An End to Obolsence?

Alfred P. Sloan Jr., the General Motors genius who championed the idea of the annual model change, once wrote: "The changes in the new models should be so novel as to create a certain amount of dissatisfaction with past models." In today's inflationary economy, there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction among automakers that the annual changes add so much to their bills for tooling and marketing. The consumerism movement has also made customers more concerned about prices and less interested in change for the sake of change. Last week G.M. announced that its new subcompact car, which is called Vega 2300 and is scheduled to roll out next September, will not look any different for at least four years.

The other automakers either have introduced or intend soon to bring out their own subcompacts. They have not been quite so explicit as G.M., but they also have strongly suggested that their little models will retain basically the same styles for several years. G.M. expects Vega sales in the first twelve months to approach 400,000 cars, but if they fall seriously short of that mark, the company could be stuck with a losing model for quite a while. Still, Vega ads promise: "If you like the 1971, you'll like the 1975," and, "Once it comes out, it's going to stay out."

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