Needs Help: Every Car Is A Pinto

A couple of problems:

• 1. The name could be better. The Trope Namer is true, but needs a long explanation of how accurate it really is. There are 2 paragraphs on the page explaining the Pinto, and is almost takes half of the description. There should be a Useful Notes page about the Pinto, and the description trimmed accordingly. Maybe also rename it to get rid of the complicated trope namer

• 2. Some examples are not the car/object exploding, but mearly catching on fire. Not sure if those should be cut or a subtrope made for these examples. (Most of The Simpsons examples are the fire variety)

Given that it has 3000 inbounds, we'll need a better reason than that to rename.

What are some specific instances of "car catching on fire" appearing in that trope?

edited 16th Nov '13 11:18:43 PM by MikuruFan

I'd say that those two paragraphs about the Pinto could be replaced with a single sentence about how the Pinto was a 1970s car that was notorious for catching on fire after collisions due to a faulty gas tank.

3,000 inbounds for "Every Car Is a Pinto." Anyone want to speculate on how many inbounds it would have if we'd named it "Exploding Car"?

734? Although making assumptions about what the inbound count could be under a rename are a weak rename argument.

On the "burning car" example question - would that fit a downplayed version of the trope?

All Cars Explode (or All Cars Explode On Impact), something along those lines (but maybe a little better) would be my suggestion for a different name, but I'm not sure it's entirely necessary. Granted, if someone doesn't know cars well at all, they might not get the name, but with that many inbounds, clearly enough people get it for it not to be too much of an issue.

This paragraph, though, informative as it is, can go:

edited 17th Nov '13 6:33:23 PM by Odd1

This. I've always hated this name too, but that's not really grounds for a rename, especially given the 3,000 inbounds. But there's no reason the page needs a short essay on the Ford Pinto.

The first paragraph seems short enough not to get in the way, but the second one needs to go definitely.

"It's nice info, but it's also not really relevant to explaining the trope."

That's what I was getting at. There's a lot of natter there about the Ford Pinto that really has no place in the definition of the Every Car Is a Pinto trope.

I would take the first sentence of the third paragraph, add a a hotlink to the article at The Other Wiki, and then delete everything that follows in the third and fourth paragraphs. Anyone curious about the history of the Pinto can open the Wikipedia link.

Maybe the first two sentences, which can probably be combined into one.

edited 17th Nov '13 6:54:16 PM by Odd1

OK, yeah, kill that paragraph. Not even remotely relevant to the article's purpose.

On my 2nd point, should a wick check be done for examples of a car actually exploding vs merely catching fire? I think catching fire is not the spirit of this trope.

I dunno, seems close enough to me. Tropes Are Flexible after all, and spontaneous combustion isn't too far removed from an ocean of explosion.

OK, those two paragraphs on the Pinto are gone, except for the first two sentences.

^^ Yeah, "explode" and "catch fire" are close enough for the purposes of the trope, IMO.

I agree with the others that fire is close enough to the spirit of the trope.

Does anyone else want to comment?

Are we seeing any serious misuse of this at all? I know all (or at least most of) the wicks I've seen are correct.

If "catching on fire" is within the spirit of the description, then no.

But nothing in the description/laconic says anything about catching fire being part of this trope. And if so, does that addition go against No Trope Is Too Common?

Tropes Are Flexible and Spontaneous Combustion And Giant Ass Explosions Are More Or Less Interchangeable In These Contexts Anyway.

The description could probably use some clarification. The spirit of the trope is that cars catch fire/explode when wrecked a lot easier in fiction than in real life. This actually predates the Pinto.

What needs to be clarified?

Actually, upon a second reading it's clear enough. Laconic needs a tweak, though. I'll take a crack at it.

EDIT: Also added a note in the description that the trope predates the Pinto (for example, an assassination attempt against James Bond in Dr. No).

edited 30th Nov '13 8:04:11 AM by StarSword