IIRC, 60 Minutes with Dan Rather did a segment on the Pinto that was "enhanced" for the audience. I think that is where the "fake" story began. Otherwise, this was a real issue in rear end collisions, I think at the time there had been over 20 real life incidents of fire by the time I bought mine. I wasn't too concerned, I was usually driving faster than everyone else ... and ~20 occurrences out of millions of Pintos and Bobcats was very rare in my mind. I had Ford perform the recall/shroud update to allay my Mom's fears.