What corporation knowingly allowed people to crash and burn in cars that were poorly made because doing so was cheaper than recalling and fixing the cars?

If you're asking about semi-recent happenings, I do believe that GMC has linked 600,000k + fatal crashes to faulty cars.

In the past, Chevy had an engine mount issue that led to many crashes and fatal accidents, but kept quite for years before speaking up. (1969-ish)