Comparing a 28 year span vehicle like the ranger (the 4cylinder variant)which is from 1983-2011,to a Pinto that was poorly designed and unsafe, which ran from 1971-1980 is blasphemy!

The Ranger is a replacement of the Ford Courier station wagons from the 1960's . So technically this need for small trucks has been around for at least 50 years in the Ford corporation.

I wouldn't compare that at all to the Ford Pinto, which didn't even need to be positioned at the time with the 4 cylinder Mustangs and Escorts already in place. Ford was in the business of wasting resources and instead of bringing over the wildly popular euro Escort, they thought Americans wanted a POS new design that was bigger. If only...

It all comes down to supply and demand. There's a demand for these "1/2 trucks", there wasn't enough demand for the Pinto. Thus one line running 30 years and the other line running 9


-Rant
It's the natural selection of things, just like government bailouts of failing businesses. The only way to fix a bad business model is to let them fail, if they fail and get backed up (i.e. bailout) , they will never learn, and fail again. This isn't the first time the government has had to bail out auto makers, probably won't be the last. So dumb!