During the 1950s and 1960s, the Detroit car companies worked hard to make every model look at least a bit different for each new model year, and the pinnacle of that effort came in the early 1960s. For example, compare the affordable '61 Plymouth Savoy to the equally affordable '62 Savoy, or the '61 Mercury Meteor to its 1962 successor. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen Beetle looked just about the same for year after year… which made it extremely cheap to buy. Here's a classic Doyle Dane Bernbach magazine advertisement for the 1962 Beetle.
Unless you took a good look at the size and shape of the rear window, it was tough to distinguish the '62 Volkswagen Beetle from the original '38 KdF-Wagen, though mechanical improvements took place year after year. The 1962 Beetle got slightly larger taillights and a gas gauge (earlier Beetles had no gauge, just a reserve-fuel lever to flip when you ran out of gas), and the price went up from $1565 to $1595 that year (which would be like a $15,248 car going to $15,540 when considered in 2022 dollars). The cheapest possible '62 Chevrolet started at $2003, so Volkswagen's approach to model-year styling changes made sense.
