Junkyard Find: 1974 Ford Pinto Wagon
Ford built better than three million Pintos from the 1971 through 1980 model years, which means that examples still show up in the Ewe Pullets of the land. Here is a 1974 Pinto wagon, found a few months back in a Denver self-service car graveyard.
GM sold two-thirds as many Chevrolet Vegas, but the Vega is much rarer than the Pinto in junkyards today (though I managed to find a group of six Vegas at this very yard last year, clearly the result of a hoarder collector clearing out inventory).
The Pinto must have been built better than most Malaise Era subcompacts for enough of them to have survived this long, because affection for the Pinto fell off a cliff after Mother Jones published " Pinto Madness" in the fall of 1977.
People tend to stash dead old cars in yards and driveways for decades when they love the idea of owning one (see: MG MGB, Fiat 124 Sport Spider, Subaru BRAT), but that isn't applicable to the much-demonized Pinto.
Long story short, just about all 1960s/1970s rear-wheel-drive cars with the fuel tank located between the rear bumper and the axle (i.e., most Detroit cars of the era) were at risk of going up in a catastrophic fireball when rear-ended, but the Pinto got all the attention for this problem due to the leaked internal Ford documents revealed in "Pinto Madness."
The Pinto became the butt of jokes, which continue to this day.
One of the lesser-known "exploding Pinto" bits from the movies takes place in the 1990 film "Spirit of '76," starring David Cassidy and Lief Garrett and shot on the Island that Rust Forgot. In fact, this scene was filmed just a few blocks from the driveway best known for Robert Bechtle's famous 1974 painting, Alameda Gran Torino.
Now that we've got the Splodey Pintoz thing out of the way, let's talk about this specific car. The build tag shows that it was born in Canada, at St. Thomas Assembly in Ontario, which closed down after the final Crown Victorias were built in 2011.
1974 was the high-water mark—by a lot— for Pinto sales, with well over a half-million built that year. This was mostly due to certain geopolitical events that took place beginning in the fall of 1973 and sent fuel prices into the stratosphere. For 1975, Pinto sales dropped to below 250,000 as Civics, Rabbits, B210s and Corollas increasingly lured away American car shoppers.
Ford offered three sizes of station wagon to American buyers for 1974: the full-size LTD, the midsize Torino and the subcompact Pinto. Naturally, each of those wagons had their Mercury-badged siblings. Note how Ford's brochure designers used short, slender models to make the Pinto wagon's interior look big; I think the driver in this photograph was about 4' 11 and scaled in at 90 pounds.
This car was built with some nice extra-cost options. There's no air conditioning, but it did get a Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission ($212, or $1,435 in 2024 dollars).
There's also a Philco AM radio, which was ideal for listening to the great hits of 1974. This may be an aftermarket- or dealer-installed radio; the factory-installed unit cost 61 bucks ($413 after inflation).
The MSRP was $2,771 ($18,760 in today's money), but hardly anybody bought these cars in zero-option form. Radial tires, hubcaps and even carpeting were extra-cost items on this car.
The base engine for the 1974 Pinto was the 2.0-liter SOHC four-cylinder EAO, rated at 80 horsepower. This car has its 2.3-liter "Lima" cousin, rated at two additional horses but with a more street-useful torque curve. The cost: $52, or $352 now.
This car was kept on the road long after it became a full-fledged hooptie, which tells us that it just ran and ran despite many years of abuse. Both door panels have been replaced with cardboard. I'm impressed that the person who installed these panels actually went to the trouble to remove and reinstall the handles and armrest in order to hold the cardboard in place, rather than just cutting big holes and taping the whole mess to the metal.
The Colorado sun nuked the dash cover decades ago.
A running car with two pedals typically stays in service until some malfunction that costs more than the car's value to repair prevents it from being driven safely. Scrap values are very low right now, so even a bad tire could have doomed this Pinto.
The odometer shows 80,643 miles, but I think this car reached at least 180,643 and maybe more.
It's easy on gas and it's fun to drive!
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
1974 Ford Pinto station wagon in Colorado wrecking yard.
[Images: Author]
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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In the late 1970s' we ran a Pinto wagon, the same colour as this one, as a company 'runabout'. It was a 'fully loaded' model with AT, A/C, etc. We ran it alongside, Along my VW Type IV squareback, which I had 'sold to the company'.
The Pinto was the proverbial 1,000 bits of metal and bolts moving together in loose formation. Rattly, noisy, zero steering feel. But it ran and ran. Badly but took all types of abuse.
The Type IV on the other hand, was light years ahead of the Pinto in NVH, creature comforts, ergonomics, engineering and design features, etc. But was the first VW we had to demonstrate the issues that VW's would become infamous for. Noisy brakes, electrical glitches, and self destructing exhaust systems.
Given the choice everyone would select the VW, if and when it was running. But the PInto put on far more miles and lasted much longer.
Ford got in trouble for their document because they seemed to be putting a price tag on human life. Well let me ask you this, would you pay $1 million more for a plane ticket if you knew that that money would go to save 1-2 lives every 40-50 years? Or would you say that the odds of that happening are so low that it isn't worth making air travel too expensive for pretty much everyone? Well congrats! You just agreed in principle to putting a price tag on human life. Now we're just haggling over what that price should be.