Essays on Dowie

Section 1: Introduction and Situational Analysis

In 1971 Ford released the Pinto in an effort to compete with foreign car makers, specifically Volkswagen, and their more compact cars (Dowie, 1977). In order to get into the compact car market quickly, Ford compressed the time the pinto took to go from draft to the showroom from 3.5 years to 2 years (Philosophia.uncg.edu, 2015). While the Pinto was being built in the factory, Ford was testing the Pinto. They found that rear-end crashes would very easily rupture the Pinto’s fuel system, risking a fire (Dowie, 1977). Engineering teams proposed a couple of solutions to the issues; they suggested ...

Business Ethics

Introduction In 1960’s Ford Company produced an automobile to compete with the Chinese sub combat, which was increasingly becoming popular in the U.S. Ford motor company and the manufacture of Ford Pinto, designed a car that had design flaws as shown by crush tests. The crush tests show defects, and raise many ethical questions in regards to responsibilities of the engineers involved and all the stakeholders. Also, ethical issues are seen in regards to the role of engineers in issuing a recall. Iacocca argued that Ford had to put out its alternative to the VW Beetle or else the ...

According to media reports the 1971 Ford Pinto was a subcompact automobile which was poorly designed. Not only was it poorly designed, it was dangerously designed according to the reports. Rear end collisions caused the car to burst into flame. The way Ford Company handled the matter became infamous when an in-house memo became public. The memo seemed to note that the cost of fixing the rear end of all the Ford Pintos so the car would be safe cost too much. The estimated cost would be $121 million. On the other hand the estimated the cost of making payments ...