lol.
Parts wear, if its a common issue they issue a recall which ends up costing much more $$. Unless you're saying that they engineer these parts so that they are "just bad enough" and does not warrant a full recall that would cost the automotive manufacture millions of dollars. Lets pick for example the current key turning off fiasco that GM is having, do you think that was intentionally engineered that way and they just got caught?
To design a part to fail is unethical and to be an engineer working on that part and knowingly release it could come back to that individual who was responsible for its design.