The truth is that the whole "unequal length half-shaft" myth was as much a myth in 1980 as it is now. And the first US built front-drives go back a lot further than 1980, too. 1978 was the first US-built transverse-engine FWD (Omni/Horizon), but Toronados and Eldorados go back to the 60s, and of course we had Cords in the 30s.
But torque steer has always been about scrub radius, not half-shaft length. Have you never noticed that the Eldorados and Toronados had very unusual extremely offset (inboard) wheels? That wasn't a stylistic choice, it was to move the scrub radius closer to zero.