but it did not appear entirely in a vacuum. Earlier social critics such as Vance Packard had already leveled attacks on the automobile industry's alleged practice of "planned obsolescence." Cars were reputedly designed to fall apart in a few years, thus forcing their owners to buy the new model. The industry was accused of being more concerned with style over substance. This critique had entered the popular culture as early as the late 1950s, when Ford's Edsel became a manufacturing and marketing flop of legendary proportions. Thus, Nader's book came into the hands of an American public already skeptical about the automobile industry.
Ironically, by the late 1960s Detroit was not even doing very well with styling. The baby-boom generation was starting to come into its car-buying years, and what baby-boomers wanted was cars that were affordable--and that were not like the cars their parents drove. Many years later, Chrysler would build an advertising campaign ("Not your father's
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