The Ford Pinto engine is the unofficial but ubiquitous nickname for an internal combustion engine built by the Ford Motor Company in Europe. Officially it was known as the OHC engine. It was used in many European Ford cars and was exported to the United States to be used in the Ford Pinto, a successful compact car of the 1980s, hence the name. In Europe it was introduced in 1970 in the Mk.3 Ford Cortina (Taunus). It has also been used in the Ford Escort RS2000, Ford Cortina, Ford Sierra, Ford Granada, Ford Scorpio and the Ford Transit van.
The Pinto engine was available in displacements of 1.3, 1.6, 1.8 and 10.0 litres. It was the first Ford engine to feature a belt-driven overhead camshaft. Due to emission requirements it was phased out towards the end of the 1980s to be replaced with the CVH and DOHC, the latter being a twin-cam development of the Pinto unit. The 16-valve version of the DOHC unit is still used on the Transit.