Originally posted by Big Daddy Kane:
So what's up with Fords and gas tanks?

Pinto
Crown Vic
Mustang
...



Ignorance of the people who talk about it basically.

1. Pinto was a real problem, there was a piece of structure that would pierce the fuel tank in a rear end collision. It was obviously fixed in a recall.

2. Crown Vic was mostly a fabrication of a single police dept that did crash testing that was deliberately falsified in order to produce the resultes they desired, ie Crown Vics pouring fuel. It is very sadly true that Police Officers have died in fires in Crown Vics after being rear ended, but these accidents have been extremely severe hits, with the striking cars moving in excess of 70mph and often over 100mph and hitting the stationary Crown Vic. At a minimum this is over twice the energy that any crash testing anywhere for a street car is done.

Further, the risk of leaking fuel isn't terribly great in a hit like that; the risk is that the car is hit so hard that the doors can no longer open. When you combine that with an obliterated fuel tank, and an ignition source, you find very sad circumstances. Any and every car is susceptible to these same things if struck hard enough, and the Crown Vic, because of how it is used by police, is more susceptible to these types of hard rear end hits.

3. Mustang isn't particularly bad, despite the location of the tank in the 79-04 cars. The tank is fully sperated by steel bulkheads from any passenger compertment. However, the Mustang (just like any car) is susceptible to the same sort of extremely hard hit that a Crown Vic is. This has occured in a few cases, and very sadly the vehicle occupants have died. But these are all very extreme accidents. Asking for engineers to design around hits like those is not terribly far away from asking airplane engineers why they can't keep people from dying when the planes hit the ground.

Balance is the Key. rarasvt@comcast.net