The new situation did not go without comment in the press. “The trend seems clear,” noted one reporter, “planned obsolescence in the domestic auto industry is dying—but it’s dying slowly.”97 A Los Angeles Times piece in 1970 announced the death of the theretofore ubiquitous three-year product cycle in the auto industry. The dawning of a new, post-obsolescence era for auto manufacturers was also reported in The Wall Street Journal: “The most hallowed of Detroit traditions is planned obsolescence, which began at GM back in the 1920s and has been a cornerstone of automotive making ever since. Auto makers aren’t planning to abandon the concept entirely under their new strategy, but they do plan to stretch out considerably the time between model changes.”98 Some auto makers chose to represent a necessity, imposed by unsustainably high retooling costs, as a virtue. “For those of you who are concerned about planned obsolescence,” Ford announced in 1974, “the Maverick [one of its car models] next year will be unchanged.”99 But there was also some ambivalence about the decline of style obsolescence, because the practice of annual model change was associated with the postwar period of great afluence and growing productivity. One journalist lamented that “annual model change, which Detroit once held sacred to the good life, [is] fading away,” suggesting that with it would go the stability of the industrial economy.100
In part this move away from the practice of planned obsolescence was in response to increasing competition from European car manufacturers, many of which still employed Ford’s old design philosophy, centered on value and durability, only, at least so the advertising copy went, spruced up with a dash of “timeless” European style. Robert Anderson, a former top executive at Chrysler, commented on this cause of the decline of planned obsolescence: “You can buy a VW for \$1700 and you are assured of being regarded as a sharp, brilliant, prudent guy for not spending money on an American car with planned obsolescence.”101 A 1970 article about trends in marketing noted a related change in advertising, which it characterized (in reference to a Volkswagen ad campaign) as the ascent of the theme of substance, or “steak,” over style, or “sizzle.”102
Moral Panic about Utility
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