Plastic automotive engine
Version one was based on Ford's 2.3-liter Pinto engine and weighed (vs. for its cast iron counterpart). It was designed to produce at 9200 rpm. It was composed of metal cylinder sleeves, metal combustion chamber tops, metal piston crowns, bearings, valves and seats, and a stock 2.3L Pinto crankshaft. Nearly everything else in the engine, including the block, rods and piston skirts, were made of glass reinforced Polyamide-imide thermoplastic resins manufactured at the time by Amoco Chemicals Co. The engine was never installed in a vehicle.
Ford Pinto
The recall was included in "Time" magazine's 2009 top ten product recalls, "Popular Mechanics" magazine's 2010 five most notorious recalls of all time, and NBC News' 2013 twelve famous recalls. "Time" said "The Ford Pinto was a famously bad automobile, but worse still might be Ford's handling of the safety concerns."
According to the "Los Angeles Times" in 2010, the award "signaled to the auto industry that it would be harshly sanctioned for ignoring known defects."