Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 24, 1993 TAG: 9309240023
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
My words: Ford Pinto.
Your words: ----- ------ ----------- -- -- --------- --- ----.
Your words, of course, were: "Fried beyond recognition by an exploding gas tank."
The truth is that for a dozen years, 150 mail carriers in Western Virginia puttered about towns and cities from Danville and Lynchburg to Roanoke and Rocky Mount to Wytheville and Bristol in their 1980 Pintos.
Small wonder postal workers are so prone to marching into their workplaces and opening fire with automatic weapons. You'd do the same if your boss sent you out on the mail route every day with a lit cigar in your mouth and a can of gasoline under your butt.
Such is the Pinto reputation, and if you believe it, you obviously trust reporters and Jay Leno too much for accuracy.
Richard Martin, the Postal Service's regional manager of vehicle maintenance in Western Virginia, has nothing but praise for the feisty Pinto.
"We used them for city park-and-loop routes, where the carrier parks it, walks the route and ends up back at the car," said Martin. "It's been a real good vehicle - much less problem than the Jeep."
Just goes to show how a lot of bad publicity can go a long way.
The Pinto was unveiled in 1971 by then-Ford Motor Co. executive Lee Iacocca. He'd vowed to produce a 2,000-pound, $2,000 car to compete against smaller, cheaper imports.
The first Pinto was 1,995 pounds. It cost a buck a pound.
It was never comfortable. Hard to steer and quick to rust, it was described by one wag as "a car nobody loved, but everybody bought." The Pinto became Ford's best-selling car.
Then Pintos started to burn. Ford became the first corporation charged with murder when a '73 Pinto, struck from behind, burst into flames and killed three teen-age girls in Indiana.
That made for great headlines; not such great headlines when the carmaker was acquitted in 1978. Turns out the Pinto didn't burn any more often than any other small car did, but the damage to its reputation was eternal.
The federal government, expert at bailing out large automakers, helped Ford by buying boatloads of Pintos in 1980, the last year the car was made.
Thousands of postal workers hit the streets in Pintos, much to the snickering delight of everyone who has ever wished a pox on the post office and its minions.
But there was no carrier kabob.
Now, the Pinto patrol that served Western Virginia is being dispersed - the last 11 are parked beneath the maples on Kimball Avenue in Roanoke.
Already, about 135 Pintos have been sold, said Martin, for $700 each, and replaced with Grumman trucks - Saltine boxes with wheels, but nonexplosive.
Two Pintos are still in service - one in Roanoke, another in Bristol - each being used to fetch parts for the postal garage.
"They've been good, dependable little cars," said Martin.
Not a one of them burst into flames on a mail route.
by CNB