The Pinto

geezer said:
The IMSA road race Pinto's with the 2.3 liter engine was amazing. The wild men that raced them cornered in dirt track style, and on courses with short straights and many turns, they could run with 911 Porche's. One year, the fastest Pinto at Summit Point broke the track record set by a 911. There is only one long straight on that track.

The Pinto's had an overhead cam hemi 4 cylinder engine, and with the free flowing tuned exhaust and high rev limits, they reliably made a lot of horsepower.

Car and Driver had one set up and modified to fit IMSA rules, and on the second race, they finished first at Charlotte. The Pinto had a better overall balance of traction and steering, giving a lot of retained speed in the corners. They also had a stiff frame and body, and with the required roll cage, flexed very little on hard cornering.

Watching them was a lot of fun, as the dirt track style had them in massive drifts at every corner after a decent straight to build speed.
Click to expand...

I had a almost new 1977 that was modified quite easily In a weekend buy my visiting uncle who was a factory racing cosworth mechanic in England..even without changing the exhaust his ability to tune using some new parts…my father made him put it back so as to not void the warranty…but for a couple of days that was amazing performance…My uncle could not believe why the limited such a good engine…
 
Last edited:
Warlock said:
I had a almost new 1977 that was modified quite easily I’m a weekend buy my visiting uncle who was a factory racing cosworth mechanic in England..even without changing the exhaust his ability to tune using some new parts…my father made him put it back so as to not void the warranty…but for a couple of days that was amazing performance…My uncle could not believe why the limited such a good engine…
Click to expand...

Cosworth was also involved with the Ford Escort in the form of a hot engine geared toward rally cross in the mid-90s.

maxresdefault.jpg
 
My first car was a 77 Pinto. My dad bought it from the county auction. Wasn't a bad car really. Pretty easy to work on. Still have the occasional dream about about finding that car and getting it running again.
 
Y'know, everyone I knew who had a Pinto (including a Bobcat or two) pretty much liked 'em - you could flog them and abuse them (like we all did at that age), and they just carried on.

For that matter, I had a vega, and it was actually a damned good car - every problem I had, I caused, with great prejudice. Even at at that, it never let me down.
 
I don't know why the Gremlin never gets any love, I kind of liked them. My oldest sister's first new car was a Pinto, and we thought it was great. A buddy drove a Vega for several years. I owned a Corvair, and the first car I ever bought was a Javelin -- I still think they look pretty cool. And, the very first NEW car we ever bought was an '84-1/2 Escort Pony, as stripped as possible for our tiny, tiny budget. I've also owned an early model Festiva (which we called the "Kia Pet".

Honestly, I didn't see any huge flaws with any of these cars. They weren't perfect, but neither was my Mercedes S600 if you want to look at the other end of the scale. Some had more reliability issues than others, in general, but none were Trabants or Yugos.
 
DaleB said:
I don't know why the Gremlin never gets any love, I kind of liked them. My oldest sister's first new car was a Pinto, and we thought it was great. A buddy drove a Vega for several years. I owned a Corvair, and the first car I ever bought was a Javelin -- I still think they look pretty cool. And, the very first NEW car we ever bought was an '84-1/2 Escort Pony, as stripped as possible for our tiny, tiny budget.

… but none were Trabants or Yugos.
Click to expand...
All excellent choices for the budget market. And they were pretty straightforward to work on too.

I also liked the Gremlin.

Also the Subaru Brat of that era also had an interesting look with the seats mounted in the cargo space.

And I got a good quantity of Yugo jokes.
 
Back when I first started as a NASCAR official, there were a lot of pintos in our "mini stock" division. What was always amazing to me that some of our largest drivers would be in those things.
 
funny thread.
My son is just 16 and so I've been thinking lately about small and cheap cars. Maybe it's just memory tricks but it seems like there was more variety can character in these low-ish end cars back in those days. Not that they were nice necessarily but at least some variety to choose from. Today they all seem the same.
 
Brad W said:
funny thread.
My son is just 16 and so I've been thinking lately about small and cheap cars. Maybe it's just memory tricks but it seems like there was more variety can character in these low-ish end cars back in those days. Not that they were nice necessarily but at least some variety to choose from. Today they all seem the same.
Click to expand...

Safety laws have dictated a lot of that across all vehicles. Mandatory bumper heights, headlight/taillight/marker light visibility/height mandates indirectly result in auto designers arriving at similar appearance in order to meet those regulations. Then add in EPA mandates and it forces design engineers to use similar profiles to squeeze out better drag coefficients and then cars/trucks start taking the same shape. Eventually there won't be enough room left in the regs to design much of anything unique.
 
wsuffa said:
And yet it was no Corvair.
Click to expand...
Don't you be badmouthing my 1965 Corvair Corsa.
I raced in SCCA parking lot grand prixs and never had a loss of control issue and very rarely lost a race.
The moron who wrote "Unsafe at any Speed" (Ralph Nader) just made up all that crap about the car.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top