Ford offered a repair kit on the Crown VIC to shut the press up and to save the car's image. There was never anything really wrong with it to begin with. IIRC the gas tank was punctured by an aftermarket gun rack installed into the trunk of the cars that exploded upon rear impact. Ford shouldn't have been held responsible for that, but they were and so they issued a fix for a problem that didn't exist in the stock vehicle.
Toyota had to do the same thing after the IIHS crash-tested the new Sienna van. Somehow the gas tank was pierced during the crash and caused a fuel leak. Even though the NHTSA test didn't have this same result and Toyota's own testing didn't have this result, Toyota still issued a fix. They basically put a skid plate over the tank. Later Toyota found out that the IIHS crash test rig broke and shot a piece of the propulsion system into the tank at a high rate of speed, which caused the puncture. Turns out that there wasn't anything wrong with the Sienna afterall, but Toyota had to issue a fix because the IIHS went to the press and issued a statement that I would call misleading as they hadn't actually figured out what caused the puncture yet. In the statement they failed to mention that Toyota's crash test and the NHTSA's test didn't yield the same result.
Sometimes you just have to fix problems that don't exist to save face and your reputation because the media gets ahold of them and blows things out of proportion.
