Planned is not forced
Halfway extending from previous item about COBOL.

In the '50s, fashionable public intellectuals like Vance Packard railed against Planned Obsolescence. They had a point.

BUT: Planned Obsolescence wasn't really obsolescence. When GM changed its styling every year, the previous models were still perfectly usable. The '56 style didn't FORCE YOU TO THROW AWAY the '55 Chevy, and didn't FORCE YOU TO THROW AWAY your skills. You could drive the new '56 on the same roads, and you could use the same driving skills you'd mastered by experience. This was simply a manipulation of the human desire for status, and you didn't NEED to go along with it.

In '59 both GM and Ford came somewhat closer to the modern Github tendency when they made the low-priced models much longer and lower and wider. New cars were suddenly harder to fit into EXISTING parking places and garages, and harder to maneuver in traffic. Some city parking structures had to turn away '59 Caddies.

And there's the real difference. In '59 the public was not conditioned to constant change, and rebelled against the attempt to force change. The parking structures didn't tear down and rebuild, they prohibited the new.

Detroit realized its mistake immediately BECAUSE IT HAD TO. Detroit started making smaller cars AGAIN in '60. The official history claims that Detroit was answering VW, but as usual that's a lie. The new compacts had the same size and weight and power as Rambler, not the same size and weight and power as VW. Rambler is uncool, so we can't mention it in our official histories. Then in '61 and '62 Detroit made an even better correction with the "intermediates", which were the same size as '55 big cars. The too-big cars were still selling to people who wanted status more than transportation, but there was no AGGRESSIVE FORCE behind them.
  ¶ 6:38 AM