A trio of American compact automobiles pioneered the domestic answer to the small, efficient European imports that gained popularity in the 1950s.

Arriving in India for the first time can be a daunting experience. Suffocatingly hot temperatures, a maze of immigration and customs procedures, and a chaotic arrival hall await the intrepid traveler. Salesmen surround new arrivals in hopes of leading them into private taxis or family-owned guest houses.

The apocryphal version of the tale stages the steel hull of the Queen Mary as a transatlantic cocktail shaker that swizzled together Donald Healey and George Mason. The result, so the story goes, was a drunken toast that spawned the Nash-Healey. In reality the events were probably far less boozy, but no less noteworthy.

In the living rooms and dens of 1950s America, kids sat bathed in the dim glow of the first color television sets. When the dust from the Lone Ranger’s latest adventure settled, this is what they heard: