For a few years in the late '50s-early-'60s, Ford marketed their Anglia in The US.
The Mercury-style roofline was distinctive, but not a whole lot of them were sold in The US.
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I don’t think I have ever seen on on the road. Did not know they sold them in the US.
Don’t recall seeing one, but I remember the name and pictures.
We had an Opel Kadett, from Germany. A better selling non-VW import of that era. IIRC a local Buick dealer sold them.
Remember Simca? Chrysler, IIRC.
“ORV engine” - what’s that?
I think I saw at least one, if you recall I grew up near Dinkytown, USA. Just off campus from the University of Minnesota. All sorts of imports were present in the 60s, including my POS Renault Caravelle.
I have seen them on British dramas.
I never saw that many. Probably no more than 8 or 10. Living adjacent to NYC, we probably got to see more foreign cars in those days than folks who lived in more remote areas.
Yes, they were sold by Buick dealers, just as Pontiac dealers sold Vauxhalls–albeit VERY few in comparison to Opels.
One of my brother’s friends was the son of a doctor, so that family had more disposable income than most in town, and that kid got an Opel for his 17th birthday. Even though it was reportedly a reliable car, his was painted lemon yellow and there were a lot of jokes about him driving a lemon.
Wikipedia says it had an overhead valve engine, so I’d guess that’s an unusual acronym for that. It also says the 0-60 time was 26.9 seconds, which sounds painful to me.
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In Sioux Falls in the late 60s the Buick dealer had the opel in the show room. I don’t recall the Pontiac dealer ever having a Vaux though.
Likely true.
I grew up close to a university whose profs tended to buy some of these obscure cars. In my neigbborhood we had a Triumph TR3, Morris Minor, Citroen DS, Volvo P1800, BMW 2002, MG Midget, and a Renault Dauphine. My aunt and uncle had an Opel Kadet wagon and an MGB. So I was exposed to some odd cars in the wilds of Ohio!
Maybe if Ford had put in the 1.5L version of the Kent engine for US sales it would have stood a chance.
ORV might mean “overhead valve, reverse flow” head. I found that description on line. Not quite sure what it means. In late 1967 that cylinder head was changed to a crossflow: inlet ports on one side, exhaust on the other.
I remember ca. 1960 the Buick dealer had a round neon sign. Under “Buick” it said “valve in head” - I guess that was a distinguishing thing at some time, maybe the 1940s-1950s. Were valves usually in the engine block?
Back in the '30s, Buicks were almost alone in having overhead valves, in an automotive marketplace dominated by flatheads. Valve In Head was Buick’s term for OHV, and it was worth mentioning as a feature in the '30s, '40s, and early '50s. By 1960, OHV was the norm, so that sign must have been really old.
It would be especially painful in the era of high-speed expressways, or–more accurately–it would be a significant safety hazard.
The Buick “Valve in Head” sign:
Yeah, those signs were already very old by the '60s.
A friend of mine had an Anglia “Pie wagon”, which was a panel van. Cool looking. I almost bought it from him but by the time I got ready to pull the trigger, he had just sold it.
My mother bought a 67 Simca. When she took it to the dealer for the first oil change, the dealer mechanic drained the transmission instead of the engine and then put 4 qts of oil on top of the 3 qt of factory fill (3 qt capacity) It ruined the transmission and they were never able to get the needed parts to repair it.
The dealers for American-made cars almost always had service departments that knew little to nothing about the foreign-made cars that they also sold. Your dealer was apparently a Chrysler dealer that was essentially forced to take-on the Simca line, and Chrysler probably didn’t mandate any special training for working on those Simcas.
When I bought my '74 Volvo, the dealership’s main line was Pontiac, and while their mechanics probably were knowledgeable about Pontiacs, they had little knowledge of Volvos. The first (of MANY) problems with my POS Volvo was the discovery that the heater put out zero heat, so back to the dealership it went, 2 days after taking delivery.
The service mgr told me that it was now “fixed and putting out great heat”, but there was no change. 
The second visit produced a duplicate bogus statement, with no change in heater output. 
When I took it back for the third time I got VERY loud with the guy, and I guess that may have galvanized him into actually making sure that the mechanic really fixed it. When I picked it up, he explained that the no-heat problem resulted from the temperature control knob on the dashboard not being connected to the heater core. They took a heat control linkage from a car on the lot, and–finally–the heater actually worked.
In addition to suffering from inadequate engineering of the entire electrical system and the fuel system, my POS Volvo was very-badly assembled.
Chrysler dealers were also selling a more expensiveSimca model that had a Ford V8-60 flathead, surly, the last automotive use of that lump that existed because Henry Ford refused to build a six cylinder car.
If you want obscure how about the Plymouth Cricket. a 71 to 73 re-badged Hillman. My wife’s grandfather had a Hillman Minx.
Nothing weong with these cars in their home markets where gasoline was very expensive and cars were taxed by engine size but they were terrible for our conditions and far from parts and mechanics that knew them.
I too had a HS classmate get a 67 or 68 Opal Kadett, I thought they were ugly. The Opal GT sports car was nice but as I recall, not sold by Buick dealers.