Bringing even more meaning to the acronym

Fix
Or
Repair
Daily

Between the Pinto's fuel tank and the firestone tire fiasco, Ford is already holder of two of the most deadly automotive defects in history.

I found it quite telling that ford knew for almost 5 years about the firestone tire defect but put off any type of recall so that if the issue was ever forced the replacement costs would be lower due to most of the tires wearing out.

The case of the pinto's design was taught in my vehicle design class as a lesson of what not to do about design defects. Even before the vehicle was on the road the engineers knew that the fuel tank's placement made ruptures very likely. Since it was too late to change the car's design after it was already in production a humane engineer came up with a $5 dollar piece of plastic that would shield the tank from a sharp corner on the axle differential and greatly reduce the chance of tank ruptures.

Fords legal and accounting departments decided that this would be an admission of a design defect and that the cost of fighting and settling lawsuits would be only about $3 per vehicle. Therefore the plastic piece was left off of all models (except the government's crash test vehicles) and almost a hundred people were burned to death just to save a couple of bucks on a several thousand dollar car.

Reading that article it appears either quality is no longer job one at ford, or the old rules of fuck the fix and fight the lawsuits is still a means of increasing profitability.