AT Tires R Pod 171

I remember there was a Cosworth version of the Vega back then. They were supposed to be quite peppy. In the eighties, my dad bought a Pinto station wagon. He welded a roof rack on to it and used it for the handy man business he started after he retired. He had a perfectly good pickup, but didn't want to put miles on it.

Stephen, did you get the mower deck option on the Metro? Just kidding. It was a fun car to drive. I had a MG Midget when I lived in California. We joked that you wore a Midget more than you drove it. Nonetheless, for as small as it was, it had a full set of gauges. Loved that little sponge, I mean car.

Originally posted by StephenH Come on now. Pintos did not spontaneously explode. I had one. I even had a rear-end collision of a sort. I stopped for a red light because the signal was changing and I hit the brakes instead of trying to get through the yellow light. A Volkswagen Beetle behind me did not stop quite so quickly. His bumper hit my tailpipe. It broke the muffler hanger and I could see where the exhaust pipe hit the brake line. I think it wasn't flattened because of the pressure it was under. He had a bent bumper to show for it. I took a piece of an old tire to make a replacement muffler hanger and drove it until the exhaust system needed replacing when the muffler rusted out. My Pinto lasted better than a classmates Chevy Vega. That thing was covered in rust spots the first winter and the aluminum engine block needed to be bored out and iron sleeves put in to stop it form burning oil. The Pinto replaced a 63 Corvair that I drove when I first got licensed. It was not turbo and it did have the swing axl.

StephenH, you misunderstand me, and rereading my post I understand why. My bad. I disliked the Pinto because it was just a terrible car to drive, not because of the gas tank. I'm not one to avoid so-called "dangerous" vehicles as long as I know what I'm getting into so I can manage my risk. Heck I fly an experimental aircraft.

But why get in any car if it's a POS? My GF back in the mid 70s had a Pinto and it was the most gutless piece of junk I ever got behind the wheel of. She had the base model. It had no power, no power steering, no power brakes even. It would literally wheeze going down the road, like an old man with asthma. And it was a new car. It also had a horrible automatic tranny. Might have only been 2 speeds, can't recall. But it was really really bad. Nothing was right on that car. It was an embarrassment to car-dom. I hated it. Told my GF I'd rather walk. Hey but they had "more road-hugging weight". Remember that silly ad slogan?

At that time I had a Civic. First brand new car I ever owned. Loved it. Jato, if you think Civics were low, get in an MG Midget sometime, if you can fit. Now that was strap a roller skate to your butt low.

As for unsafe at any speed, I'm still not sure why Nader singled out the Corvair. That car was just GMs rather poor attempt to copy the ultra popular VW Bug. The Veedub had the same swing axle design up to around 1968 when they finally adopted the Porsche IRS. I can assure you that the swing axle VWs had similar handling quirks as the Corvair. You could still throw them around in the twisties, you just had to know the limits or it would bite you real bad. Serious racers put things called camber compensators on them to limit wheel tuck under.    But Nader didn't target that car. I suspect he knew the VW was too popular to fail, while the Corvair was vulnerable. Nader sure knew how to pick his battles.

Yep, number 3 exhaust on VWs was notorious. Even worse in type 2s (busses) because they are run harder. The fix is to remove the OEM oil cooler and replace it with an external one that gets better cooling, and allows air to get to number 3.

Interesting but Lycoming O320 and O360 aircraft engines have the exact same issue on some aurframes, premature number 3 exhaust failure. I recently had to sort that out on my airplane, which as an 0360. Turns out the fix is even easier than on VWs, the cause is the cooling baffle setup can block airflow past the cylinder cooling fins in one spot on that cylinder. Creating a 1/8 inch gap with a spacer fixes it. It's often the little things. My number CHTs now run within 2 degrees of the other cylinders.

Was your Civic tranny manual or a slushbox? I had a 76 with the manual, never had a single issue with that car in the 150k miles I owned it.

My worst ownership experience was my 1984 Keep Cherokee. That's when AMC owned Jeep. AMC seemingly made a global search to fund the worst parts they could for it. Had Lucas hydraulics (Lucas!) and the infamous 2.8 liter GM V6. What a piece of junk that car was.

Everyone has different experiences. I found that if I actually liked driving the vehicle a lot then Id tolerate it's foibles but if I didn't it could do nothing right.