31 top cars imported into the USA in 1974

America’s biggest-selling non-American cars

In December 1981, the United States International Trades Commission published a remarkable document about the sales of cars built and sold in, imported to and exported from the US from 1964 to 1980.

Rather than go through the whole thing, we’re concentrating here on 1974, because at the time of writing that’s a neat half-century ago, plus we are going to focus on the cars imported to the USA.

The compilers appear to have had no interest in individual models built and sold locally (because a country obviously can’t trade with itself), or those imported from Canada (presumably because they were all built by offshoots of US-based companies) or from countries which supplied very few cars.

They did, however, study models imported from what we’ll call the principal seven sources (the compilers used the term ‘principal eight sources’ for these plus Canada), namely Belgium (represented by the Ford and Opel factories in Genk and Antwerp respectively), France, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the UK and what was then known as West Germany.

31 of these models can be identified more or less precisely, and we’ll be listing them here in ascending order of how many were imported, then following that with some bonus material for your reading pleasure.

All images are of the correct model, but not necessarily from 1974, or as they were sold in the USA

Overview

In 1974, 7,331,256 cars with a total retail value of $26.2 billion were both built in the US and sold there (the most successful being the Ford Pinto, pictured above). In addition, 2,572,557 ($7.54 billion) were imported and 600,902 ($2.1 billion) were exported.

By far the greatest number of imports – 2,567,382 ($7.53 billion) – came from the aforementioned principal eight sources, and the largest of these was Canada with 817,559 ($3.1 billion).

However, Canada represented only 31.8% of total imports by volume, though slightly more by value because the average Canadian car sent to the US was more expensive than the average sent from the other principal seven countries.

Those principal seven supplied 1,749,823 cars ($4.4 billion), and therefore represented 23.9% of the entire US market by volume and 16.8% by value.

1. Volkswagen Type 3: 57 units

We start at a very low level with the Volkswagen Type 3, which sold at the rate of slightly more than one per week.

This was a big downfall for a car which had found 32,069 American customers in 1973 and 99,012 in 1970.

It can be explained by the fact that the Type 3 had just gone out of production, so these 57 examples had presumably been imported before 1974 and sat around on dealer lots waiting to be bought.

The Commission reported that the number included Fastback coupés and Squareback station wagons, without specifying how many sales there were of each, but with such a low total it doesn’t really matter.

2. Volkswagen Scirocco: 335 units

The VW Scirocco sold poorly in the US in 1974 for exactly the opposite reason that the Type 3 did.

The coupé derivative of the Golf (which was known locally as the Rabbit, and didn’t arrive in the States until 1976) was only launched in this year, and could not have been expected to attract much custom.

Sales rose enormously to 16,108 in 1975, and reached their highest pre-1981 figure of 28,156 three years later.

3. De Tomaso Pantera: 1230 units

The Pantera was imported to the USA by Ford, which also supplied its mid-mounted V8 engine.

The process began in 1971, and sales reached a peak of 1831 in 1973, before dropping to 1230 in the year we’re paying closest attention to.

No Panteras were imported after 1975, but the model had a very long life elsewhere, remaining in production until 1992.

4. Mazda 808: 4295 units

The car sold in the US and other countries as the 808 was known in Japan as the Grand Familia and elsewhere as the 818.

It was always powered by a 1.6-litre piston engine – 1.3-litre versions introduced after 1974 were called Mizer, while those with rotary engines were marketed as the RX-3, which we’ll be coming to later.

Japan was one of America’s most significant sources of imported vehicles, and clearly the 808 was a relatively insignificant contributor.

Sales, however, increased considerably to 17,984 in 1976, the last year the Mazda 808 was offered in the US.

5. Porsche 911: 4868 units

For all its legendary status today, the Porsche 911 was a minor player in the USA in 1974.

Its figure in that year represented a temporary dip, since 5838 were sold in 1973 and 5024 in 1975, but it never got much beyond that later in the decade, and had dropped below 4000 by 1980.

It was comprehensively outsold by a cheaper Porsche which we’ll be discussing eight slides from now, but even the cancellation of that model after 1976 didn’t make much difference to the popularity of the 911.

6. Renault 12: 6532 units

France was the most poorly supported of the aforementioned seven principal sources and, in 1974, Renault was its only representative (with a caveat which we’ll come to later).

The 12 was its least successful car in the US, perhaps because it didn’t suit the tastes of most buyers.

The report does not show sales of individual Renault models until 1973, and the ’74 figure of 6532 was the 12’s highest after that.

Such enthusiasm as there might have been for the car dwindled quickly in subsequent years, and it disappeared entirely in 1979.

7. Renault 15 and 17: 9214 units

Although they had separate names, the 15 (pictured) and 17 were both coupé versions of the 12, with minor styling differences – and, in the case of the 17, more powerful engines – so the commission clearly felt that it made sense to treat them as a single model.

Their greater success in the USA could be due to the fact that they looked more modern and interesting than the 12 did.

This success, however, did not last for long, and 1974 was, contrary to the state of the market as a whole, the 15/17’s best year in the US by an enormous margin.

Its second best performance in the years when Renault models are listed separately in the report was just 2396 sales in 1973.

8. Saab 99: 10,417 units

The Saab 99 is not specifically mentioned in the report, but two models called LE and EMS are, and there is absolutely no doubt that these were versions of the 99.

The 2-litre engines and front-wheel drive were standard, but although both cars were available with two doors and a four-speed manual transmission, only the LE was offered with four doors and the option of a three-speed automatic.

The last of these features might explain why the LE was by far the more popular of the two, with 9282 sales to the EMS’s 1135.

A further 3008 sales were attributed to ‘Other’ Saabs, which can only mean the Sonnet coupé, unless there were a lot of discontinued 96 saloons and 95 estates still in stock.

9. Mercedes-Benz 450: 10,444 units

It might seem strange at first that the 450 was more popular in the US than the Saab 99, despite being much more expensive.

Unfortunately – and perhaps because the compilers were more interested in numbers than in cars – it’s at this point that we encounter one of several pieces of vagueness which occasionally crop up in an otherwise very detailed report.

The name 450 refers only to the 4.5-litre V8 engine, codenamed within Mercedes-Benz as M117, and not to anything it was fitted to.

The report could therefore be referring here to the SL convertible, the SLC coupé (pictured) or the S-Class saloon, or most likely a combination of all three, and there is no way of telling how the sales were divided among them.

10. Volvo 164E: 13,791 units

Volvos are listed in the report slightly unhelpfully as four-cylinder or six-cylinder models, but it’s easy to identify the 164E (the ‘E’ indicating fuel injection), since it was the only example of the latter on sale in the US.

The 13,791 figure is another example of the brief downturn caused by the global energy crisis.

More than 15,000 Volvo 164Es were sold in the year before and the two years after, and following another decline in the late 1970s the model reached 13,770 sales in 1980.

11. Toyota Mark II: 14,233 units

The Toyota known in the US in 1974 as the Mark II was sold in Japan as the Toyopet Corona Mark II, and became known as the Cressida in the following generation.

Its 14,233 sales represented a sharp drop from the previous year’s 25,293.

This reflected the downturn in US sales generally, but unlike most other cars the Toyota Mark II never recovered, and did not come close to the 1974 figure again for the remainder of the decade.

12. Porsche 914: 16,161 units

The cheaper Porsche which, as mentioned earlier, roundly outsold the 911 was the 914, a collaborative effort with Volkswagen and the only mid-engined roadgoing Porsche until the arrival of the Boxster in 1996.

The 1974 figure was lower than the 17,933 achieved the previous year, but it exceeded the 15,730 911s sold from the beginning of 1973 until the end of 1975.

It didn’t last long – the 914 was discontinued in 1976, after which the 911 was outsold instead by the new front-engined models.

13. Mercedes-Benz W114 and W115: 22,170 units

Known collectively as Stroke Eight, these ranges were essentially the same, except that the W115 had four- or five-cylinder engines and the W114 only had straight-sixes.

The 280, the only version which was unquestionably a W114, had been the most popular Mercedes in the US in 1973, finding 14,884 customers, but it declined sharply to 9357 in 1974 and did not recover after that.

The W115 300D diesel, in the first year it was offered in the USA, did not contribute much to the total with just 660 sales, but it would become the dominant Mercedes-Benz over the next few years, reaching 26,542 in 1980.

The 240D was slightly more popular than the 280 with 9668 sales, while the 230 (which could have been either a W115 or a W114 because it was available with four or six cylinders) lagged behind with 2485.

14. Volkswagen 412: 23,250 units

The report refers to this car as the Type 4 (though specifying that it was available as both a sedan and a station wagon), but in the year we’re concerned with this must mean the 412, the name which replaced 411 when the model was updated in 1972.

Type 4 sales had been more than 30,000 in the previous two years, but 1974 was the last year of production, which largely explains the sudden drop of more than 20%.

A further 6543 were sold in 1975, but these must have been imported before then.

15. Audi 100 LS: 23,978 units

The precision of this listing is explained by the fact that the LS was the only version of the 100 sold in the US in 1974, 50 years ago.

Like many cars available that year, though not the next Audi we’ll be looking at, it suffered a decline of 7087 sales compared with 1973.

Despite a general recovery between the immediately preceding global oil crisis and the one which followed later in the decade, the Audi 100 never returned to its 1973 performance, though its successor, known as the 5000, managed 28,726 sales in 1979.

16. Audi Fox: 26,457 units

The Fox was the name used in the USA for the car known elsewhere as the second Audi 80, and the first with no connection to the old DKW brand.

According to the 1974 brochure, which was liberally festooned with references to the canine fox, it was available only with a 1.5-litre engine, but with a choice of manual or automatic transmission.

From 1973, when the report began listing individual Audis rather than the whole range, to 1980, when it ended, sales of the Fox and the 100 LS were never closer than they were in 1974.

Thereafter, the fortunes of the larger model sank, while those of the Fox went in the other direction – sales reached 30,405 in 1975, and although they declined after that, they did so less dramatically than those of the 100.

17. Volkswagen Type 2: 29,919 units

The Volkswagen Type 2 is often referred to nowadays as the Transporter, though it was available in many body styles.

The report specifies that the 29,919 sold in the US in 1974 included the Microbus (pictured) and the Kombi, without mentioning if any other versions were also included.

Sales were by now spiralling downwards from 42,656 in 1973 and a formidable 65,069 in 1970.

Although the Type 2 rallied in 1977 and 1978, the general trend remained unfavourable, and the number of buyers fell to 13,167 in 1980.

18. Fiat 124: 32,128 units

All Fiat 124s are listed together in the report, so the number shown above must refer to sales not only of the saloon and estate, which is presumably what most customers were interested in, but also of the Sport Coupé and Sport Spider.

Fiat responded to the global energy crisis by basing its US advertising almost entirely on the fuel economy of its cars.

As will become apparent later, this had a startling effect elsewhere in its line-up, but 124 sales rose by less than 6000 units compared with the previous year, and by only a further 120 in 1975.

19. Datsun 610: 32,916 units

For the remainder of this list, Datsun will appear more often than any other manufacturer.

We start with the 610, known in Japan as the Bluebird and elsewhere as the 160B or 180B, and a rival to the similarly sized Toyota Mark II mentioned previously.

In 1973, it had been the best-selling Datsun in the US, and the third most popular individual model from the principal seven (not counting Mazdas, as will be discussed), with 75,511 sales.

Things went sharply downhill after that, and only 3693 610s were sold in 1977, the year it was replaced by the 810.

20. Datsun 710: 33,366 units

Marketed as the Nissan Violet in Japan and the 140J or 160J in most other markets, the Datsun 710 was shorter, narrower and lower than the 610 despite, confusingly, having a larger number in its title.

It slightly outsold the 610 in the years we’re most interested in here, before erupting to 50,914 sales in 1975, when it overtook the Z to become the second most popular Datsun in the USA.

This was its high point – total sales for 1976 and 1977 combined were 59,519, a yearly average of less than 30,000.

After that it was discontinued, as was the 610, though the smaller model’s decline had been much less dramatic.

21. Volkswagen Dasher: 37,232 units

In most parts of the world, the name of this car will cause much confusion and head-scratching, as people wonder what a Volkswagen Dasher might be.

In fact, it’s well-known globally, since Dasher was simply what the first-generation Passat was called in North America.

It was introduced in 1974 and was an immediate hit, despite VW’s bold strategy of advertising it under the heading, ‘It’s over 4 grand [$4000, or around $25,000 in 2024 money], but you get what you pay for’.

Customers were convinced by this at the time of the Dasher’s debut as they would not be again – the car never found as many US customers in any subsequent year before it was replaced in 1981.

22. Fiat 128 and X1/9: 38,413 units

In another of those strange anomalies guaranteed to baffle the researcher, sales of the front-wheel-drive Fiat 128 saloon, estate and Coupé were combined with those of the mid-engined X1/9 two-seater which, though its engine and transmission were also used in the 128, was otherwise a completely different car.

There is no information in the report about the Fiat X1/9’s contribution to the total figure, but it was probably minor.

As mentioned before, Fiat strongly emphasised its cars’ economy in its 1974 US advertising, and this led to a doubling of 128 and X1/9 sales over the 1973 figure, and a further rise to 55,487 in 1975.

It all went wrong after that, and Fiat withdrew from the US market entirely in 1983.

23. Volvo 140 series: 39,252 units

The four-cylinder Volvos grouped together in the report can only be the mechanically identical 142 two-door saloon, 144 four-door saloon and 145 estate, which can be considered as a single model known as the 140 series.

Although the report does not say how their sales were shared, the 140 series as a whole was by far the most popular Swedish car in the USA in 1974, accounting for 59.1% of all imports from that country.

Possibly because of the energy crisis, 39,252 was actually a fairly low figure, since 41,925 140s were sold in 1973 and 43,217 in 1975.

Despite Volvo’s solid image, sales of the 140 series were startlingly variable in the 1970s, falling to just 28,006 in 1976, but recovering to 43,032 three years later.

24. Datsun Z: 45,328 units

‘Datsun Z’, the term used by the report’s compilers, could refer to old stock of the 240Z or newly built examples of the 260Z, which was sold in the US for just one model year before being replaced in 1975 by the 280Z.

All three were essentially the same car, the major difference (and the one which forced the changes of name) being the increasing capacity of the straight-six engine.

Datsun Z sales in this year were the lowest from 1973 to 1980, reflecting both the market as a whole and a sharp, but temporary, decline in Japanese imports, rather than any problem specific to the 260Z.

25. Toyota Corona: 53,047 units

Following a familiar trend, fifth-generation Toyota Corona sales in the USA dropped sharply from their 1973 figure of 61,305.

It was still the third most popular Toyota in the country at the time, not far behind the second, but a very long way from the first.

However, in contrast to the fortunes of other Toyotas (with the exception of the Mark II), Corona sales never fully recovered, and they would exceed 50,000 annually only once more in the 1970s.

26. Mazda RX-2, 3 and 4: 56,685 units

The report grouped all Mazda rotaries together, which is unfortunate since the RX-2, RX-3 (pictured) and RX-4 were simply the rotary-engined versions of the Capella, the previously mentioned 808 and the Luce respectively, and these were quite separate models.

The energy crisis hit rotary cars particularly hard, as can be demonstrated by the fact that 96,641 examples of the Mazda trio were sold in 1973, before fuel economy became a significant selling point.

There was a slight upturn in 1975, but sales collapsed in the models’ remaining two years on the market.

They were replaced by the RX-7 coupé which, in 1979 (its second year on sale in the US), achieved 54,853 sales all on its own.

27. Toyota Celica: 59,172 units

The Toyota Celica was a much more exciting car than the Corona, which isn’t necessarily something that helps sales.

In this case, however, it appears to have done so – the Celica was slightly more popular than its more straightforward stablemate, finding 6125 more customers.

It was also hardly affected by the energy crisis, dropping only 428 sales compared with 1973.

Things just kept getting better after that, and the second-generation Celica reached 172,815 sales in 1979.

28. Datsun 210: 73,317 units

The most popular Datsun sold in the USA in 1974 is referred to as the 210 in the report, but was marketed as the B-210 and is often referred to nowadays as the B210 (without the hyphen).

Taking advantage of the energy crisis in the same way Fiat did, Datsun referred to the B-210’s economy twice in the first two sentences of its print ad, then returned to the subject in the final paragraph, describing the car as ‘the savingest Datsun of them all’.

It was clearly an effective strategy – 1974 was the B-210’s first full year in the US, and it immediately became the fourth best-selling import in the land.

Sales ballooned after that, and the momentum carried through to the car’s replacement, which broke the 200,000 barrier in 1979.

29. Ford Capri: 75,260 units

Among the models named in the report, this is a unique case of one bearing the name of an American brand being built in and imported from another country in 1974, 50 years ago.

The Capri suffered a sales collapse of nearly 40,000 units compared with its performance in 1973, but it was still the third best-selling foreign car identifiable in the report, and the second built in Europe ahead of the Volvo 140 series.

As far as the US was concerned, it was still just about in its glory days, but sales continued to fall, reaching just 4079 in its final year of 1978.

By then Ford was bringing in the first-generation Fiesta, which slightly exceeded the Capri’s 1974 figure in both 1978 and 1979.

30. Toyota Corolla: 103,394 units

The Toyota Corolla is generally accepted as being the best-selling nameplate in the world, even though the current, 12th-generation model is completely unrelated to the first.

The second generation arrived in 1974, the year it topped the global sales list for the first time, and was one of only two imports, and the only one from Japan, to achieve more than 100,000 sales in the USA.

Given what was about to happen, this can be seen as a very poor start.

Before the model was replaced, it attracted more than a quarter of a million buyers just three years after it first reached American shores.

31. Volkswagen Type 1: 243,664 units

By 1974, the most famous Volkswagen was in a calamitous decline, having fallen badly from sales of 405,615 just four years earlier, but it was still easily the number one import, exceeding the Toyota Corolla by more than two to one.

Four years after that, it had almost vanished, with sales dipping below 10,000 for the first time.

Type 1 is a general term which includes the VW Beetle – undoubtedly the most important version – but the Commission also used it to cover the Karmann Ghia (mistyped in the report as ‘Kharman Ghia’) and the Thing, a very basic convertible with the official codename Type 181.

The report mentions that ‘small quantities’ of the Thing were imported from Mexico, but adds that, for establishing the total number of imports from the principal sources, ‘the Thing is considered to be West German’.

Other (UK)

Several manufacturers from the principal seven sources had their total sales combined in the report without listings for individual models, and since these are split almost equally between those based in the UK and those not, we’ll look at those situations separately.

Chief among the UK brands was MG (always a strong performer in the US) with 25,015 sales, followed by Triumph on 18,396.

In the four-figure range were Jaguar on 5299 and Jensen on 3036, and then came Lotus (902) and Rover (690).

At the bottom of the list, on 630, were Rolls-Royce and Bentley, which were no doubt combined because they were under the same ownership.

Other (non-UK)

The Opel Manta (pictured) and the Sedan and Sportback versions of the 1900, as the Ascona was known in the US, were not considered separately, which is a pity since, with total sales of 59,279 – greater than those of all the British brands put together – they obviously performed well.

Sales of the Honda Civic and Accord were not listed individually until 1976, so for 1974 the report only shows a combined total of 43,119.

Honda was followed by Mitsubishi (42,925), Subaru (22,980), BMW (19,419), Peugeot (7948) and Alfa Romeo (3139).

Last on this list was Citroën, whose 338 sales must have been of models imported in 1973, since the manufacturer’s hopes of success were subsequently obliterated by a ban on cars with Citroën’s speciality, adjustable-height suspension.

1973

The situation in 1974 can be put into context by looking at what happened in the years immediately before and after.

1973 was the best year for the US auto industry up to this point in the report – which, you’ll remember began counting from 1964 – with the greatest home sales, imports and exports, and imports from the principal seven sources stood at 12.9% rather than the 17.7% they would reach a year later.

The Volkswagen Type 1 (pictured here in Karmann Ghia form) was the leader by an even greater margin than in 1974 with 371,097 sales, and was followed by the Toyota Corolla on 116,905 and the Ford Capri, having by far its best year ever, on 113,069.

The Mazda RX-2, RX-3 and RX-4 were next on 96,641, but if you insist they don’t count because they were different cars, as you might reasonably do, the top six was completed by the Datsun 610 (75,511), the Datsun 210 (73,713) and the Toyota Corona (61,305).

1975

While individual models recovered well after the energy crisis, the market as a whole did not.

Exports of US-built cars were up by 41,126, which was good news, but sales in their own country were down by 618,404, total imports by 497,904 and imports from the principal seven sources by 408,972.

The decline of the Volkswagen Type 1 was becoming ever more serious, and it dropped to third among the imports with sales of 92,034, well down on the Toyota Corolla (151,177) and Datsun 210 (140,039) which both exceeded 200,000 sales later in the decade as the VW faded away.

The Toyota Celica (64,922) rose to fourth, followed by the rotary Mazdas (57,879), and the Fiat 128 and X1/9 which achieved 55,487 in their peak year.

Discounting both of those as not being individual models, the remaining cars in the top six were the Ford Capri, still hanging in there with 54,586 sales, and the Datsun 710 on 50,914.