By Hal Lewis, Partner

When you ask someone to think of a defective and dangerous automobile that would explode upon impact, almost everyone thinks of the Ford Pinto. Hundreds of people perished as the result of fires that started when their Pintos were rear-ended by other vehicles, and Ford eventually ended up paying huge damage awards to those victims before finally recalling 1.5 million Pintos in 1978. The most tragic part of this saga, however, was that Ford knew about the design defect before it produced the Pinto but still chose not to install a $5.08 rubber fuel-tank bladder in each car that would have solved the problem.

One would think that Ford would learn a valuable lesson from the history of the Pinto, but apparently not, since Ford is still producing vehicles to this day that explode and catch fire when struck from behind. In November of 2001, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a “service query” into the issue of rear-impact explosions on the following vehicles: the Ford Crown Victoria, the Mercury Grand Marquis, the Lincoln Town Car and the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

Since 1990, there have been dozens of people killed – many of them highway patrolmen – when one of the above-named vehicles was involved in a rear-end collision. In fact, on July 26, 1999, the Florida Highway Patrol brought this to Ford’s attention and recommended to Ford that the fuel tanks be “redesigned” with a bladder or shield to prevent these tragedies from occurring. To this date, Ford has done nothing in response to the FHP request. The design problem in these cars is that the fuel tank is located behind the rear axle in the “rear crush zone.” Furthermore, there is a hexbolt with sharp edges on the rear axle that punctures the fuel tank when impact occurs. However, rather than recall these vehicles and protect the occupants, Ford’s only action has been to issue a service bulletin recommending that people replace the hexbolt with a round one – at their own expense! Every year, Ford is settling several cases relating to rear-impact fuel tank fires for these particular vehicles, and there are hundreds of thousands of them still on the road every day in our state. By making our readers aware of this potential problem, Fonvielle Lewis Foote & Messer hopes that everyone will make an informed decision whenever they are thinking about buying or selling a Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis or Lincoln Town Car.