FREE ESSAY ON THE FORD PINTO

THE FORD PINTO

Ford Pinto
Plato said," The appetites or the passions may gain control of him and refuse to obey the
dictates of his highest part, reason or mind." (Frost 131)
If this is so what was Ford Motor Company so hungry for in the early 1970's to knowingly
sell thousands of unsafe cars to its customers? Yes, we can all agree that the foreign
automakers were taking a big chunk out of the American industry with its fuel-efficient
compact cars. We can even understand the concept of Ford wanting to produce it's own
compact car to compete with it's foreign competitors. Does this make it all right then to
take shortcuts if the end justifies the means?
Ford Motor Company did just that when it mass-produced and sold the Pinto. Customers
expected a certain degree of respect, honesty, and quality with the purchase of their
vehicle. In return for their loyalty to an American built car they got a death trap. 
I don't know if there are any written professional codes of conduct for automakers and
even if they were it doesn't mean Ford would have followed them in this case. I do know
there were safety standards successfully lobbied against by Ford for almost a decade. The
money spent lobbying for almost ten years could have been used to fix the problem in the
first place. Two hundred thousand, seven hundred and twenty five dollars is the price
Ford put on human life. In actuality Ford said human lives were not worth the five to
eight dollar fix. The man who puts a monetary value on life looks at the world, and
instead should stand in front of the mirror to truly gauge that value. Sure the number of
human lives lost in the Pinto due to rear end collisions is very small compared to the
total number of Pintos sold. I don't think Iacocca would think so if it were his wife or
child in those collisions.
Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public in the
performance of their duties. This is the first fundamental canon of the Code of Ethics of
Engineers. This simply means that even if Iacocca had no ethics, the engineers who
designed the Pinto should have had some. 
Aesop wrote that," The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same
scales." (Boldt 51) Ford Motor Company didn't value human life high enough then and who's
to say they value it even more today?
Works Cited
Laurence G. Boldt, "Zen Soup Tasty Morsels of Wisdom From Great Minds East 
West" Penguin Putmnan Inc, New York, New York, 1997
S. E. Frost, Jr., "Basic Teachings of The Great Philosophers", Anchor Books, 
New York, New York, 1942, Reprint 1962