Welcome to Thursday Trivia where we offer up a historical automotive trivia question and you try and solve it before seeing the answer after the jump. It’s like a history test, with cars!
This week’s question: How many years did the Ford Motor Company go without a domestically-produced passenger car with a four-cylinder engine?
If you think you know the answer, make the jump and see if you’re right.
This year Ford introduced a Mustang with a four-cylinder engine, the first thus such equipped Pony from the company since 1993. That’s an amazing 22-year stretch, but perhaps even more amazing was the length of time that the company went without a domestically-produced four cylinder car of any kind. That drought ended in 1971 with the introduction of the Pinto.
From How Stuff Works:

Performance got better-than-expected marks, considering that many customers were coming to Pinto having previously experienced only V-8 or six-cylinder engines. After all, this was the first domestically produced Ford passenger car with a four-cylinder engine since 1934.

The last U.S.-built four-cylinder car from Ford had been the 1934 Model B, a four-pot edition of the V8-engined Model 18 and Model 40. Everything between then and the September 1970 introduction of the Pinto, was either a six or a V8.
Thirty-seven years without a domestic four-pot. The wait was even greater for a domestic-built car with a domestic-built four. The 1600 and 2-litre engines that debuted with the Pinto were sourced from Europe. It wouldn’t be until 1974, with the introduction of the 2.3-litre SOHC four, built at Ford’s Lima Ohio plant, that a completely domestic four-cylinder car would be offered by the company.
That Lima engine went on to be the standard bearer for Ford’s domestic fours, and in fact was the base for that entry-level engine in the 1993 Mustang we noted above.
Image: How Stuff Works