Paul recently presented a multipart survey of the many four-door hardtop models U.S. automakers offered in the 1950s and 1960s. But, how popular were these models in their day? Data from the American Manufacturers Association (AMA) reveals the answers.
1978 Chrysler Newport in Tapestry Red / Bring a Trailer
In Paul’s earlier posts, different commenters had different recollections of how common (or uncommon) four-door hardtop models were when relatively new. However, memory can be a poor guide to such things, and cars that were ubiquitous in some parts of the country could be rare in others.
1949 Buick Roadmaster Riviera in Sand Gray over Cirrus Green / Iconic Auctioneers
There’s no question that starting in the 1950s, Americans became mad for pillarless hardtops, first two-door models, then four-doors and even some wagons. The following chart, based on AMA factory sales data, will give a good sense of just how popular they were in their heyday:
Calendar-Year Factory Sales of Hardtop Models, U.S. Automakers, 1955–1974
Source: Automobile Manufacturers Association
The above chart shows the sales of ALL hardtop models. If we break out the totals by two- and four-door models, they look like this:
Calendar-Year Factory Sales of 2- and 4-Door Hardtop Models, U.S. Automakers, 1955–1974
Source: Automobile Manufacturers Association data
You’ll notice that the above charts start in 1955. While there were a few pre-1955 models that could be considered four-door hardtops, like the Kaiser Virginian pictured below …
1949 Kaiser Virginian in Indian Ceramic / Mecum Auctions
… it wasn’t until 1955, and the arrival of four-door hardtop models like the red Buick Century Riviera pictured below, that the AMA began to separately track two- and four-door hardtop sales.
1955 Buick Century Riviera four-door hardtop in Cherokee Red / Bring a Trailer
As the second chart illustrates, the largest chunk of domestic hardtop sales were two-door models, whose market share reached as high as 45 percent in the late 1960s. The number of two-door hardtops available at any given time was always greater. Between the early ’50s and the mid ’70s, nearly every model line eventually offered at least one two-door hardtop, but four-door hardtops tended to be associated with bigger, more luxurious cars, and they weren’t as popular in the intermediate or compact classes even when they were offered.
Still, four-door hardtops accounted for a substantial percentage of domestic passenger car sales in this era — sometimes as many as one in every seven new cars!
Calendar-Year Factory Sales and Market Share of U.S. 4-Door Hardtops, 1955–1974
Source: Automobile Manufacturers Association data
Here’s the data in tabular form:
| Calendar Year | 2D Hardtop Sales | 4D Hardtop Sales | All Hardtop Sales | All Passenger Cars | Hardtop Market Share | 2D HT Market Share | 4D HT Market Share | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | N/A | N/A | 10,431 | 5,119,466 | 0.20% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1950 | N/A | N/A | 266,680 | 6,665,863 | 4.00% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1951 | N/A | N/A | 487,261 | 5,338,435 | 9.13% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1952 | N/A | N/A | 539,508 | 4,320,794 | 12.49% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1953 | N/A | N/A | 841,982 | 6,116,948 | 13.76% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1954 | N/A | N/A | 954,519 | 5,558,897 | 17.17% | N/A | N/A | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1955 | 1,666,984 | 501,814 | 2,168,798 | 7,920,186 | 27.38% | 21.05% | 6.34% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1956 | 1,060,541 | 763,057 | 1,823,598 | 5,816,109 | 31.35% | 18.23% | 13.12% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1957 | 1,140,131 | 932,992 | 2,073,123 | 6,113,344 | 33.91% | 18.65% | 15.26% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1958 | 657,056 | 543,397 | 1,200,453 | 4,257,812 | 28.19% | 15.43% | 12.76% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1959 | 749,682 | 709,489 | 1,459,171 | 5,591,243 | 26.10% | 13.41% | 12.69% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1960 | 766,249 | 750,674 | 1,516,923 | 6,674,796 | 22.73% | 11.48% | 11.25% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1961 | 705,096 | 586,413 | 1,291,509 | 5,542,707 | 23.30% | 12.72% | 10.58% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1962 | 1,161,215 | 651,490 | 1,812,705 | 6,933,240 | 26.15% | 16.75% | 9.40% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1963 | 1,676,156 | 753,781 | 2,429,937 | 7,637,728 | 31.81% | 21.95% | 9.87% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1964 | 2,205,601 | 748,455 | 2,954,056 | 7,751,822 | 38.11% | 28.45% | 9.66% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1965 | 3,118,615 | 1,132,351 | 4,250,966 | 9,305,561 | 45.68% | 33.51% | 12.17% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1966 | 3,359,060 | 1,078,669 | 4,437,729 | 8,598,326 | 51.61% | 39.07% | 12.55% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1967 | 3,192,896 | 959,803 | 4,152,699 | 7,436,764 | 55.84% | 42.93% | 12.91% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1968 | 3,983,185 | 1,070,022 | 5,053,207 | 8,822,158 | 57.28% | 45.15% | 12.13% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1969 | 3,667,276 | 1,115,083 | 4,782,359 | 8,223,715 | 58.15% | 44.59% | 13.56% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1970 | 2,799,883 | 795,622 | 3,595,505 | 6,546,817 | 54.92% | 42.77% | 12.15% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1971 | 3,358,897 | 1,243,542 | 4,602,439 | 8,584,592 | 53.61% | 39.13% | 14.49% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1972 | 3,423,119 | 1,109,994 | 4,533,113 | 8,823,938 | 51.37% | 38.79% | 12.58% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1973 | 4,036,728 | 1,014,863 | 5,051,591 | 9,657,647 | 52.31% | 41.80% | 10.51% | |||||||||||||||||||
| 1974 | 3,278,545 | 494,093 | 3,772,638 | 7,331,256 | 51.46% | 44.72% | 6.74% |
(Note that these are calendar year factory (wholesale) sales from U.S. factories, not model year production.)
Here are some points of interest about the data:
The all-time peak U.S. market share of four-door hardtops was in 1957.
In 1957, four-door hardtops accounted for 15.26 percent of all domestic factory sales. This year was also the ’50s sales peak, with four-door hardtop sales reaching 932,992 units. Not all four-door hardtop models sold well this year, but there were a lot of them. Here are a couple of less-common examples:
1957 Imperial Crown Southampton in Saturn Blue — one of 7,843 / RM Auctions
1957 Rambler Rebel in Rebel Silver — one of 1,500 / Hemmings
1957 Mercury Commuter four-door hardtop station wagon in Classic White over Sunset Orchid — one of 5,752 / RM Auctions
In the 1960s, four-door hardtop sales peaked in 1965 …
Factory sales of four-door hardtops like the 1965 Sedan de Ville totaled a whopping 1,132,351 cars this year.
1965 Cadillac Hardtop Sedan de Ville in Hampton Blue / F & E Collector Auto Auction
… but the greatest ’60s market share for four-door hardtops was in 1967.
That year, more than one in eight new U.S. cars — 12.91 percent — were four-door hardtops, many of them from General Motors. However, 1967 was a weak year for the domestic industry, so four-door hardtop sales totaled “only” 959,803 cars, little better than the ’50s peak a decade earlier.
1967 Chevrolet Caprice Custom Sedan in Madeira Maroon / Mecum Auctions
1967 Chevrolet Malibu Sport Sedan in Medium Blue / Bring a Trailer
1967 Chevrolet Corvair Monza in Nantucket Blue / GAA Classic Cars
The all-time sales peak for U.S. four-door hardtops was 1971.
That year, four-door hardtops accounted for 14.49 percent of all domestic passenger car sales — a whopping 1,243,542 cars, like this Olds 98 Holiday Sedan, which eventually ended up in New South Wales, Australia:
1971 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Sedan in Palm Green / Just Cars
They were so popular it’s almost hard to fathom how quickly they would become extinct.
1971 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Sedan / Just Cars
U.S. four-door hardtop sales dropped off rapidly after 1973.
Although four-door hardtops sold 1.1 million units in 1972 and 1.1 million in 1973, the bottom fell out of the market almost immediately afterward. Four-door hardtops remained fairly popular for bigger luxury cars, but by the 1973 model year, some lines, like the new GM Colonnade intermediates, had dropped their hardtop models entirely, or, like Ford, replaced them with “pillared hardtop” sedans like the LTD pictured below:
1973 Ford LTD Brougham four-door pillared hardtop in Medium Ginger Metallic / Bring a Trailer
1973 Ford LTD Brougham four-door pillared hardtop / Bring a Trailer
With a downturn in big-car sales following the OPEC oil embargo (which took place during the 1974 model year), more four-door hardtops soon disappeared. Most of the full-size GM models hung on through 1976, but Plymouth and Dodge dropped theirs after 1975.
1975 Dodge Monaco Royal Brougham four-door hardtop in Moondust Metallic / Bring a Trailer
The downsizing trend seems to have been the last straw.
Four-door hardtops had often sacrificed some rear-seat room, and the need to reinforce the structure to compensate for their inherently lower rigidity had made them heavier than pillared models. As automakers sought to improve packaging efficiency to provide comparable space in smaller cars, those penalties became less and less acceptable. More stringent federal crash safety regulations probably contributed to the decline, but enough pillarless models remained on sale after the effective dates of those regulations to suggest that that wasn’t the primary cause.
1978 Chrysler Newport four-door hardtop in Tapestry Red / AutoHunter
To my frustration, the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association (as the AMA became in 1972) stopped reporting factory sales by body style after 1974. (Maybe they didn’t want to argue about whether pillared models should count if they were marketed as hardtops, I don’t know.) However, I was able to chart the decline based on model year production:
Model Year Production and Market Share of U.S. 4-Door Hardtops, 1974–1978
Source: Manufacturer model year production totals and MMVA total passenger car production, excluding pillared hardtops
Here’s the data as a table:
| Model Year | 4D Hardtops | All Passenger Cars | 4D Hardtop Market Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | 501,315 | 8,444,894 | 5.94% |
| 1975 | 442,442 | 6,791,909 | 6.51% |
| 1976 | 493,787 | 8,395,728 | 5.88% |
| 1977 | 60,060 | 9,472,492 | 0.63% |
| 1978 | 50,962 | 9,244,790 | 0.55% |
(Note that unlike the table above, these numbers are production totals by model year, not wholesale sales by calendar year.)
The last holdout in the U.S. was Chrysler, which continued to offer pillarless four-door hardtop models in the Chrysler C-body line through the 1978 model year. By 1979, however, even those would be gone. While there were still some four-door models marketed as pillared hardtops for a few years afterwards, the true four-door hardtop was extinct, at least in North America.
1978 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop in black / Orlando Classic Cars
1978 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop, once owned by Chrysler dealer Bill Pettit / Orlando Classic Cars
Even after four-door hardtops were extinct in the U.S., they remained big in Japan.
Nissan introduced the first Japanese-market four-door hardtops, in the 230 Cedric/Gloria line, in 1972. Four-door hardtops became very popular in the pricier realms of the Japanese domestic market even as they were fading away in the States.
1973 Nissan Cedric 2000 Custom Deluxe four-door hardtop in dark brown / Nissan Heritage Collection
Japanese automakers offered both pillarless and pillared four-door hardtop models into the 1990s. We got some of the pillared models in the U.S. (although they weren’t generally called hardtops here), but the pillarless models were mostly reserved for domestic sales — some remained on sale in Japan through about 1993.
1992 Nissan Laurel Medalist four-door hardtop in Black Pearl Metallic / Japanese Classics
The survival rate for U.S. four-door hardtops appears to be poor.
This is more an anecdotal observation than a statistical one, but both Paul and I had enormous difficulty finding presentable survivors of even some quite popular four-door models, like the Cadillac Sedan de Ville hardtop or early Ford LTD. Convertibles have almost always been collectible, so it’s not surprising that they’re more likely to be preserved, but while two-door hardtops remain popular with modern collectors, four-door hardtops, even high-end ones, don’t seem to be regarded any more highly than four-door sedans. I wonder how many ended up in junkyards, or cannibalized to fix more popular two-doors.
1978 Chrysler Newport in Tapestry Red / Bring a Trailer
Four-door hardtops were always first and foremost about fashion, and fashion is a fickle thing: Some popular styles become perennials, while others go in and out, but some just end up in the dumpster or the remainder bin, the detritus of our short collective memory and changing tastes.
Related Reading
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 1: The 1950s
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 2: 1960–1964
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 3: 1965-1969 – Now Available In Sizes S, M, L & XL
Pillarless Under the Rising Sun: Japan’s Four-Door Hardtops (at Ate Up With Motor)
In my garage is parked an ‘as brand new’ 1962 Export factory Right Hand Drive Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan (4 door pillarless hardtop). This car is factory black with a red interior and is equipped with almost every factory & dealer offered option.
I genuinely believe my Export RHD ‘62 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan would be one of only a few survivors today. It’s at least one of few that has survived in original correct factory specifications. It even still has cross ply BF Goodrich Silvertown one inch wide white wall tires.
I am only its second owner since it rolled off the Tarrytown GM assembly plant and being delivered new to its first owner in Australia it was one seriously ‘unique’ car. As a genuine 4 door pillarless hardtop it would have turned many heads in 1962 in Australia.
Yes, I believe the few surviving 4 door pillarless cars today are certainly to become highly collectable as they are now rarely sighted at car shows that have endless rows and rows of common place 2 door hardtops.
Great article, thanks for acknowledging these unique 4 door hardtops.
Having grown up in 1950s, 4 door hardtops never seemed unusual. My parents drove them. The safe visibility out of cars back then, with even wrap around windshields, was so much better than today.
WAIT! A “pillared hardtop” ???????
Those pillarless hardtops seem pointless. They lost the wide-open visual field of a real hardtop, but didn’t gain the solidly sealed windows of a proper sedan.
I don’t follow your comment that “pillarless hardtops” lacked the “wide-open visual of a real hardtop” ? With absolute respect, your comment makes no sense whatsoever.
A real hardtop is simply any car that does not have a ‘B’ pillar. It has nothing to do with the number of doors. Whether 4 or 2 door pillarless is not relevant. If car lacks a ‘B’ pillar then regardless of whether it has 2 or 4 doors, both are ‘real hardtops’.
Now I agree that the description “pillared hardtop” is crazy. If the car has a ‘B’ pillar then it can never be a ‘hardtop’ period.
I think he might have meant “pillared hardtops.”
The Galaxie 500 that Stone and Keller used in The Streets of San Francisco, was one of the earliest hardtops I remember spotting. Thought it was impressive for two police inspectors, to ride in.
Great piece, Aaron, with lots of good information. I did not know the 4-Door Hardtop was that popular.
One observation though regarding the ‘73 LTD. Having had my own 2-Door Hardtop as my first car, I can tell looking at those pictures that this example is not a Brougham, although it has some of the Brougham gingerbread like the Exterior Accent Group or whatever Ford called it.
A few quick ways to tell:
The Brougham models had the word “Brougham” right under the LTD emblem on the C-pillar.
Those are the same Base LTD wheel-covers I had on my LTD (not a Brougham).
And if I am not mistaken, the LTD Broughams had the high-back captain’s chairs, but they may’ve been an option… my neighbor growing up had an LTD Brougham that had those, while my seats looked like the ones pictured only in vinyl.
Aaron, another excellent deep dive into a bit of automotive history. Looks like the 4 dr.HT captured a steady 12% or so of market share until 1974, when sales fell off a cliff. The hardtopless Colonnades had a lot to do with that. They really were a radical design departure from the prior generation. What is puzzling to me is the FMC “pillared” HT, which looked almost identical to the real HT and still had frameless windows. Why offer both? Kind of a transition period I suppose until the next generation when all hardtops, pillared or otherwise, disappeared.
The hardtopless Colonnades had a lot to do with that.
It would take a deeper dive into the stats, but the GM A body 4-door hardtops never sold in substantial numbers. The drop in large car sales in 1974 due to the energy crisis was undoubtedly the biggest factor.
True even for very popular models, my ’69 Olds Cutlass Holiday Sedan is one of the few I’ve seen (I know of 2 others) and I’ve never seen another event at an all Olds show. I’m not home right now so can’t look in the “Std Catalog of American Cars 1946-75” but less were made than any other body style iirc.
Unfortunately, Chevrolet record-keeping style in the ’60s makes this very difficult to check: As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the official Chevrolet production figures are by series, not broken out by body style, and rounded off to boot. Some people have delved deeper into the factory records to provide more detailed breakdowns for certain Chevrolet models, but those lists are often more concerned with how many cars had certain engines or options. The official B-O-P figures are broken out by body style, but not having reliable figures for Chevrolet obviously makes things challenging in this respect.
Great piece as always, Aaron.
I’m honestly surprised that 4-door hardtops lasted as long as they did. They are essentially a gimmick, with no functional value. Like most gimmicks, the public generally wises up to the trade offs in involved,.
In the case of the hardtop, you are giving up rigid door window frames and got poor weather sealing that leaked water and whistled air at highway speed, especially as the seals age.
What you got in return was a pillarless look that you have to roll down all four windows to appreciate, which was increasingly uncommon in the age of air conditioning.
There was a bigger styling difference in the first years. My grandfather’s ’56 Roadmaster sedan looked very stodgy compared to his brother’s ’56 Holiday 88, windows up or down.
Chromed window frames made sedans look much better to me, yet they disappeared before the hardtops. Body colored frames looked too much like taxis and Biscaynes, and then they went black.
For example, ’67 LeSabre sedan with chrome:
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CC-374-079-1.jpg
Blacking out the window frames was a way to achieve something like the 4-door hardtop’s continuous side window opening without the structural, weight, sealing and space-utilization compromises of one. Some manufacturers (most notably Toyota) for decades held it out to the higher trim levels giving the more-likely-to-be fleeted base models body-color window frames.
Ahh, but it had another salient advantage: It was a four-door body style that was generally not in danger of being mistaken for a cop car, a taxicab, or some other such fleet vehicle. That I’m pretty sure was a big factor in their popularity in Japan, where bigger cars were often more expensive to own. Having a hardtop marked you as a private owner with money rather than some kind of livery driver.
Except maybe in the mid-’50s, I’m not convinced four-door hardtop buyers were ever very concerned with the “roll down all the windows to show off the pillarless look” thing; the style was most popular in segments where air conditioning installation rates were quite high.
They are essentially a gimmick, with no functional value. Like most gimmicks, the public generally wises up to the trade offs in involved,.
They had unique styling including different roofs. Styling has been an overwhelmingly huge aspect of car buying decisions since…almost forever. We could easily say the same things today about many automotive gimmicks. SUVs, which no one drives off pavement. AWD which mostly never gets used. Ginormous hp engines which never gets fully used by 99% of the drivers. Highly questionable styling. Sports cars that only get driven gently. Jeeps that never go off road. I could go on…
If car buyers didn’t want or like or perpetually fall for gimmicks, we’d all be driving boxes with wheels, or gen 1 xBs 🙂 . Henry Ford found out the hard way that car buyers like style and gimmicks.,
I would have thought the final hardtop peak (all types) would have been ’71 or ’72, not ’73, before the Colonnades took over from the popular A body hardtop coupes. The F bodies and Eldorado left the party in ’71. The ’74 Coupe de Ville was no longer a hardtop and sold well in a bad year, but the other B&C coupes didn’t switch to opera windows until ’75, and then not completely.
My father bought new cars from 1950 to 2003, but the only hardtop was the ’57 Olds Fiesta wagon, which I don’t remember. He bought a ’68 pillared Electra because of the extra rear legroom–he could see we kids had Mom’s skinny build (her brother was 6’5″), but it had been demoted to his commuter car before my brother passed 6′. His mother bought 3 Cadillac 4 door hardtops, and we inherited his uncle’s ’56 Olds 4 dr Holiday 88.
That’s … exactly what it says, in big bold letters. The all-time sales peak was 1971, which was also the second-highest market share.
All types–two and four door combined, peaked after ’67 in ’73, according to your first two graphs. Despite calendar ’73 having two months of oil embargo reducing sales of high end and large models, it was a record sales year in Detroit, but there were also fewer hardtop models on offer. None of which I expected, particularly with ugly new bumpers and stricter emission controls messing up drivability. The first 9.5 months must have been a boom time. Salesmen must have quickly learned in late ’72 to warm up a car before a customer tried it, as cold starts were awful.
We didn’t care for the big safety bumpers but just took them in stride. They were on everything. I think my ’75 MG Midget even looks better with them.
The ’72 cars started and ran fine when cold. Just don’t try to floor them cold or they will likely buck. Never floor a cold engine, anyway, a good way to spin an engine bearing.
Of course, although they ran fine, HP was down and MPG went horrible.
V8s with 10 MPG, 6s with 12 MPG, 4s with 14 MPG. Some MPG relief started in 1976, although some engines were bad until 1993…
MY ’73 cars went on sale in Fall ’72 and were much worse. Our ’73 Century never failed to die at least once after a cold start. Even warm, it felt like the engine’s sinuses were clogged up.
Ah, I see what you mean now, sorry. Two caveats I should emphasize with the AMA numbers is that they’re by calendar year, not model year (so their 1973 factory sales figures are for part of MY1973 and the first part of MY1974), and it’s not clear how they counted pillared hardtops. (Since I don’t have calendar year production data broken out by body style, there’s no way to check.) Since the data is an aggregation of figures reported by the manufacturers, it might have varied by marque.
I learned something new today, that Chrysler dropped the Dodge/Plymouth 4 door hardtops for 1977. I did know that in the final 1978 model year of the C body *all* 4-doors were hardtops, the post sedans were dropped along with wagons and all Dodge and Plymouth variants leaving only the Chrysler New Yorker and Newport as 2- or 4-door hardtops (the former optionally with fixed opera windows but still structurally a “hardtop”).
I would love to see a breakdown among the various manufacturers. If I had to guess, GM buyers would have had the highest 4DH ownership, with FoMoCo a fairly close second. Mopar would have been much lower. At least that was how it seemed at the time.
I think the 4DH falls in a crack among old cars. The people who buy and hold and create nice survivors are sedan people. While convertibles and even 2 door hardtops have been prized enough to rescue and restore. But the poor 4DH gets treated like a sedan by the 2D people but was also shunned by the clear plastic seat cover crowd. Even wagons get more love.
There’s a publication that tracks the current registration of model types. It would be interesting to know which have the highest and lowest survivor rates, though I imagine some, like museum cars and barn-unfounds, are no longer registered.
A conjecture…
In my experience, hardtop cars (and to a lesser degree, all cars with frameless door glass) had weather sealing issues. The seals weren’t perfect when new, and with age, repeated use, and UV exposure, they got worse. Over time, they got more and more rainwater ingress which led to rusted out floors. And that’s my theory about the lower survival rate of hardtops.
GM cars of the era had bad problems with the rear window leaking water into the trunk. Vinyl roofs made the rust worse.
A very interesting article which adds context to Paul’s series on 4-door hardtops. I’ve learned a couple things here, such as the fact that the full-size FoMoCo offerings included a real 4-door hardtop as well as the seemingly more common pillared hardtops. Also interesting that the share was near-peak jn 1971-72, which is later than I would have thought, given the increased popularity of Brougham treatments that emphasized luxury and a smooth, quiet ride, which favored the sedan body type with its greater structural rigidity.
One other thought regarding the general lack of sales success seen by small and intermediate four-door hardtop models: I think the proportions of a 4-door hardtop look best on a full-size frame, while so many of the 4-door intermediates of the late 1960s were rather awkward looking, saddled as they were with the close-coupled styling that looked so much better in two-door form. Even Bill Mitchell struggled with this design conundrum, with 1968-72 A- bodies being a prime example. Hardtops were more expensive than sedans, so why pay more for something that isn’t fully resolved as a style statement?
’68/72 GM A bodies had a longer wheelbase in 4 dr form, coupes were shorter, and the 4DHT rooflines and C pillars were far better looking than those of the sedans, not at all awkward imo, but then again one hardly ever sees one.
Had a 70 Impala 4 Dr hardtop; a low milage used car in the late 80’s. Driving at any speed over 30 mph with all windows down was a miserable experience. Sedans are much more comfortable.
I never owned a four-door anything. If you have a four-door you are an old man and I refuse to admit I am an old man. But there were many four-door hardtops that still remain stylish. But four-door sedans, only if you could not pay for a four-door hardtop.
I do admit I occasionally borrow my friends four-door Subaru to take my pets to the vet. But I can still get four large pet carriers into my two-door Camaro.
Well I know that two of them sit in my driveway so they have survived. I just updated someone who is now 37 years old but grew up as a child, till a teenager, in the 67 Parklane getting a rebuilt engine. To say he was thrilled would be an understatement even after 22 years.
I just loved my pillarless ’92 Nissan Laurel hardtop (pics of it on Aaron’s Ate Up With Motor article he linked to in the article).
It had a low belt line and slim A-pillars, and the all-round visibility (excluding the chunky C-pillar) was superb and made for a wonderful car in which to explore and view the countryside. The base of the half-height B-pillar was quite solid, and lifting the carpet revealed a pronounced curved structural brace running from part way up the pillar across the floor to the centre tunnel. That’d help with side impacts, but I suspect the body wouldn’t perform terribly well in a rollover.
For my subsequent C34 and C35 Laurels, Nissan had added a B-pillar. Very slim though, and visibility was still good. If they were still available and capable of meeting modern crash/safety requirements, I’d have another pillarless hardtop in a heartbeat.
The popularity of four door hardtops tracks with the postwar optimism which began to fade in the late 1960’s, turned to malaise in the 1970’s. The practical alternative was the pillared four door hardtop, half-door construction with narrow B-pillar. Blame the 1961 Lincoln Continental sedan for making the style acceptable, even GM joined in with the 1965 C-Body Olds 98, Buick Electra and Cadillac. Oddly FoMoCo didn’t get around to adding the body style until 1969 for their other full-sized cars.