In September 1973 a Ford memo set $200,000 per death, $67,000 per injury and $700 per vehicle against the cost of an $11 safety fix. Total benefit: $49.5 million. Total cost: $137 million.
In 1977 the magazine Mother Jones made the memo famous in a story about the Pinto. But the memo was not about the Pinto. It concerned a proposed federal rule for all 12.5 million cars and light trucks sold each year, and the Pinto is not mentioned. The $200,000 was the federal traffic safety agency’s own estimate of the cost to society of one traffic death.
In Grimshaw v. Ford, the best-known Pinto lawsuit, the judge did not admit the memo as evidence.