The US has always been the land of big cars, which opened a door for European small car imports. In the 1950s and 60s virtually all European car companies attempted to break into the American market. Some were successful, like the Volkswagen Beetle, which went on to become the best selling motor vehicle of the era. Others, such as the Zundapp Janus failed to make much of an impression and became little more than a historical novelty. Catering to the select market of foreign and small car customers was Small Car magazine, which was published from the mid 50s to the mid 60s. This January 1958 edition reviews most of the cars expected in the US market for that year.
Triumph Sedan
Fiat 600
Citroen 2CV
Renault 4CV
Volkswagen Beetle
Nash (Austin) Metropolitan 1500
Ford Anglia and Prefect
Austin A35
Station Wagons
Lloyd 500
Simca Aronde
Morris Minor 1000
Hillman Minx
Renault Dauphine
Fiat 1100
Sports Cars
Simca Vedette
Ford Consul and Zephyr
Saab 93
DKW 3=6
Volvo PV444
Opel Olympia Rekord
Luxury Foreign Sedans
Service
Micro Cars
Notice that everything smaller than the increasingly-bloated Ford-Chevy-Plymouth from the six-cylinder Ford Zephyr/Zodiac and Simca Chambord (V-8!) to the Isetta was lumped under the rubric of "small cars". The term "compact car" was just coming into parlance to acknowledge that cars the size of European upper-middle class models or the domestic Rambler Classic (not mentioned here likely due to space limitations) were not by any reasonable standard "small" and functionally the size the American "Low Priced Three" had been until shortly before WW2.
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