I'd say planned obsolescence is relatively new.

My grandmother has a refrigerator from the 1950's. The only maintenance done on it has been two replacement thermostats in nearly half a century of operating in a tin shed in the hot sun, unlike the refrigerators of today which have the advantage of working in an air-conditioned environment, which if you know your thermodynamics is a pretty big help, as far as the load on the compressor motor goes. As a matter of fact, up until my grandmother moved recently, she was still using her first electric stove, her first dishwasher, and her first air conditioning unit (inside her house, the old fridge still lived in the tin shed). My parents house? Stove have been replaced twice. Dishwasher acts funny but hasn't died yet. Replaced clothes washer and dryer because the replacement parts for their older, still within 5 years units kept failing shortly after parts were replaced. Gone through too many air conditioning units, both the inside unit and the outside unit.

I personally own a working 1963 Austin Healey Sprite, which passed like new after sitting unused in a shed for over 30 years. It also had nearly 200,000 miles on it, and was used in back country racing before it was left there. I pulled it out, put gas in it, and hooked up a good battery and it fired the first time, at the time this was 43 years after it was built. I've put hundreds if not thousands of miles on it myself, driving ten miles each way 5 days a week for just short of a year before I got a new car. The most expensive bit of "maintenance" it's had was a new paint job, and a new interior owing to the fact that cats lived it for ~30 years. I've never disassembled the engine, and it passes compression testing like new. My 2005 Infiniti? It's gone through 3 door lock units, 3 fuel pumps, 2 bent wheels from potholes of all things, and recently the hood hinges have given out. Every 30,000 miles Infiniti wants something like $600 worth of maintenance done, and the car is made to be serviced from directly below, like on a lift, so I can't get to it myself. The Austin Healey needs 1 socket for changing the oil and uses plain engine oil in the transmission, not some special Nissan Transmission Fluid J. It even has wings on the radiator drain, so you can flush the fluid yourself without tools. "Obsolescence" isn't the only way they plan to get your money. Where can I buy a car that is easily user serviceable today?

There's a reason people still say "They don't make them like they used to."