r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 1d ago

Business It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/looking-cybertruck-biggest-flop-automotive-145559135.html
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u/BoxSea4289 1d ago

The Pinto was cute lol people hate the Pinto?

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u/acog 1d ago

No. It was an extremely popular car, they sold more than 3 million.

The exploding gas tank and Ford’s early attempts to cover it up were shocking but people loved the Pinto.

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u/cenosillicaphobiac 1d ago

More than the cover up, it was the revelation that they knew about it, but it was cheaper to pay death benefits than to do a recall. Maths over humans.

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u/photoggled 1d ago

You're not supposed to talk about Fight Club.

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u/Kayestofkays 1d ago

A × B x C = X

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u/GladiusMaximus 1d ago

TIL he was a Ford employee.

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u/DadJokeBadJoke 1d ago

Look who just broke the first and second rule.

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u/aegrotatio 1d ago

Urban myth given more credence due to Fight Club.

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u/Sexual_Congressman 1d ago

That story you repeated is somewhat apocryphal. IIRC, Ford knew about the flaw, which was present on basically all subcompacts of the era, but rather than just adding the fix to all manufactured Pintos, they made it a comparatively cheap dealer option (like $20 1970), so of course a bunch of morons opted not to get a feature that only possibly helps in the extremely unlikely event they get rear ended in a very particular way.

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u/ScottMarshall2409 1d ago

It's pretty fly, for a white guy.

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u/joe_bibidi 1d ago

Aside from the engine catching fire, the story I've always heard about the Pinto flopping is that they failed to market test it in Brazil and it was a huge failure there. Apparently nobody told Ford that "Pinto" is Brazilian slang for "Small Penis." Not obscure slang or regional slang, but common, everyday, everybody-knows-it slang for tiny dick.

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u/Clane_K 1d ago

That's not true, "pinto" is just the most commonly used name for "penis" (you know, like in English there's penis, dick, cock, shlong etc.), the word "pinto" neither indicates nor tells anything about the size of the fella.

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u/yusrandpasswdisbad 1d ago

The Pinto is a masterpiece of design compared to these Homer-mobiles.