ZAZ: In America it's very rare to outright ban a car that was legally sold and met standards at the time of sale.  I can't think of an example. The recent Jeep recall is close, because it is effectively a retroactive application of a standard, but the expectation is the cars will stay on the road.

The government apparently owned nearly everyone of these cars, leasing them to people. Thus the 'ban' consisted of the government collecting them.

Much like the EV1 that GM leased to people. GM owned the cars and when the engineering exercise was over it collected them and crushed them. (not a conspiracy theory, blame the product liability lawyers and the fact that GM couldn't financially justify supporting them with parts in private hands)

legion_of_doo: The Crown Vic had at least 135 OMFGfire deaths in law enforcement alone.

Crown vics were being rear ended at speeds of 70+ mph and had a high exposure rate to such crashes.
The crown vic was also a 1970s design. With CAFE fundamentally redesigning the car was too risky financially at any given time IMO. At least two years development time and then the platform would have to last to be financially viable. At the end of the day nobody could predict if it the CAFE numbers would work out 7 years down the road.

Sin_City_Superhero: Remember the Pinto? I saw a restored one on the road, the other day. Who the hell restores a Pinto?

Usually with a car like a Pinto it's a good condition original.

Often a car for some reason was put away when it had relatively low mileage and forgotten about. Sometimes it was owned by someone who didn't drive much and kept it in a garage.

An example of such:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2013/04/22/hemmings-find-of-the-d ay -1978-ford-pinto-cruising-wagon/