Ford

[Guest Alison82]

I heard that a little while back Ford cars discovered that one of it's models had a serious fault that would cause fatal accidents, their accountant thought it would be better if they paid out compensation to the families of the fatalities rather than recalling the cars as that would be too expensive!

[dave]

Was that not the Edsel? If the car was indicating left and got hit up the back side, it would cause a series of events that caused the car to turn into a fireball I believe.

 

Also, there was a fault in the windows of some models of 747 - the airline calculated that to pay the claims in the event of 4-5 planes falling out of the sky and killing everyone would be cheaper than the cost of putting the windows right.

 

 

Ford = Fire On Residential Driveway

Lotus = Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious

[martinwhite]

This was the Ford Pinto. The car had a neat feature of bursting into flames when it was rear-ended. This was because the fuel tank was between the rear axle and the rear bumper. In a rear shunt, the tank would split, dump fuel everywhere, and the sparks caused by broken lights would ignite the fuel.

 

A lawyer acting for families of people burned or killed found an internal document where, yes, Ford had indeed decided that given the amount of money to fix the problem on one car, was say $11 (it really was that small) multiplied by xx million cars per year, compared to the compensation paid out to families of the dead/maimed, it was cheaper to let 'em burn.

 

The judge fined Ford $350million in punative damages. A record at the time.

 

The Edsel was the car released under a fanfare (Edsel was one of Ford's sons names) and it flopped badly.

[crusty git]

Was that not the Edsel? If the car was indicating left and got hit up the back side, it would cause a series of events that caused the car to turn into a fireball I believe.

 

Also, there was a fault in the windows of some models of 747 - the airline calculated that to pay the claims in the event of 4-5 planes falling out of the sky and killing everyone would be cheaper than the cost of putting the windows right.

 

 

Ford = Fire On Residential Driveway

Lotus = Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious

 

 

Surely Ford stands for Fix Or Repair Daily ??

[Guest]

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