By Dan Strohl

Hemmings

Many cars have made the transition from joke fodder to recognized collector car: the Model T, the Corvair, the Beetle. Some cars are still in transition, notably the Gremlin and Pacer. Some cars, like the Yugo, may never make the transition. So what about the Pinto? Will excellent examples such as this 1978 Ford Pinto for sale on Hemmings.com help legitimize the car and dispense with the explosion jokes? Or will 30th century archaeologists still be laughing at it? From the seller’s description:

1978 Pinto 10,000 Original Miles Mint Condition 1 repaint Like new interior 4 cyl 4 speed Green with Green interior

See more pics at Hemmings

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

Out cruising with Chris yesterday evening, I noticed that this poor Pinto wagon–one that I first saw at the beginning of winter–was still sitting out in the weeds on this industrial-district road south of Seattle waiting for its forever home. The slightly soggy sign in the window says it’s a grandpa car, and that the old man was a Boeing engineer who used it back in the day to commute to his job–which was working on the 747. Cool! They’re asking 800 bucks, but I bet that at this point, $400 cash and a tow dolly would easily relieve them of the little wagon. More pics after the jump, and PM me if you’d like the seller’s phone number.

Continue reading "Lonely Pinto Needs Home" »

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

I figured I’d quickly post about a car that played an important role in my teenage years – a ’72 Ford Pinto. Yep, a Ford Pinto , the car that’s infamous for erupting into a ball of fire with a slight tap of the rear bumper. While this hot rodded Pinto was about as shoddy as it gets, its turbocharged engine swap also made it one of the funnest cars ever.

At some point someone took the rusty, weather Pinto chassis and added a turbocharged 2.3 liter motor from an ’80s era turbo Thunderbird. I bought the car in 2002 for something like 1,100 bucks, and I remember road tripping down to LA with my dad and driving the car 250 miles home – choking on gas fumes the whole way. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Mike Garrett

One of the perks of living in a "mobile home community" has to be the ability to accumulate weird projects and half-apart junk cars without the neighbors really complaining much—there’s a lot of places I can think of where you couldn’t get away with dismantling a couple Pintos, that’s for sure. I spotted this pair when I went to check out this Craigslist Firebird with a friend recently. The owner said he was going to build one Pinto out of two, and swap in a 2006 Ford Focus motor—he had a whole plan for hooking it up to the Pinto’s RWD transmission. It probably won’t turn out anything like the one we found on eBay this week, but it’ll definitely be something different.

Continue reading "Trailer Park Treasure" »

It’s running a balanced and supercharged 355. Hehe, and the license plate says "animal." Check out the auction!

During the 1973-4  oil crisis, Car and Driver took a Pinto and modded it for improved fuel economy. By spending $11 on improving the aerodynamics, removing two of the four fan blades, and switching from bias ply to steel belted tires, they were able to improve the Pinto’s gas mileage by 25%. More at Ecomodder.

I met a number of the Pinto owners at last year’s All-Ford Nationals, and they’re a good-natured bunch. And the awesome thing about their cars is that no two are the same. They’re divided into stock and modified classes, but within these distinctions, anything goes. The woodgrain wagon isn’t even a Pinto, it’s a Bobcat, Mercury’s equivalent model. The powder-blue ’77 has a Mustang’s 302 and a Shaker hoodscoop. A handful of the cars are running the boosted T-Bird turbo coupe version of the Pinto’s 2.3L four-cylinder. One of these was Connie’s lovely orange Pinto, which also has a color-matched powder-coated valve cover and orange plaid seats that were re-covered using a roll of the original NOS fabric. Check out the whole Pinto gallery after the jump!

Continue reading "Fords At Carlisle: Pinto Party!" »

The it turns out, was an extremely rare option package offered by Ford dealers on the Pinto. It included this distincitve nosecone and pop-up headlights, a beefed-up suspension, and a turbocharged, Weber-carbed, OHC 2.3L. Brad owns one of the five intact Pangra Pintos known to exist, and he even let Hemmings road-test it a few years back. He’s done an amazing job of turning it into a burly little racecar while keeping it almost entirely true to the factory design—check out his ride page, and watch the step-by-step resto video to see this ultra-rare ride transform before your eyes!

Everyone hates Nazis, especially Illinois Nazis. Too bad their cool orange Pinto wagon had to die with them. Believe it or not, the producers of the Blues Brothers had to get a special airworthiness (or unworthiness?) certificate for the Pinto from the FAA to certify that the car would not fly off-course when it was dropped from a helicopter in the famous scene. As a result, they first had to drop a duplicate car in a remote area to see how far off from vertical it would travel while falling. So two Pintos died for the sake of art. Oh well… Sadly, I could not find a photo of the actual drop.

Update: check out this site. Thanks for the link Gary!