Didn't know Ford used Boxer engines in the early Pintos.

In 1971 and 1972 Pintos they did. There were a couple of issues with these cars. First if you wanted top performance you needed to run premium leaded fuel, at least 93 octane or else the pinging at high performance levels would be quite bad. In 1973 premium leaded gasoline began to disappear commercially. I actually would fill up now and again with 101 octane airplane fuel. The other problem was the 13" wheels. I used J. T. Whitney so I could build a capacitive discharge system which added about 20" to horsepower and eliminated the pinging. I also bought 1968 Mustang 15" wheel adapters and 15" tires. There was plenty of room in the wheel wells and allowed me to run snow tires in the rear all year round. That helped the spinning and fish-tailing. The addition of horsepower from the Whitney electronic ignition system was zeroed out by the much bigger and heavier tires. Still I averaged 28 miles per gallon and could spin the tires through the first three gears.