I knew someone from the Catskills, had a 1957 Ford Prefect, bought new from King Ford in Brooklyn. A few Pontiac dealers sold some Vauxhall Victor’s GM was considering putting Chevy emblems on the ones imported to the US and Canada and calling them Corvairs.I remember near Yankee Stadium was a garage that sold Brit cars, Land Rovers, Jags, Bentleys. Where I grew up in Rockland there was Foreign Cars of Rockland that sold MGs and Triimphs, also Renaults and occasionally Peugeots. Ted Shultz Ford sold a few Anglias and Cortinas and Moorehead up in Kingston, still in business was one of the first Volvo dealers in NY. But yeah, other than VWs before the Japanese cars, not many imports around.
My uncle (who was a B-17 pilot in the war) raced motorcycles at tracks around Stamford, CT after the war. He ran a motorcycle dealership in Stamford and sold Harleys. Around 1960, he added this odd motorcycle brand called "Honda." Wiki...
In 1960, the first full year of operations, American Honda sold fewer than 2,000 motorcycles through three product lines: the Dream, Benly and Honda 50 (Super Cub). The following year, Honda established 500 motorcycle dealers and spent $150,000 on advertising in regions where it operated. Honda's expansion into new U.S. markets was undertaken one region at a time over a five-year period, starting on the West Coast and moving east, creating new demand for motorcycles.He was really prescient to buy that franchise so early and it became a huge money-maker for him.Sales in the U.S. did not increase notably until 1963, when the company launched its "You meet the nicest people on a Honda" advertising campaign, the first of its scale to position motorcycles to mainstream Americans. By the end of the year, Honda had sold more than 100,000 units in the U.S., more than all other motorcycle manufacturers combined.