[Tatsfield]

Over the years my take on inaccessibility of engine components seems to be that the designers worried more about efficient and cost effective assembly on the assembly lines rather than about maintenance and not that they have devious plans to run up servicing bills.

I had a car where the manufacturer wouldn't sell you low cost ABS reluctor rings and you had to buy the whole drive shaft because they bought the drive shafts complete with the rings attached so they didn't bother to put separate rings in the parts inventory. If you bought after market rings, they fitted perfectly but on the assembly line they hadn't wanted to be bothered with assembling the rings onto the shafts so they bought them complete and only sold them that way. The owners club fumed over this but I could see that the fiddly job of putting the rings on the shafts wasn't something that the manufacturer wanted to have to do and the spares situation flowed from that.

I suspect that the thermostat site at the back of the engine is of no consequence when the unit is attached to the engine on the engine assembly line and only becomes a problem when it has to be replaced with the engine in the car. Ford would have prioritised cheap assembly over everything while I suspect that the old Volvo company would have figured in the maintenance consequences, but then Volvo was never a cheap car and Ford always strived to make their cars as cheaply as possible.