Never thought I’d see it but, yesterday, this aging Ford Pinto Runabout was being driven on the streets of San Francisco in a non-ironic fashion - as if it were a normal car!
Only In San Francisco. Click to expand – note whitewall tires:
Confer the similar AMC Pacer being driven the normal way, in an ironic fashion, around Lowest Haight near horrible Octavia Boulevard. See the difference?
NB: If this Pacer were a Pinto, the flames would be coming out of the rear wheel well, instead of the front. About which more anon.
Now, Wikipedia says some Pintos were built just across the bay in Richmond(!), CA. See that monstrous building with the solar panels? That was the haunted Ford factory, back in the day. But didn’t this factory close down back in ’55, 15 years before the Pinto era? Think so.
Anywho, maybe the Pinto wasn’t all that unsafe after all (compared to other cars in its class at the time), despite that Pulitzer-winning Mother Jones magazine bit/press conference back in 1977 and the received wisdom of today. Regardless, flaming “Pinto Madness” inspired the Gene Hackman / Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio film called Class Action- that was the 1991 movie shot in San Francisco that had absolutely, positively nothing to do with any kind of class action lawsuit. Anywho.
Keep on truckin’, yellow Pinto lady!
