The term often leads into confusion, however, since international compact cars are somewhat larger than their North American equivalents, mostly because no supermini/subcompact size is manufactured by American, Mexican and Canadian car makers up to date.
By the late 1860's, Darwin came to describe this process as the survival of the fittest. This is very different from Lamarck's incorrect idea that the environment altered the shape of individuals and that these acquired changes were then inherited.
Survival of the fittest has been claimed to justify all kinds of things, from free markets to eugenics. Such notions still have a powerful grip in some circles. However, natural selection is simply a description of what happens in the living world. It does not tell us how we should behave.