Changes going forward to new vehicles off the production line were really inexpensive.

The issue was to fix cars that had already been finished required a recall. The factory recall was to put in a piece of polycarbonate between the bolts and the fuel tank.

The recall would require hours of work by a mechanic per car to install the additional plastic plate. Ford made some (fairly accurate) predictions as to how many fatal crashes there would be, and decided to settle every case instead.

It was cold blooded mathematics and a PR disaster when the documents were inevitably leaked.