10 Crash Tests With Shocking Results

The crash test above was at the centre of an incredible scandal. The Ford Pinto had its fuel tank in the rear, and a report in Mother Jones in the 70s claimed the cars had a tendency to burst into flames from a rear-end crash. Worse, it claimed Ford was aware of the defect, and had decided it would be cheaper to pay out for lawsuits from resulting deaths and injuries than to simply fix the problem. In 1991, however, a report claimed that the number of people affected by Pinto fires was exaggerated, and that the car was no more likely to cause death by fire than any other car of the era.

At the height of the scandal, an ABC news report cited the video above as evidence of this fact, however it later had to retract this statement as the crash test had taken place 10 years before the scandal erupted, and was intended as a test to see how cabins reacted to fire after a crash. The first attempt did not yield fire, so they used an incendiary device to light the fuel.