I have a different outlook. Samsung and its exploding phones in 2016 is a case-study that comes to mind. The recall of those phones cost the company billions of dollars, and even though they released a new model that fixed the issue, no one wants to buy the new one because all they remember is the last bad product that was offered. Eventually, in October 2016, Samsung officially recalled the Galaxy Note 7 globally and discontinued the product entirely.
Selling the people a bad product will result in it being more difficult for Ford to get these same people to buy anything from Ford ever again. Same thing goes for top engineering talent looking at Ford's retention strategy and how they will be treated. In other words, these recalls and scandals (cover-ups / covert suppression) will harm this board's downstream agenda and mark it's history next to something like Boeing.
I'm sure Ford is aware of this though with all the money they have, there is most certainly an algorithm or simulation used to come up with a conclusion to help chart the winds.
With all the money Ford has been dropping, it's reasonable to assume they've already plugged in data into some algorithm to determine if this current path is worth sailing, and that while Farley and Doug are speaking to investors and the general public, people in his camp are working on their behalf to determine if the current "corrective" actions being taken are a good idea. I'd assume the algorithm concludes that forgoing failure-mode-avoidance for them is a dud. Change is necessary. Are we sending the right message? Or does the message we send through our actions not matter for those watching?