One reason car companies are conservative: unit-body construction and safety and efficiency standards mean that getting a new car to market is very expensive no

One reason car companies are conservative: unit-body construction and safety and efficiency standards mean that getting a new car to market is very expensive nowadays. In the 50s and 60s, restyling every year or so cost a lot in tooling (meaning the independents like Nash and Studebaker had a hard time keeping up), but it was almost pure fashion, with very little regards for aerodynamics or safety. And since the body didn't provide the main structure of the car, you could do some radical changes to styling without affecting much of the underlying function. It's not to say that there isn't a lot of conformism, like in many industries. This leads, for instance, to the use of less-durable features like those silly plastic wraparound headlights; everybody has them, but because they aren't protected from the sun, they quickly fog and yellow; their complicated shapes also mean they're very expensive to replace for no good reason.