Pontiac Le Mans
In the early ’60s, all major US car makers introduced compact models. Chevrolet had the Corvair, Ford had the Falcon, Plymouth had the Valiant, and Pontiac presented the Tempest. The Pontiac Le Mans started as a sub-series of the Tempest and was very interesting. In most cases, those compact models were only smaller versions of bigger cars, sharing design cues and mechanicals. Still, Pontiac went a different route and presented one of the most advanced and most interesting American cars of the era (via Classic).
The new Tempest had independent suspension all around, in a time when all cars used live rear axles. Then, it featured an economical four-cylinder engine, which was a cut-down V8 when all competitors had six cylinders. The third most interesting thing is that Tempest used a rear-mounted gearbox, the transaxle design, which was unheard of at the time.