The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (24 page)

The crash tests revealed that the Pinto’s fuel system as designed could not meet the 20-mile-per-hour proposed standard. Mechanical prototypes struck from the rear with a moving barrier at 21 miles per hour caused the fuel tank to be driven forward and to be punctured, causing fuel leakage in excess of the standard prescribed by the proposed regulation. A production Pinto crash tested at 21 miles per hour into a fixed barrier caused the fuel neck to be torn from the gas tank and the tank to be punctured by a bolt head on the differential housing. In at least one test, spilled fuel entered the driver’s compartment through gaps resulting from the separation of the seams joining the rear wheel wells to the floor pan. The seam separation was occasioned by the lack of reinforcement in the rear structure and insufficient welds of the wheel wells to the floor pan.

Tests conducted by Ford on other vehicles, including modified or reinforced mechanical Pinto prototypes, proved safe at speeds at which the Pinto failed. Where rubber bladders had been installed in the tank, crash tests into fixed barriers at 21 miles per hour withstood leakage from punctures in the gas tank. Vehicles with fuel tanks installed above rather than behind the rear axle passed the fuel system integrity test at 31-miles-per-hour fixed barrier. A Pinto with two longitudinal hat sections added to firm up the rear structure passed a 20-mile-per-hour rear impact fixed barrier test with no fuel leakage.

The Cost to Remedy Design Deficiencies:

When a prototype failed the fuel system integrity test, the standard of care for engineers in the industry was to redesign and retest it. The vulnerability of the production Pinto’s fuel tank at speeds of 20 and 30-miles-per-hour fixed barrier tests could have been remedied by inexpensive “fixes,” but Ford produced and sold the Pinto to the public without doing anything to remedy the defects. Design changes that would have enhanced the integrity of the fuel tank system at relatively little cost per car included the following: Longitudinal side members and cross members at $2.40 and $1.80, respectively; a single shock absorbent “flak suit” to protect the tank at $4; a tank within a tank and placement of the tank over the axle at $5.08 to $5.79; a nylon bladder within the tank at $5.25 to $8; placement of the tank over the axle surrounded with a protective barrier at a cost of $9.95 per car; substitution of a rear axle with a smooth differential housing at a cost of $2.10; imposition of a protective shield between the differential housing and the tank at $2.35; improvement and reinforcement of the bumper at $2.60; addition of eight inches of crush space a cost of $6.40. Equipping the car with a reinforced rear structure, smooth axle, improved bumper and additional crush space at a total cost of $15.30 would have made the fuel tank safe in a 34 to 38-mile-per-hour rear-end collision by a vehicle the size of the Ford Galaxie. If, in addition to the foregoing, a bladder or tank within a tank were used or if the tank were protected with a shield, it would have been safe in a 40 to 45-mile-per-hour rear impact. If the tank had been located over the rear axle, it would have been safe in a rear impact at 50 miles per hour or more.

Management’s Decision to Go Forward With Knowledge of Defects:

The idea for the Pinto, as has been noted, was conceived by Mr. Iacocca, then executive vice president of Ford. The feasibility study was conducted under the supervision of Mr. Robert Alexander, vice president of car engineering. Ford’s Product Planning Committee, whose members included Mr. Iacocca, Mr. Robert Alexander, and Mr. Harold MacDonald, Ford’s group vice president of car engineering, approved the Pinto’s concept and made the decision to go forward with the project. During the course of the project, regular product review meetings were held which were chaired by Mr. MacDonald and attended by Mr. Alexander. As the project approached actual production, the engineers responsible for the components of the project “signed off ” to their immediate supervisors who in turn “signed off ” to their superiors and so on up the chain of command until the entire project was approved for public release by Vice Presidents Alexander and MacDonald and ultimately by Mr. Iacocca. The Pinto crash tests results had been forwarded up the chain of command to the ultimate decision-makers and were known to the Ford officials who decided to go forward with production.

Harley Copp, a former Ford engineer and executive in charge of the crash testing program, testified that the highest level of Ford’s management made the decision to go forward with the production of the Pinto, knowing that the gas tank was vulnerable to puncture and rupture at low rear impact speeds creating a significant risk of death or injury from fire and knowing that “fixes” were feasible at nominal cost. He testified that management’s decision was based on the cost savings which would inure from omitting or delaying the “fixes.”

Mr. Copp’s testimony concerning management’s awareness of the crash tests results and the vulnerability of the Pinto fuel system was corroborated by other evidence. At an April 1971 product review meeting chaired by Mr. MacDonald, those present received and discussed a report (exhibit 125) prepared by Ford engineers pertaining to the financial impact of a proposed federal standard on fuel system integrity and the cost savings which would accrue from deferring even minimal “fixes.” The report refers to crash tests of the integrity of the fuel system of Ford vehicles and design changes needed to meet anticipated federal standards. Also in evidence was a September 23, 1970, report (exhibit 124) by Ford’s “Chassis Design Office” concerning a program “to establish a corporate [Ford] position and reply to the government” on the proposed federal fuel system integrity standard which included zero fuel spillage at 20 miles per hour fixed barrier crash by January 1, 1972, and 30 miles per hour by January 1, 1973. The report states in part: “The 20 and 30 mph rear fixed barrier crashes will probably require repackaging the fuel tanks in a protected area such as above the rear axle. This is based on moving barrier crash tests of a Chevelle and a Ford at 30 mph and other Ford products at 20 mph. Currently there are no plans for forward models to repackage the fuel tanks. Tests must be conducted to prove that repackaged tanks will live without significantly strengthening rear structure for added protection.” The report also notes that the Pinto was the “[smallest] car line with most difficulty in achieving compliance.” It is reasonable to infer that the report was prepared for and known to Ford officials in policy-making positions.

The fact that two of the crash tests were run at the request of the Ford chassis and vehicle engineering department for the specific purpose of demonstrating the advisability of moving the fuel tank over the axle as a possible “f x” further corroborated Mr. Copp’s testimony that management knew the results of the crash tests. Mr. Kennedy, who succeeded Mr. Copp as the engineer in charge of Ford’s crash testing program, admitted that the test results had been forwarded up the chain of command to his superiors.

Finally, Mr. Copp testified to conversations in late 1968 or early 1969 with the chief assistant research engineer in charge of cost-weight evaluation of the Pinto, and to a later conversation with the chief chassis engineer who was then in charge of crash testing the early prototype. In these conversations, both men expressed concern about the integrity of the Pinto’s fuel system and complained about management’s unwillingness to deviate from the design if the change would cost money.

FREE ELECTRICITY

Born in Croatia in 1856, Nikola Tesla was a scientific genius, some of whose inventions have entered everyday life (he developed AC electrical current), some of which were madcap.

Or were they? One of Tesla’s most infamous ideas concerned electricity that could be transmitted through the air without the need for wires. To this end, he developed the Tesla Coil, a device to create bursts of high-voltage electricity which could be beamed to receivers without the need for wires. His biggest coil, the Magnifying Transmitter, was built at his lab in Colorado Springs, and when tested sent electricity arcing 50 metres into the air. The surge created a static discharge that lit up the earth. But the Magnifying Transmitter worked: it illuminated light bulbs twenty five miles away, without wires.

Tesla believed that the earth is a natural conductor, and that a strategically placed grid of Magnifying Transmitters could send free electricity over the world (see Document, p.167). To receive a supply, all people would need to do was stick a metal rod into their backyard, then relay the current to antennae on their electrical devices.

According to conspiracy lore, Tesla’s wireless electricity scheme did not catch on because it was suppressed by big electricity manufacturers, notably J. P. Morgan, who had hitherto been financing Tesla’s projects. “Where do I put the meter?” he famously asked Tesla about the latter’s “free power” scheme. The scientific jury is out on whether Tesla’s coils are a possible global power source, but Morgan certainly pulled the plug on free power in Tesla’s lifetime. And suppression of customer-friendly electrical goods was hardly unknown in the USA.
Time
magazine reported in 1945 that Philips, Osram and GE had engaged in a conspiracy to suppress light bulb technology that would have produced cheaper and longer lasting bulbs.

Inadvertently though, Morgan may have done the world a favour by stopping the flow of dollars to the inventive Tesla. On Long Island, Tesla began construction of the monstrous Wardenclyffe Tower to run a “World System”, combining wireless transmission of free energy and a global broadcasting system. There was intense press speculation – not helped by Tesla’s boast that the tower’s beam was so powerful it could destroy a ship in seconds – that Tesla’s invention was behind the mysterious sinking of the
Iena
in 1907. More recently, it has been suggested that the 1908 explosion that wiped out half a million acres of Siberian forest was not, as officially claimed, caused by a piece of Enke’s comet hitting Earth, but a misfiring from Tesla’s Wardenclyffe Tower in which a colossal, trillion-watt beam of power went to the wrong place. The tower was pulled down in 1917 because German U-boats were using it as a navigational beacon

Lack of money also put paid to Tesla’s 1934 plan for a particle beam weapon, which could knock aircraft out of the sky 250 miles away. Tesla christened his new invention the “Peace Ray”, because he considered it so terrible a deterrent that all wars would stop. The ray gun was never built in Tesla’s lifetime (he died in poverty in 1943) but the concept was revived in the 1980s by Texan physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund – and, say conspiracists, by the mysterious Project
HAARP
of the US government in remotest Alaska.

Further Reading

Nikola Tesla and David Hatcher Childress,
The Tesla Papers: Nikola Tesla on Free Energy and Wireless Transmission of Power
, 2000

DOCUMENT: NIKOLA TESLA,
MY INVENTIONS,
1919 [EXTRACT]

One day, as I was roaming in the mountains, I sought shelter from an approaching storm. The sky became overhung with heavy clouds but somehow the rain was delayed until, all of a sudden, there was a lightning flash and a few moments after a deluge. This observation set me thinking.

It was manifest that the two phenomena were closely related, as cause and effect, and a little reflection led me to the conclusion that the electrical energy involved in the precipitation of the water was inconsiderable, the function of lightning being much like that of a sensitive trigger.

Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed.

The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature. It seemed a hopeless undertaking, but I made up my mind to try it and immediately on my return to the United States, in the summer of 1892, work was begun which was to me all the more attractive, because a means of the same kind was necessary for the successful transmission of energy without wires.

The first gratifying result was obtained in the spring of the succeeding year when I reached tensions of about 1,000,000 volts with my conical coil. That was not much in the light of the present art, but it was then considered a feat. Steady progress was made until the destruction of my laboratory by fire in 1895, as may be judged from an article by T. C. Martin which appeared in the April number of the
Century Magazine.
This calamity set me back in many ways and most of that year had to be devoted to planning and reconstruction. However, as soon as circumstances permitted, I returned to the task.