“Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me…” (1971) by Tony Auth
Artist: Tony Auth (All)
4 Comments - 1,349 Views - 1 Like
Additional Images:
detail
Sawyer Press
Sawyer Press
Sawyer Press
Sawyer Press
Artwork Details
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Description“Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me…” (1971)by Tony Auth (1942-2014) 11 x 14 in., ink on board After graduating from UCLA in 1965 and working as a medical illustrator, Auth began doing political cartoons. Initially he did one cartoon a week for a weekly alternative newspaper, the LA Free Press. Sawyer Press represented Auth for syndication. They also represented Ron Cobb, one of the most widely recognized underground cartoonists of his day. Auth and Cobb were featured together in the Sawyer solicitations with three other cartoonists (Badajos, Evans, and Urbank). After being encouraged by Paul Conrad at the Los Angeles Times, Auth contributed three a week for the UCLA Daily Bruin. Six years later, in 1971, Auth was hired as staff editorial cartoonist by The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he worked for 41 years. The five examples I have are likely from his work at the Bruin (1970-71) just before he moved to the east coast. They are the earliest known original works from Auth, who won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. A few samples of 1969 solicitations from Sawyer are included in the additional images. The Ford Pinto might be the most famous dangerous car in history, thanks to the massive amount of media attention its defects received during the late 1970s. Apparently, a design flaw placed the fuel tank too close to the rear bumper. The result being that an otherwise harmless fender-bender could ignite the fuel tank and blast the automobile into spare-parts. A total of 27 people were killed in Pinto explosions before Ford issued a recall. In the early 1970s, Lee Iacocca was president of the Ford Motor Company. Iacocca wanted the company to produce a car that would be cheap and compact. The result was the Pinto, marketed as “The Little Carefree Car.” At first, the Pinto was famous because it was small, cheap, and marketed as costing just a dollar per pound: the Pinto’s compact 2,000-pound frame clocked in at a modest $2,000, making the car affordable and popular. The “Little Carefree Car” took less than two years to be conceptualized, designed and put into production — a much more rapid timeline than the 43 months that would normally be taken. In another detail that seems ominous today, the Pinto’s initial release date was September 11. To help shave off weight and bulk, the Pinto lacked the traditional bumper that would be used to cushion collisions. While that may have been okay if additional precautions were taken to compensate, just the opposite was true: the gas tank had virtually no reinforcements protecting it. Taken together, these design choices meant that if a Pinto was ever rear-ended, it was extremely easy for its fuel tank to be punctured and cause a massive fire. And if a fire did result from a collision, occupants were unlikely to escape: the doors had a tendency to jam shut after an impact, trapping victims inside as the wreck burned. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was critical of the vehicle and was quick to launch an investigation into the Pinto. While the NHTSA determined in 1974 that a recall was not merited, Ford ultimately issued its own recall in 1978. The recall affected approximately 1.5 million Pintos with model years from 1971 to 1976. The title of the cartoon comes from a song title featured on the fourth and posthumously released album “Pearl” by Janis Joplin, in January 1971. Joplin, one of the most widely recognized musicians of her era, died of a heroin overdose the previous October, at age 27. Social/Sharing |
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Rick W 
Member Since 2017
Posted on 7/14/2019
Nice piece!
Reminds me of my first Hot Wheels car when I was 5, the "Poison Pinto" (1976)
My friends all had Porsches ;)
Brian Coppola
Member Since 2009
Posted on 7/14/2019
Rick W wrote:
Nice piece!
Reminds me of my first Hot Wheels car when I was 5, the "Poison Pinto" (1976)
My friends all had Porsches ;)
You were born the year this was drawn... I was 14. :) I owned a second-hand yellow Pinto in the late 70s and early 80s. This cartoon is such a nice flashback to that era. I would love to know if having the front (engine) be the trouble (in the cartoon) was a deliberate ploy to steer clear of showing the actual problem, which was the danger of the gas tank in the back going off with a rear-end collision... to keep Ford off their backs?
Rick W
Member Since 2017
Posted on 7/14/2019
Brian Coppola wrote:
You were born the year this was drawn... I was 14. :) I owned a second-hand yellow Pinto in the late 70s and early 80s. This cartoon is such a nice flashback to that era. I would love to know if having the front (engine) be the trouble (in the cartoon) was a deliberate ploy to steer clear of showing the actual problem, which was the danger of the gas tank in the back going off with a rear-end collision... to keep Ford off their backs?
That's awesome you cruised a real life Poison Pinto in its heyday (and lived to tell about it ;)
For another nice flashback, check out Winona Ryder tearing it up in her Green Pinto on the Netflix series 'Stranger Things'.
Brian Coppola
Member Since 2009
1 - Posted on 7/14/2019
Rick W wrote:
That's awesome you cruised a real life Poison Pinto in its heyday (and lived to tell about it ;)
For another nice flashback, check out Winona Ryder tearing it up in her Green Pinto on the Netflix series 'Stranger Things'.
Ahhh... roger that! "Stranger Things" has been in my queue for a while.
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