Ethics Chart

This case was a very sensitive issue because it touches the life of others.

We research about the case and we noticed that the company president Mr. Lee Iacocca was a very strict boss and most of the employees were afraid of loosing their jobs if they went and talk to him about any problem that will cause any delay on his plan. Mr. Iacocca wanted to compete with Japanese market and he wanted to build a car that was less than two tons and in less than 25 months. The usual time to build an assembly line would be more than 45 months. The engineers while were creating the prototype and realized the mistake but it was already late because the assembly line was already designed.

When Ford started to make the driving test, they could see that the Pinto car was bursting into flames when another car hit the rear area. The gas tank was located in that area. When they brought this to the attention to the managers, they used analyze the cost of the solution which was a plastic part that cost only 11 dollars. After they go through out all this evaluation, they found it was going to be cheaper to pay for the lost lives than adding the part that will solve the problem. This would have delay the production; this is the reason they continue selling this car for more than seven years. There were around 180 claims of fatal accidents YES YES