of the seventies as read by me.

521
00:27:03,200 --> 00:27:06,359
Speaker 4: I like old ads in old magazines because like you

522
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 4: can smell them after work, you know what I'm saying.

523
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 4: Like if you go into Google images, the ads there,

524
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 4: but not the smell. But you know what an old

525
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 4: magazine smells like. But it's a great fantastic smell.

526
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:21,840
Speaker 3: You mean, like musty, what magazines are you reading?

527
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 2: Just any old magazine? Pick up? Just like.

528
00:27:32,760 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 3: All right, Jerry cut that part.

529
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 5: Now, I'm not doing my shot yet.

530
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 2: And everybody calmed down. My niece left to go to bed.

531
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 3: So oh, okay, are there any other kids here?

532
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 5: All right?

533
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 3: You have a very deep voice, young boy right here.

534
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:58,680
Speaker 5: I'm seven, bear me screw.

535
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 4: So everybody, I think we can all agree this is

536
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:04,360
Speaker 4: going pretty well.

537
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 2: You're not gonna like this. That means that we need.

538
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 3: To put an ad break in here.

539
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 2: Calm down, We'll be right back right after these messages.

540
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 2: Stuff we Josh shop.

541
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 6: Soft your shore.

542
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, we're back.

543
00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 2: Magic about words.

544
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, sir. I am wearing me Undies. Oh

545
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 3: you know what we should say this?

546
00:28:57,840 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 2: That's a freebie man.

547
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 3: Well this part out too, but uh, I have to

548
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:03,560
Speaker 3: share this we got.

549
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 5: This is a legit tangent like you know, like all

550
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 5: of them.

551
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 4: The heavily scripted and reversed tangents that you've heard him.

552
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 5: We got an email yesterday. You saw it. I did

553
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 5: where a woman?

554
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 3: This is so weird. A woman wanted to send a

555
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 3: new pair of me Undies to us for us to

556
00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 3: autograph so she could frame underwear for her husband's Christmas gifts.

557
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 5: Now that is a deep cut.

558
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 4: Sure, that's a true fan. At least she wasn't like

559
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:42,160
Speaker 4: and you wear them first? Yeah, each of you passed

560
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 4: it off to the other one and then mail them

561
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 4: back to me.

562
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 5: Those are like, oh yeah, send him in right, totally

563
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 5: do that I.

564
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 2: Sent you will smell them like an old magazine, you know.

565
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 2: Right when she got that in the mail.

566
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 6: Oh chuck, uh said, I didn't what guys, what why

567
00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 6: would you do that?

568
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 2: No one else saw that. We should probably edit this

569
00:30:17,480 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 2: part out.

570
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 5: To Jared, this guy right here.

571
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 3: So I send that email to our head of sales though,

572
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:25,560
Speaker 3: and he was just so delighted. He was like, oh,

573
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 3: I can't wait to send this to me Undies. They're

574
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 3: you're autographing underwear. They're not gonna believe it.

575
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 4: That's that's like David Lee Wroth level, except we're autographing

576
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 4: me undies for a fan some dude.

577
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 5: It's not David right.

578
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, we're back, kind of thinking, sure you

579
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 3: may do it again though, because you just said that, right, Okay,

580
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 3: Hey everybody, we're back.

581
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 4: I think I just stepped on you again. And stop laughing, everybody.

582
00:30:57,280 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 4: We need to clean I said, stop laughing.

583
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:07,920
Speaker 5: Hey, everybody, we're back. Thanks for hanging there.

584
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 2: Thank you. That was a really long app We know

585
00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 2: where we were now. I got it.

586
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 3: I got it you right, I got creepy right before

587
00:31:17,560 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 3: I know that, I know, all right, I got you. Hey, everybody,

588
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 3: we're back. Everyone's gonna be like, what the hell happened

589
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 3: in Atlanta?

590
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 4: That's good enough. We're leaving that dinn right. So by now,

591
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 4: everybody you may be saying, Chuck, Josh, WTF, how how

592
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,400
Speaker 4: could this possibly be going on?

593
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 2: How could Ford be doing.

594
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:52,479
Speaker 4: This kind of stuff. We're gonna tell you WTF. It

595
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 4: turns out that back in the sixties, the American auto

596
00:31:55,560 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 4: industry was like the last great unregulated industry the entire country.

597
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:06,200
Speaker 4: And the reason why was because most Americans considered the

598
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 4: auto industry the backbone of the American economy. Right, so

599
00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 4: everyone said, we should probably just let the auto industry

600
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 4: decide what's best for it and us it's consumers, because

601
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 4: we don't want to mess with them.

602
00:32:19,320 --> 00:32:22,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, and big corporations love to look out for everyday Americans,

603
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:23,040
Speaker 3: all right.

604
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 4: But at the time, there was a fatality rate aka

605
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 4: death rate on the America's highways reaching fifty thousand people

606
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 4: a year.

607
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 2: We did the math. That's a lot.

608
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 5: That is a lot.

609
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 3: Ralph Nader had a book called Unsafe at Any Speed

610
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 3: that was a big hit.

611
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 5: He also had one called hot.

612
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:51,960
Speaker 3: Plates Unsafe at any temperature, So does cell quite as well.

613
00:32:52,160 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 4: Has anyone actually read Unsafe at Any Speed? Don't feel bad,

614
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:58,480
Speaker 4: We haven't either, Okay, good. So he released his book

615
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty five, and it was basically like a

616
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 4: chapter by chapter, really wonky detailed description of how your

617
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:10,840
Speaker 4: car was ready and willing to murder you, right, not

618
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 4: kill you, murder you intentional.

619
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 2: They were like chapters.

620
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 4: On like the steering column it's going to impale you,

621
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 4: or that dashboard it ain't padded, and your head's going

622
00:33:22,040 --> 00:33:23,800
Speaker 4: to open up like a ripe candle op when it

623
00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:25,000
Speaker 4: comes in contact with it.

624
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 2: Right.

625
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,200
Speaker 5: It was amazing chapter I think that.

626
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 2: Yeah.

627
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 4: And the reason that this would happen for both instances

628
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 4: is because there's no such thing as seat belts, right,

629
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 4: So he goes to the truck.

630
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 5: There were seat belts. It was your mom doing that, right, And.

631
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,560
Speaker 4: That's how you knew, like a really dedicated mom in

632
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 4: the in the sixties, because she was missing an arm, right,

633
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 4: that's right, like her kid was all messed up at

634
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 4: a den on his head or whatever because it didn't

635
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 4: quite work because her arm came clean off when they

636
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 4: both went forward. But he was still alive. She didn't

637
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 4: have an arm. It was a badge of honor back then.

638
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 4: So Ralph Nader makes this makes writes this book, and

639
00:34:04,240 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 4: it gets released and it becomes like a best seller

640
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 4: almost immediately, and it has so much of an impact

641
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:13,359
Speaker 4: that the next year Congress passed the Highway Safety Act

642
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 4: of nineteen sixty six.

643
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is another way you knew it was

644
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 3: a day from way back in the day. The House

645
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 3: and the Senate passed it unanimously.

646
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 2: This is so quaint.

647
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:28,959
Speaker 3: They all got together and said, well, this is what's

648
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 3: good for the American people.

649
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 5: So this is our job to do this.

650
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 3: And they went yeah, yeah, pretty sweet, pretty sweet time.

651
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 4: Pretty sweet. So they passed this thing. And the upshot

652
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:45,280
Speaker 4: of it was that now the auto industry would be regulated.

653
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 4: It was just the way it was going to be. Okay,

654
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:51,440
Speaker 4: And the auto industry said, okay, okay, fine, fine, but

655
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 4: what about this. Why don't we agree to use something

656
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 4: called a cost benefit analysis to decide if we a

657
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 4: actually undertake any regulations you propose? Deal and the DOT

658
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:07,800
Speaker 4: and NHTSA was like, well oh no. In the auto

659
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 4: industry went like that, and the DOTWO is like, all right, fine, fine,

660
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 4: we don't want to arm wrestle over this one. Fine

661
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 4: cost benefit analysis for everybody.

662
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you don't know what a cost benefit

663
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 3: analysis is, we call it the cruelest of all analyzes

664
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:24,239
Speaker 3: because it's basically just a math problem. You plug in

665
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 3: numbers and you say, I plug in this, I plug

666
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:27,880
Speaker 3: in this.

667
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 5: Is it worth it to do this?

668
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:29,600
Speaker 2: Right?

669
00:35:29,800 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 5: Which works great in.

670
00:35:31,280 --> 00:35:33,719
Speaker 3: A lot of circumstances if you're talking about I don't know,

671
00:35:33,800 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 3: like a like what's a good example.

672
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,520
Speaker 4: Or like if you're trying to figure out whether to

673
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:41,120
Speaker 4: go with tire distributor A or tire distributor, be kind

674
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 4: of easy.

675
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:42,640
Speaker 5: Right exactly.

676
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 3: But if you're talking about replacing a fuel tank because

677
00:35:46,080 --> 00:35:50,080
Speaker 3: it's killing people, it gets a little sticky. Because one

678
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:53,440
Speaker 3: of the inputs on those math problems has to be

679
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:55,760
Speaker 3: the value of a human life.

680
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 5: There's no getting around it, no way around it.

681
00:35:58,080 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 2: Right.

682
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 4: So the NHTSA say said, well, I guess we should

683
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 4: go ahead and figure out how to quantify a human life.

684
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,680
Speaker 4: They all went home and like kissed their children. Then

685
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 4: they came back to work, and what they came up

686
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 4: with they actually did it. There was a nineteen seventy

687
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 4: two document that said, everybody, this is the value of

688
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 4: a human life. We figured it out two hundred thousand,

689
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 4: seven hundred and twenty five dollars. And what they did

690
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 4: was it was just like, who, yeah, really, I.

691
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 2: Thought mine was half that. So what they did was

692
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 2: they figured out.

693
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 4: The average life span or the average age I guess,

694
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:44,759
Speaker 4: of a person who dies in a car wreck, and

695
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 4: then subtracted it from the average lifespan of the Americans

696
00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 4: at the at the time in the Iraq such as

697
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 4: and they came up with They came up with thirty

698
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 4: seven years. Those people who die in a car wreck

699
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,000
Speaker 4: would have lived thirty seven more years. And then they said, well,

700
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,919
Speaker 4: how much would those people make in that time? And

701
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 4: they said, well, two hundred thousand, seven and twenty five dollars.

702
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 4: The problem with this is is that really what they

703
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,359
Speaker 4: calculated was the cost to society and lost productivity if

704
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,640
Speaker 4: it's just wages, right, They didn't take into account some

705
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 4: very important stuff like the value that the individual places

706
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 4: on his or her own life, or whether their family

707
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 4: wants them to come home after a car wreck, stuff

708
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:34,800
Speaker 4: like that. But they came up with this dollar amount

709
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 4: and they said they're there. We'll get better at it

710
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 4: over time. But here's what it is, and it's a primitive.

711
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:45,359
Speaker 3: Stab exactly again, the cruelest of all analyses. So Mark

712
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 3: Dowie is sorting through all the file cabinets of the

713
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 3: DOT and the.

714
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 4: The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. It's no faster to

715
00:37:56,880 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 4: say it abbreviated.

716
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,480
Speaker 3: I know, I would just mess it up though. So

717
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 3: he's sorting through all this stuff, he's going through file cabinets.

718
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 3: Everyone's worried, and he comes across to document a memo

719
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 3: called Fatalities associated with the Crash induced fuel Leakage and Fires.

720
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 3: And over the years people come to think like, this

721
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 3: is the smoking gun.

722
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 5: This was pinto.

723
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 3: It was about pinto fires from getting hit in the rear,

724
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 3: and that's what it is. It really wasn't that. What

725
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:22,799
Speaker 3: it was was it was about all cars in the

726
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 3: United States.

727
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 5: And whether they caught on fire when they rolled over.

728
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,799
Speaker 3: However, the one damning thing in this memo was that

729
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 3: Ford used that number, well almost that number to quantify

730
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:41,560
Speaker 3: the value of a human life. But Ford rounded down.

731
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 4: They rounded down the value of a human life, just

732
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 4: you know, to make the math easier.

733
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 5: Yeah, they made it two hundred grand.

734
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:51,800
Speaker 3: They cut off the seven hundred and twenty five dollars,

735
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:53,520
Speaker 3: just made it a straight up two hundred.

736
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 2: Right.

737
00:38:54,960 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 4: So they estimated like one hundred and eighty fatalities and

738
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty injuries in car fires post collision

739
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:07,320
Speaker 4: car fires every year in the US. And they said, well,

740
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:12,560
Speaker 4: that would cost society forty nine million dollars in lost productivity.

741
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 4: But if you want us to do this eleven dollars

742
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,880
Speaker 4: per car safety improvement that would save those lives and

743
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,799
Speaker 4: those injuries, well it cost us the auto industry one

744
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 4: hundred and thirteen million dollars, So don't have to do

745
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 4: it right, great, see it Racquetball's head.

746
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 3: That was kind of a do you guys see fight club?

747
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 3: Remember Edward Norton's job. That was kind of what he

748
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 3: did right a little bit.

749
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had to kind of calculate whether or not

750
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 4: it was worth taking a recall exactly. And Ford, thanks

751
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 4: to Dowie, had just been caught red handed with one

752
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,160
Speaker 4: of these submitted in the public record.

753
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:55,240
Speaker 3: All right, so part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act

754
00:39:55,360 --> 00:39:58,280
Speaker 3: was something and all these bills this gets a little wonky,

755
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 3: but bear with me. They're all broken down into subcategories,

756
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 3: and one of them was called Vehicle Safety Standard three

757
00:40:03,280 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 3: oh one and three yoho one was basically our government

758
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:10,480
Speaker 3: getting together and saying, you know what, we feel like

759
00:40:10,560 --> 00:40:13,399
Speaker 3: you should be able to get hit from the rear

760
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 3: at like twenty miles an hour and not explode it

761
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 3: into a fiery ball.

762
00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:21,720
Speaker 4: We've talked about it. We know what you're going to say, Detroit,

763
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 4: what we've talked about. We feel very strongly about this.

764
00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:26,280
Speaker 5: We feel that's reasonable.

765
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 3: Democrats push for thirty, Republicans pushed for ten. They met

766
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 3: in the middle at twenty.

767
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 2: There are people from copp County here on sure. They

768
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 2: are not happy with you right now, so that's right.

769
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 2: They are going to let us know via email after

770
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 2: this show.

771
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 3: I'm so angry that the way you feel about life.

772
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 3: So they settle in twenty miles an hour and that

773
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:55,760
Speaker 3: was Safety Standard three oh one. But here's the rub

774
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 3: for Ford and the Pinto is they had a problem

775
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:02,120
Speaker 3: on their hands. They could with stand twenty miles an hour,

776
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 3: they could barely withstand five, so this would have meant

777
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:07,400
Speaker 3: a complete redesign on the Pinto.

778
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,319
Speaker 5: So they came up with a.

779
00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 3: Plan basically to shall we say delay the process.

780
00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 4: Yeah, I Coca went kill it, killed that thing, killed

781
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 4: that standard three oh one, I hate it.

782
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 5: And they were happy because they didn't have to kill

783
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 5: a human.

784
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 2: Right for once.

785
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,359
Speaker 4: So what Clowson is, Oh, yeah, I didn't even mean

786
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 4: to say that, but.

787
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 2: Getting dark pretty well.

788
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 5: So here's what they did.

789
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 3: They got attorneys on the case and they said, here's

790
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 3: what you'll do. You're gonna you're gonna file these arguments

791
00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 3: on the last day that you can file an argument,

792
00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 3: and you're gonna get all this data together and you're

793
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 3: gonna shove it in their face and say here's an argument,

794
00:41:46,640 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 3: dot dot U, and now you got to look through

795
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 3: all this stuff and you have to satisfy that argument.

796
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,600
Speaker 3: So they may not have even cared if the argument

797
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 3: held up or not. The point was they just wanted

798
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 3: to delay things so they could keep selling the very

799
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:03,279
Speaker 3: dangerous pinto So they did this, and they didn't They

800
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,439
Speaker 3: didn't file them concurrently, all at once, which is sort

801
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,240
Speaker 3: of what you usually do in the law in court.

802
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 3: They would file one, they would go look through them

803
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 3: all and say, yeah, this holds water. It doesn't They

804
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 3: go great, They'd wait till the next deadline and file

805
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:18,680
Speaker 3: another one, and all of a sudden, they have delayed

806
00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 3: this process for nine years.

807
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:22,160
Speaker 2: Nine years.

808
00:42:22,680 --> 00:42:25,880
Speaker 4: They started arguing against it in nineteen sixty eight, and

809
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 4: standard three oh one went into effect in nineteen seventy seven.

810
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:37,879
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, boo. So there's kind of like.

811
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,960
Speaker 4: A silver lining to this whole thing, and that Ford's

812
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 4: objections actually forced the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to

813
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 4: study the problem of car fires, to answer Ford's objections

814
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 4: and say, no, actually, you're wrong, they're kind of a problem.

815
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 5: Yeah.

816
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,240
Speaker 3: They were giving them reams of data and then they went, oh,

817
00:42:57,560 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 3: we just gave them.

818
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 4: Right, But the NHTSA also had to like contract with

819
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:04,800
Speaker 4: people to study this stuff. And what they were finding

820
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 4: was that car fires in America were way, way more

821
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 4: of a problem than even Ford I think realized at

822
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:15,840
Speaker 4: the time. They turned up some stats like four hundred

823
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:19,319
Speaker 4: thousand cars were burning up on the American Highway every year,

824
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 4: burning more than three thousand.

825
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:23,360
Speaker 2: People of death. Is that high?

826
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 5: Four hundred thousand cars.

827
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:28,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it's a little high. I don't know, but

828
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:29,160
Speaker 2: this is what they turned up.

829
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:33,359
Speaker 3: It sounds high. Here's a here's one forty percent of

830
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:37,680
Speaker 3: all calls to all fire departments in the United States

831
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:40,280
Speaker 3: and the nineteen sixties were cars on fire.

832
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:42,160
Speaker 2: Isn't that nuts?

833
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 4: Just the last time you guys trust a car on fire.

834
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 4: This would be like an like you would see one

835
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 4: and a couple of miles later, there's another one.

836
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 3: Well yeah, And this was people didn't have cell phones,

837
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 3: so you would have to see a car on fire,

838
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,799
Speaker 3: have a dime in your pocket, be near enough to

839
00:43:57,840 --> 00:43:58,920
Speaker 3: a payphone.

840
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 5: To report it, right, And that was forty percent, and

841
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:02,240
Speaker 5: have made.

842
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 4: The judgment that there was a chance that the person

843
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 4: was going to make it in the time that you

844
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:09,239
Speaker 4: went to the payphone. You know, there's a lot of

845
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 4: factors here. Forty percent seems high. Like if you had

846
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:15,840
Speaker 4: a Christmas parade in your town, there was a pretty

847
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:17,880
Speaker 4: good chance a couple of those cars were just going

848
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:21,799
Speaker 4: to catch fire in the middle of the parade. This

849
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:25,880
Speaker 4: is insane. And this is what the NHTSA was finding

850
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 4: from studying this problem. There's a University of Miami study.

851
00:44:29,200 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 4: They found that rear end impact fires were quote a

852
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:34,759
Speaker 4: clear and present hazard to all Pinto owners.

853
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 2: That was the cane saying that.

854
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 3: All right, so.

855
00:44:41,080 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 4: Wait, wait, wait, we got to take another Mbrank Okay, everybody.

856
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:46,919
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.

857
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 4: Don't get up, We'll be right back right after these messages.

858
00:44:52,520 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 7: Softly soft, Hey, everybody, we're back.

859
00:45:16,120 --> 00:45:20,399
Speaker 2: It's a lot better live. Huh.

860
00:45:20,440 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 5: They get it now.

861
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 3: So, the original draft of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act

862
00:45:25,120 --> 00:45:28,719
Speaker 3: had had a part that provided it was very controversial.

863
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:30,280
Speaker 5: It provided for criminal.

864
00:45:29,920 --> 00:45:37,399
Speaker 3: Sanctions, criminal sanctions against executives of auto companies, and these well,

865
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 3: let's be honest, these white dudes that were executives of

866
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:44,200
Speaker 3: these auto companies said, well, I think I don't think

867
00:45:44,239 --> 00:45:45,399
Speaker 3: you really mean that right.

868
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 2: That means we could go to prison, you understand.

869
00:45:48,200 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 3: I like, I think we should. Uh, we have some

870
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 3: lobbyists on the case. And so they put the lobbyists

871
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 3: on the case, and they did get that lobbied out

872
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:02,359
Speaker 3: of the Safety Act. Unfortunately, Yeah, I say, unfortunately, that's

873
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:02,880
Speaker 3: me talking.

874
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 2: Sure, Well, you're speaking for both of us, buddy, And.

875
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 3: They end up with like five or ten thousand dollars.

876
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, in nineteen seventy seven, money which today translates to

877
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 4: like forty grand. So if you were an auto executive

878
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 4: who knowingly put a dangerous car out on the American market,

879
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 4: you could face a fine of forty thousand dollars and

880
00:46:23,480 --> 00:46:25,960
Speaker 4: from what we understand, that's like once one time.

881
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 2: Fine, Yeah, that was it.

882
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 4: So it would be up to the media and the

883
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,760
Speaker 4: courts to force Forward to do something about its Pinto

884
00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 4: And boy.

885
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 3: Did they ever the drumbeat started, isn't that right?

886
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 2: Yeah?

887
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 4: It started with Dowie, right, Like, Mark Dowie gets this

888
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:44,520
Speaker 4: gets a lot of credit for the Pinto article, and

889
00:46:44,560 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 4: definitely he definitely had a big impact, but he gets

890
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 4: some undue credit for getting Standard three to ZHO one

891
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 4: to come into effect because it came into effect pretty

892
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 4: shortly after the Pinto madness article came out. It turns

893
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:58,800
Speaker 4: out later research turned.

894
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:02,919
Speaker 2: Up that the NHTSA had.

895
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 4: Said, Ford, we're so sick of you arguing against standard

896
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 4: three oh one. How long will it take for you

897
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 4: guys to get your cars up to standard three TOZHO

898
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 4: one level, which again is a twenty mile an hour

899
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:17,760
Speaker 4: rear impact that doesn't lead to fuel loss.

900
00:47:17,920 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 2: And four it was like, I don't know, seems like a.

901
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 4: Big job, right, four years And the NHTSA was like,

902
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 4: you know, it took you two years to design the

903
00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:33,760
Speaker 4: car from scratch, right, They're like like, yeah, this is huge,

904
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:36,799
Speaker 4: massive improvements to make it safe. So four years so

905
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:40,479
Speaker 4: the NHTSA said, fine, fine, in nineteen seventy seven, it'll

906
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:43,520
Speaker 4: come into effect. So it was just coincidence, but Dowy's

907
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 4: article did have a big impact in the way of

908
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 4: like shaping public opinion.

909
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.

910
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 3: So what happens is there's starting to be some lawsuits.

911
00:47:52,000 --> 00:47:55,200
Speaker 3: People that are getting burned alive in pintos and other

912
00:47:55,239 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 3: cars say well, maybe maybe we could sue somebody, and

913
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 3: that is that a duck.

914
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 4: Class a duck in the house. Well, okay, let's get

915
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:09,000
Speaker 4: back on tracks. Get back on track.

916
00:48:14,239 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 2: Works, doesn't it. You're all charmed? Thank you for taking

917
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:21,520
Speaker 2: that one for us, Chuck.

918
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 3: Jerry cut that part all right, so by that's delicious,

919
00:48:28,960 --> 00:48:29,399
Speaker 3: it's good.

920
00:48:29,560 --> 00:48:31,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, bullet bullet, bran bourbon.

921
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 3: It's called buzz marketing everyone. They don't even pay us

922
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 3: for that yet. So they're these people that have this

923
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:49,240
Speaker 3: job where they recreate accidents for sometimes it's for court,

924
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 3: for attorneys for the state. Sometimes it's for insurance companies.

925
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 3: But they recreate these accidents to kind of show what

926
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 3: went down. And some of them started to say, and

927
00:48:59,200 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 3: again it was a rat started to say, wait a minute,

928
00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:07,160
Speaker 3: I think that if you get in a car wreck,

929
00:49:07,880 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 3: you maybe should be able to live through it. It's

930
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:15,880
Speaker 3: a radical idea, but like maybe they should make cars safer.

931
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, they go back to San Diego hippie.

932
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 5: Well the notion from from America.

933
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 3: Everyone sort of agreed to the thing where like you

934
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:27,560
Speaker 3: get in a car wreck and die, like you got

935
00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:29,080
Speaker 3: in the car wreck, it's your fault.

936
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 2: It was a driver's fault.

937
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a driver's fault. You can't make cars safer

938
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:35,240
Speaker 3: in the case of an accident. It seems weird now

939
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,000
Speaker 3: because it's all we think about is auto safety, but

940
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 3: it was just not on the radar. LEI Coca was

941
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 3: not the only one, but that.

942
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 4: Was thanks to Detroit, like saying, it's your fault, you're

943
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 4: a dummy.

944
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:46,880
Speaker 5: But everyone agreed to it. Everyone was.

945
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 4: Yeah, in in Detroit's defense, at the time, everybody was

946
00:49:51,160 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 4: drunk while they were driving, way more than today, so

947
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:58,799
Speaker 4: they kind of had a point. But still they could

948
00:49:58,840 --> 00:50:01,640
Speaker 4: still make the cars safe and should have even even

949
00:50:01,680 --> 00:50:02,439
Speaker 4: more back then.

950
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.

951
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 3: So these I don't know, we call them accident recreationists.

952
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 4: Reconstruction reconstructionists, recreationists, or the Civil War dudes.

953
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:15,239
Speaker 3: Does anyone here do that?

954
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 5: Any Civil War reenactors?

955
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:19,920
Speaker 2: There's three who are just sitting there like right.

956
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 3: Now, all right, quick sidebar Emily and I went hiking

957
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 3: at you guys ever go to Sweetwater.

958
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 5: State Park.

959
00:50:30,280 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 2: See local show.

960
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 5: Emily remember this.

961
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:36,240
Speaker 3: We went hiking in Sweetwater and there were some Civil

962
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:40,479
Speaker 3: War reenactors, but it wasn't like what I know about

963
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,880
Speaker 3: Civil War reenactors is that they throw a big battle

964
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:47,239
Speaker 3: party or whatever it's called, and they act like it's

965
00:50:47,280 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 3: a big war and they go bang you die or

966
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:52,880
Speaker 3: don't die and bang bang, and then that's sort of

967
00:50:53,400 --> 00:50:54,120
Speaker 3: what happens.

968
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 5: I have no idea what they do, but.

969
00:50:57,160 --> 00:50:59,200
Speaker 3: It's a big show, like on a field like I

970
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:00,439
Speaker 3: went to one when I was a kid.

971
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:01,080
Speaker 5: I remember that.

972
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:05,720
Speaker 3: But these dudes were just hanging out in the woods

973
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 3: at sweet Quater State Park. They were like they had

974
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 3: a fire going and it was it was like three

975
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:13,160
Speaker 3: or four people. It was a couple of dudes and

976
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,080
Speaker 3: a couple of ladies and in their outfits and they

977
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 3: were cooking like I guess, like a squirrel on a spit.

978
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:21,080
Speaker 2: That's Huckeby style.

979
00:51:21,160 --> 00:51:24,279
Speaker 3: It was no organized thing, and I was just hiking by.

980
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:26,399
Speaker 3: It was like a year ago. I was like, well,

981
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:27,760
Speaker 3: that's weird.

982
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 4: Did you guys just like back slowly into the ward,

983
00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 4: don't make eye contacted me.

984
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:36,399
Speaker 3: I guess I approved because it wasn't war, so that's

985
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:36,919
Speaker 3: kind of cool.

986
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 2: It was you know, they were prepping for war.

987
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:43,200
Speaker 4: So oh okay, they were gathering their strength from squirrels,

988
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:46,240
Speaker 4: plowing their muskets to go faint.

989
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 5: Very strange.

990
00:51:47,040 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 3: Don't go to Sweet Waters, by the way, don't go there.

991
00:51:50,280 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 2: No, not after that, Okay.

992
00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:54,640
Speaker 4: I didn't know if there's something out like there's a

993
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:56,760
Speaker 4: lot of abandoned tires in the ravine or something.

994
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:01,040
Speaker 3: All right, so where are you Jared cut that whole story.

995
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:02,800
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it was a good story.

996
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:04,800
Speaker 2: I think we should keep it.

997
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:11,160
Speaker 3: Jerry, is she dead?

998
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:13,920
Speaker 2: Skyticle? Remember the sky?

999
00:52:15,320 --> 00:52:15,640
Speaker 5: All right?

1000
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 3: So these recreationists that's where I was, are saying, uh,

1001
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:23,200
Speaker 3: maybe you should sue the car company, like because cars

1002
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 3: should be safer, And people went, oh, well that's not

1003
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:28,719
Speaker 3: a bad idea. Yeah, because every revolutionary idea.

1004
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 4: These guys were saying. With the Pinto in particular, I'm

1005
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 4: starting to notice a lot of charred bodies that are

1006
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:39,479
Speaker 4: otherwise in perfect shape, look great aside from the charred part, right,

1007
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 4: Like they don't have any contusions, they don't have any

1008
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 4: broken bones. So like these accents are happening and really

1009
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 4: low speed. Maybe it's actually a design flaw with Ford.

1010
00:52:48,640 --> 00:52:51,400
Speaker 4: And so the lawyers were like, that sounds great, and

1011
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 4: they started circling the.

1012
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:55,399
Speaker 2: Courthouses like the flying Monkeys and.

1013
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:58,200
Speaker 4: The Wizard of Oz and dropping lawsuits down on the

1014
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 4: Ford's head. And at first it was like, bring it,

1015
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 4: We're Ford. You know, juries are made up of like

1016
00:53:04,239 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 4: upstanding registered voters, right, We're going to be just fine.

1017
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:12,120
Speaker 4: And Ford won a couple at first, and then they

1018
00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 4: started losing them and Ford was still kind of like,

1019
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,560
Speaker 4: we're still we're still taking the jury trial on. But

1020
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:22,360
Speaker 4: the whole thing turned on this one trial in nineteen

1021
00:53:22,400 --> 00:53:28,800
Speaker 4: seventy seven in Orange County, California, and Ford lost big time.

1022
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:30,279
Speaker 4: Actually in a Pinto case.

1023
00:53:30,520 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, they lost, and this was in seventy seven. They

1024
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,600
Speaker 3: lost one hundred and twenty five million dollars and damages

1025
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 3: to a boy named He's thirteen years old, Richard Grimshaw

1026
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,800
Speaker 3: was very sad. He's burned very badly, and the driver

1027
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 3: of the car died and one hundred and twenty five

1028
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:48,799
Speaker 3: million bucks back I mean, it's a lot of money now,

1029
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 3: but back then it's a ton of money. And it's

1030
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,400
Speaker 3: what they call, you've heard of like a symbolic award,

1031
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:57,000
Speaker 3: where they'll just hit a company with a ton of

1032
00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:59,680
Speaker 3: ton of money and it later gets reduced. But all

1033
00:53:59,719 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 3: they can about is that the media knows that they

1034
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,680
Speaker 3: got hit with this ton of money. That was sort

1035
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:07,960
Speaker 3: of the case here. It got reduced to what three

1036
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:09,200
Speaker 3: and a half million bucks.

1037
00:54:09,680 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 2: It's still pretty It seems a lot.

1038
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,720
Speaker 3: Of money back then, of course, but that initial figure

1039
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:19,280
Speaker 3: like really made a point and sent shockwaves through the auto.

1040
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 4: Industry, and so Ford changed its tactics. They're like, okay,

1041
00:54:23,600 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 4: well maybe we'll start settling.

1042
00:54:25,600 --> 00:54:27,760
Speaker 2: And we got another quote and.

1043
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 4: Chuck reads it way better than me, so if you

1044
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:31,640
Speaker 4: don't mind, Yeah, this.

1045
00:54:31,719 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 3: Was an attorney for Ford, and I'll read it in

1046
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 3: the voice of Lionel Hunts of the Simpsons, the great

1047
00:54:40,000 --> 00:54:45,360
Speaker 3: Phil Hartman. Uh, here we go. We'll never go to

1048
00:54:45,400 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 3: a jury again, not in a fire case. Jury is

1049
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 3: a just too sentimental. They see those charred remains and

1050
00:54:53,239 --> 00:55:01,920
Speaker 3: forget the evidence. No, sir, we'll settle thanks for that.

1051
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:06,440
Speaker 3: That is a he wasn't overheard saying that a TV

1052
00:55:06,600 --> 00:55:10,359
Speaker 3: reporter stuck a microphone in his face and he said that.

1053
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:13,440
Speaker 4: Right, that was his quote that he gave, Like Amazon

1054
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 4: Alexa didn't overhear him saying that to his wife at

1055
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:20,080
Speaker 4: home later, right exactly.

1056
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:24,520
Speaker 2: So Ford was like, Okay, kill that guy, that lawyer.

1057
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:26,359
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're going.

1058
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 4: To start settling. And so they did start settling. There's

1059
00:55:29,040 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 4: some benefits to settling. Well, there's some drawbacks too. One

1060
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 4: is that it tells the entire world that you know,

1061
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 4: your case is terrible, but it says, well, there's going

1062
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 4: to be lower payouts to the lawyers, and there's going

1063
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:43,880
Speaker 4: to be lower payouts.

1064
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:44,359
Speaker 2: To the defendants.

1065
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:47,719
Speaker 4: And it also cuts down on discovery. So discovery, if

1066
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 4: you go to jury, the plaintiff, the person filing the case,

1067
00:55:51,680 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 4: has legal access to any and all documents that you

1068
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 4: have that prove their case against you.

1069
00:55:57,960 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 2: Right.

1070
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:02,200
Speaker 4: So with all these jury there was this steady trickle

1071
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:06,280
Speaker 4: or flow even of Yeah, it wasn't even a trickle.

1072
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 4: It was a flow of damning evidence coming out of

1073
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,640
Speaker 4: Ford going into the hands of lawyers who were happily

1074
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:15,120
Speaker 4: turning it around and handing it to the media who

1075
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:17,960
Speaker 4: were reporting on this stuff, which was getting the public

1076
00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 4: just good and picked and that drum beat that Chuck

1077
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:23,640
Speaker 4: was talking about started to really pick up, and like

1078
00:56:23,719 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 4: people were really looking at Ford like in this weird,

1079
00:56:26,560 --> 00:56:29,280
Speaker 4: like unsettling, non blinky way.

1080
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 5: You know.

1081
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:32,560
Speaker 2: Everyone took their shirts off and they put like.

1082
00:56:32,680 --> 00:56:35,879
Speaker 4: War paint on, and just FOURB was starting to get

1083
00:56:35,880 --> 00:56:41,480
Speaker 4: a little nervous. They were like, like US America said, you.

1084
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:50,040
Speaker 5: So that got a little weird. Yeah, thank you for clapping,

1085
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:50,920
Speaker 5: Thank you, buddy.

1086
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:55,200
Speaker 3: You get a T shirt that bordered on performance art,

1087
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 3: did it?

1088
00:56:56,640 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 5: I think so?

1089
00:56:57,719 --> 00:56:59,880
Speaker 2: Had I taken my shirt off, it would have been.

1090
00:56:59,800 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 5: For oh my god, do it.

1091
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:09,000
Speaker 4: No, you're out of your mind, you guys until blood comes.

1092
00:57:08,760 --> 00:57:09,600
Speaker 2: Out of your mouths.

1093
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:12,800
Speaker 4: And I still wouldn't take my shirt off. There's nothing

1094
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:15,000
Speaker 4: you can do to make me take my shirt.

1095
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:19,280
Speaker 3: Actually, I would probably be my shirt off, which would

1096
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 3: be uh.

1097
00:57:25,760 --> 00:57:30,120
Speaker 4: That does feel good, though. Now we've reached David Lee

1098
00:57:30,200 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 4: Roth level.

1099
00:57:32,040 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 5: I wish I had another shot.

1100
00:57:33,240 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 3: Oh my god, all right.

1101
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 2: That's so shy. That's just having common values. Not taking

1102
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:41,880
Speaker 2: your shirt off in public when people tell you to.

1103
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 4: That's normal stuff. Man, you did good is what I'm saying.

1104
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 4: You Jerry cut out the last series.

1105
00:57:55,200 --> 00:57:56,200
Speaker 2: Shame on all of you.

1106
00:57:58,200 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 5: I'metown show, all right.

1107
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 3: So finally, in nineteen seventy seven, safety three oh one

1108
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:06,560
Speaker 3: came into effect. What we talked about, would you should

1109
00:58:06,560 --> 00:58:08,080
Speaker 3: be able to hit a car from twenty miles an

1110
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:12,080
Speaker 3: hour not be a flaming death ball? And the nineteen

1111
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:16,080
Speaker 3: seventy seven new Pento debuted with a very brand new

1112
00:58:16,080 --> 00:58:20,080
Speaker 3: safety feature that one dollar one pound piece of plastic

1113
00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 3: in between the flaming death bolts and the gas dagg.

1114
00:58:23,080 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 4: That they've known since nineteen sixty eight would save lives.

1115
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 5: Boom, thank you.

1116
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 4: So Leiah Coca by this time and Ford in general,

1117
00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 4: were scared to death of the PR crisis that had

1118
00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,000
Speaker 4: been growing and growing. And the whole thing again was

1119
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 4: started by Dowie's article. Not only did he get the

1120
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 4: Mother Jones readership involved, he really kind of awakened the

1121
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:54,360
Speaker 4: mainstream media to the thing. So everybody was reporting on this,

1122
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:55,520
Speaker 4: people were suing for it.

1123
00:58:55,800 --> 00:58:57,160
Speaker 2: It was a huge, big.

1124
00:58:56,960 --> 00:59:00,800
Speaker 4: Problem, and I had Coca told everybody clam up. That's

1125
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:04,360
Speaker 4: actually a direct quote from his book, his nineteen eighty

1126
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:07,200
Speaker 4: eight book. I used to think in a happier time.

1127
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 4: That was called straight Talk. That's a Dolly Parton movie.

1128
00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:13,400
Speaker 4: It's called talking Straight job.

1129
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:16,200
Speaker 3: I gotta say you sent me this initial Josh said

1130
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 3: this wrote this show, and he sent it and he

1131
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 3: said straight talk, And I was like, did Dolly Parton

1132
00:59:20,920 --> 00:59:21,280
Speaker 3: play lee?

1133
00:59:21,760 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 2: Still it still says I never corrected it.

1134
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:26,600
Speaker 3: I never saw the movie. That would be great.

1135
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 2: You never saw straight talk?

1136
00:59:29,080 --> 00:59:32,400
Speaker 5: Oh no, that's so ashamed. Is that gonna be your movie?

1137
00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 5: Crush pick?

1138
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 2: Oh maybe that's buzz marketing. Now I have to do it.

1139
00:59:42,880 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, So yeah, it was called talking

1140
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 3: Straight In the end, I think straight talk might have

1141
00:59:49,240 --> 00:59:50,160
Speaker 3: been the working title.

1142
00:59:50,320 --> 00:59:53,080
Speaker 4: Okay, but in it he says, like we were so

1143
00:59:53,280 --> 00:59:59,240
Speaker 4: afraid of this PR crisis bankrupting forward. If you could

1144
00:59:59,240 --> 01:00:02,880
Speaker 4: imagine that that they just said, no one talked, don't

1145
01:00:02,880 --> 01:00:07,160
Speaker 4: talk to anybody, just clam up. And they thought that

1146
01:00:07,400 --> 01:00:09,880
Speaker 4: if somebody said something the wrong way and like there

1147
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 4: was a scary turn of phrase or something like that

1148
01:00:12,160 --> 01:00:13,960
Speaker 4: that was just taking the wrong way, it would be

1149
01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:16,600
Speaker 4: seen as an admission of guilt. The problem was to

1150
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:21,880
Speaker 4: the public that the fact that they weren't talking was seen.

1151
01:00:21,680 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 2: As an admission of guilt. More than anything.

1152
01:00:23,680 --> 01:00:24,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a big deal.

1153
01:00:24,640 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 3: Like sixty Minutes was literally knocking at the door, like

1154
01:00:28,080 --> 01:00:28,920
Speaker 3: morally safer?

1155
01:00:29,120 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 5: Was it? Ford knocking at the door?

1156
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 3: And he said, I'm morally safer And if you're not intimidated, now,

1157
01:00:37,440 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 3: I got Ed Bradley with me. We've sent two of

1158
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,640
Speaker 3: our best dudes, so you should be pretty worried.

1159
01:00:44,720 --> 01:00:47,120
Speaker 4: And Ford was crouched down under their window, like are

1160
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 4: they still out there?

1161
01:00:49,680 --> 01:00:51,960
Speaker 5: It's just so funny. Is I used to love sixty Minutes?

1162
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:52,440
Speaker 2: Sure?

1163
01:00:53,040 --> 01:00:56,240
Speaker 3: You know when I was like thirteen. It's so such

1164
01:00:56,280 --> 01:00:57,760
Speaker 3: a weird show to watch as a kid.

1165
01:00:57,760 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 2: It's sophisticated.

1166
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:02,520
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was not so investigated, apparently you were. Yeah,

1167
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:04,080
Speaker 5: I was not. I don't know what.

1168
01:01:04,520 --> 01:01:07,640
Speaker 4: I like the little right, and then after that you're

1169
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:09,040
Speaker 4: just like all right, I'll turn the channel.

1170
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, and also now I think about

1171
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:17,120
Speaker 3: I think it came on after either like the Wonderful

1172
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:18,560
Speaker 3: Warble of Disney.

1173
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 5: Or that was great or Wow Kingdom or something. Anyway,

1174
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:25,240
Speaker 5: I don't know what that is, sir.

1175
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:27,720
Speaker 2: That was like Full House was on there, that was

1176
01:01:27,720 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 2: like the nineties.

1177
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:30,840
Speaker 5: You're way off, but yeah, I'm so old.

1178
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:32,240
Speaker 2: Do you see this?

1179
01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 5: Beard?

1180
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 4: So much gray, like the Davy Crockett story Hour was

1181
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:37,520
Speaker 4: that one?

1182
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 2: Let just make that up.

1183
01:01:39,080 --> 01:01:45,480
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not that old night writer.

1184
01:01:48,040 --> 01:01:49,760
Speaker 2: That was a good I had a good theme song.

1185
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 3: This has devolved into like shout out your favorite old thing.

1186
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:55,760
Speaker 2: We're almost done. Everybody call that.

1187
01:01:56,560 --> 01:01:57,640
Speaker 5: All right, we're hit in the end.

1188
01:01:58,040 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 3: So uh. Nineteen seventy eight, In June, they started their

1189
01:02:05,160 --> 01:02:08,280
Speaker 3: own recall proceedings. In sixty minutes, was on the on

1190
01:02:08,320 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 3: the door, they're knocking, they're knocking, and Ford says, you

1191
01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:16,560
Speaker 3: know what, We're gonna undertake a voluntary recall if anyone

1192
01:02:16,560 --> 01:02:19,400
Speaker 3: believe that the will make us look so good of

1193
01:02:19,640 --> 01:02:21,800
Speaker 3: one point four and I don't know if we mentioned

1194
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:24,800
Speaker 3: the Pinto was a big, big seller, Like, despite all this,

1195
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:27,360
Speaker 3: it was a super super popular car.

1196
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,880
Speaker 4: It was like the best selling subcompact of the seventies.

1197
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:32,320
Speaker 5: It very much was.

1198
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:35,640
Speaker 3: It was It's Winona Ryder's car and Stranger Things Too.

1199
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:40,640
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I haven't seen it. I don't know.

1200
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:42,080
Speaker 5: Was it her car and Stranger Things one?

1201
01:02:42,080 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 3: I don't remember, but they feature the Pinto and Stranger

1202
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:45,360
Speaker 3: Things too.

1203
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:47,640
Speaker 2: Night Rider.

1204
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 3: Spoiler thanks a lot, right now, I know what car

1205
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 3: she drives, all right? So they undertake a one point

1206
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:04,720
Speaker 3: four million car recall on just the Pinto alone, but

1207
01:03:04,800 --> 01:03:06,560
Speaker 3: also another car they had, right.

1208
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:11,480
Speaker 4: The Mercury Bobcat right, which was its like more luxurious

1209
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:15,520
Speaker 4: but equally deadly twin. And we're not quite sure like

1210
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:17,120
Speaker 4: what made it so luxurious?

1211
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 5: No idea.

1212
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:21,440
Speaker 4: Maybe it had like an onboard like blow dryer brush

1213
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:23,280
Speaker 4: to like to feather your hair with while you were

1214
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:23,919
Speaker 4: going home.

1215
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 3: What were you sit in the back seat and they

1216
01:03:26,160 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 3: just have the thing from the hairplace that just right

1217
01:03:28,640 --> 01:03:29,520
Speaker 3: lowers over your head.

1218
01:03:29,560 --> 01:03:31,760
Speaker 4: That is the pinnacle of luxury that we can think

1219
01:03:31,800 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 4: of for the nineteen seventies.

1220
01:03:33,400 --> 01:03:34,440
Speaker 5: God bless the seventies.

1221
01:03:35,440 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 2: All right.

1222
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 5: The bad news is, though, and this.

1223
01:03:37,800 --> 01:03:41,160
Speaker 3: Is very sad to stop laughing, between the time four

1224
01:03:41,320 --> 01:03:44,600
Speaker 3: decided to undergo that recall in June and the time

1225
01:03:44,920 --> 01:03:47,680
Speaker 3: it told consumers, like internally they said, all right, June,

1226
01:03:47,720 --> 01:03:50,480
Speaker 3: we'll do this September we announced it to the public.

1227
01:03:50,920 --> 01:03:57,840
Speaker 3: In those few months, that was a very very sad crash.

1228
01:03:56,880 --> 01:03:58,959
Speaker 5: Rear rear end.

1229
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:06,120
Speaker 3: You need another shot, no, a re random impact where

1230
01:04:07,000 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 3: where some young women died. And there was a prosecutor

1231
01:04:10,040 --> 01:04:14,280
Speaker 3: in Indiana named Michael Constantino that said you know what,

1232
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:15,920
Speaker 3: I've had it, I've done.

1233
01:04:16,360 --> 01:04:17,120
Speaker 5: I know the deal.

1234
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,800
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring these dudes on trial for murder.

1235
01:04:21,360 --> 01:04:26,040
Speaker 4: Murder, like he filed criminal homicide charges against the executives

1236
01:04:26,080 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 4: at Ford for that crash.

1237
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:28,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, very big deal.

1238
01:04:28,680 --> 01:04:29,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1239
01:04:29,160 --> 01:04:32,920
Speaker 4: So, and it wasn't just like a flash in the

1240
01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:36,120
Speaker 4: pan like this trial actually or these charges went to trial.

1241
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:37,920
Speaker 2: It was over like three years.

1242
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,520
Speaker 4: And over the three years, everybody was reporting on Ford

1243
01:04:41,560 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 4: executives on trial for murder every day, and the charges

1244
01:04:46,440 --> 01:04:50,600
Speaker 4: got dismissed, but the public criminalizing of Ford's executives were

1245
01:04:50,680 --> 01:04:53,120
Speaker 4: it was huge. Like it was a bad PR crisis

1246
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:57,800
Speaker 4: before that. It couldn't get worse than that, your executives

1247
01:04:57,840 --> 01:04:59,320
Speaker 4: on trial for murder, right.

1248
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:00,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.

1249
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:03,240
Speaker 3: So despite all this, despite the fact that the Pinto

1250
01:05:03,800 --> 01:05:06,800
Speaker 3: was a flaming death trap to a certain extent, when

1251
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:08,880
Speaker 3: you look at the numbers today and when you look

1252
01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:13,640
Speaker 3: at the real statistics, it was not much worse and

1253
01:05:13,680 --> 01:05:17,600
Speaker 3: sometimes better than other cars on the market at the

1254
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:20,000
Speaker 3: time that would kill you from.

1255
01:05:19,840 --> 01:05:24,920
Speaker 4: Fire, like the Vega or the Grimlin. They would kill you, right,

1256
01:05:25,520 --> 01:05:28,080
Speaker 4: So we tried to figure out and actually it turns

1257
01:05:28,080 --> 01:05:32,000
Speaker 4: out there was this nineteen ninety three article in Harvard

1258
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 4: Law Review where this guy said, I've done the math.

1259
01:05:35,720 --> 01:05:38,960
Speaker 4: I've actually figured it out, and here's the number I

1260
01:05:39,040 --> 01:05:39,720
Speaker 4: came up with.

1261
01:05:40,400 --> 01:05:41,680
Speaker 2: It was twenty seven.

1262
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:45,800
Speaker 4: Twenty seven people is probably the number of people who

1263
01:05:45,880 --> 01:05:50,720
Speaker 4: died in low speed rear collision impact fires in pintos.

1264
01:05:50,720 --> 01:05:54,040
Speaker 5: And it's over like ten years, like millions of cars.

1265
01:05:54,120 --> 01:05:56,880
Speaker 2: Twenty seven. It's not that bad, actually.

1266
01:05:56,640 --> 01:06:00,520
Speaker 4: Right, it was way less than I I think Mother

1267
01:06:00,640 --> 01:06:03,640
Speaker 4: Jones said like five hundred to nine hundred. Yeah, and

1268
01:06:03,680 --> 01:06:05,400
Speaker 4: this is so mother Jones. They said that was a

1269
01:06:05,440 --> 01:06:10,120
Speaker 4: conservative estimate that we just made up. And then I

1270
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 4: think sixty minutes Chuck's beloved sixty Minutes said like thousands

1271
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:16,720
Speaker 4: of people had died in Pinto's, no one knew, so.

1272
01:06:16,720 --> 01:06:17,960
Speaker 2: They were just making up numbers.

1273
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:20,200
Speaker 4: But this nineteen ninety three article said, no, it was

1274
01:06:20,320 --> 01:06:23,200
Speaker 4: probably twenty seven actually exactly.

1275
01:06:23,320 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 3: So in the end we look back and the Pinto was,

1276
01:06:29,080 --> 01:06:31,480
Speaker 3: even though it could have been a flaming death trap,

1277
01:06:31,560 --> 01:06:34,800
Speaker 3: what it really was was a very bad victim of

1278
01:06:34,840 --> 01:06:36,640
Speaker 3: pr Yeah, you know, yep.

1279
01:06:36,800 --> 01:06:40,040
Speaker 4: So, like the problem was was that the way you

1280
01:06:40,080 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 4: could die in a Pinto was just too bad to

1281
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,360
Speaker 4: be allowed to continue, right, the idea that, like if

1282
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:49,960
Speaker 4: you got in a rear in collision and the passenger

1283
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:51,840
Speaker 4: compartment filled up with gas.

1284
01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 3: That's bad enough.

1285
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:55,360
Speaker 4: But the idea that it could happen at such a

1286
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:58,200
Speaker 4: low speed that you would still be conscious when you

1287
01:06:58,360 --> 01:07:01,440
Speaker 4: caught fire and burned a death. The American public said, Nope,

1288
01:07:01,600 --> 01:07:04,480
Speaker 4: that can't happen. It doesn't matter. And so thanks to

1289
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 4: Dowie's article and sixty minutes, eventually, for sure, the Pinto

1290
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:15,640
Speaker 4: was basically laid to waste as far as the American

1291
01:07:15,680 --> 01:07:18,640
Speaker 4: public was concerned, and still has a bad reputation today.

1292
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:19,320
Speaker 5: That's right.

1293
01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:23,960
Speaker 3: In the end, the Pinto took career impact, but not

1294
01:07:24,440 --> 01:07:25,080
Speaker 3: in the good.

1295
01:07:24,920 --> 01:07:28,439
Speaker 4: Way, not in the good way, in every kind of bad.

1296
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:33,400
Speaker 5: You know, that's true. I never thought about that.

1297
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:40,920
Speaker 3: So in the end, mister Lee Ayacoca would go on

1298
01:07:40,960 --> 01:07:45,640
Speaker 3: to write his legend with the Chrysler Corporation by bringing

1299
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:48,960
Speaker 3: them back from kind of the brink of bankruptcy into

1300
01:07:49,200 --> 01:07:50,400
Speaker 3: huge success.

1301
01:07:49,960 --> 01:07:50,720
Speaker 5: In the nineties.

1302
01:07:51,080 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 3: In the eighties, and he was named I think by

1303
01:07:55,080 --> 01:07:59,280
Speaker 3: Portfolio magazine as the eighteenth greatest CEO of all time,

1304
01:07:59,800 --> 01:08:02,040
Speaker 3: just ahead of Oprah, which is.

1305
01:08:02,200 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 5: Both team Oprah. Up Here.

1306
01:08:12,680 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 3: Wrote A couple of books wrote that biography that Josh

1307
01:08:14,680 --> 01:08:16,880
Speaker 3: talked about, that Dolly Parton did not star in, and

1308
01:08:17,040 --> 01:08:21,040
Speaker 3: another called Where Have all the Leader's Gone? And mister

1309
01:08:21,120 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 3: Iacocca is still live today, the ripe old age of

1310
01:08:24,080 --> 01:08:29,400
Speaker 3: ninety two in bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

1311
01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:31,400
Speaker 2: Where there is nary a Pinto to be found.

1312
01:08:31,720 --> 01:08:34,360
Speaker 5: That's right, and that is the story of the Ford Pinto.

1313
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:49,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, yeah, good luck. Stuff you should Know is

1314
01:08:49,080 --> 01:08:52,519
Speaker 3: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,

1315
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:56,160
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

1316
01:08:56,240 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.