It
WAS implemented long ago, it's called the "hatchback".
Before somebody parrots something "obvious" about the Pinto, Ford made over 2 million Pintos of which twenty seven were recorded by the NHTSA as actually causing a fiery death.
This is statistically similar/unremarkable to any other car of that era. According to a study performed for the Rutgers Law Review, intended to study tort cases ( meaning, it was not affiliated with Ford itself and took place in 1991, over a decade after the last Pinto was made) "the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, that
its fatality rates were lower than comparably sized imported automobiles, and that the supposed "smoking gun" document that plaintiffs said demonstrated Ford's callousness in designing the Pinto was actually a document based on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations about the value of a human life — rather than a document containing an assessment of Ford's potential tort liability" and additionally "The Pinto's fuel tank location behind the axle was "commonplace at the time in American cars" "
I'm not saying any of this because I care about Pintos, they're just some little econo car made 30+ years ago. What I care about is people forming opinions based on actual reality instead of on popular 'shock' bull*. When we believe the hype, we end up making decisions based on bad data, and that leads us to bad results. THAT is more dangerous than the back seat of a Pinto.
Small cars with cavernous,
slanted hatchbacks are inherently awesome for utility with aerodynamics, I'd love to see one built to haul - perhaps when fully electric cars are ready for prime time we'll see one again, no danger of exhaust entering the rear of the cabin!
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