Given the immediate popularity and glamour of the 2-door hardtop that was first introduced by Cadillac in 1949, it was just a matter of time—five years, precisely—before the first four door hardtops appeared. They spanned the price spectrum from the top-tier luxury brands like Cadillac (top) and Lincoln (bottom) to the low priced brands, even Rambler. But their lifespan in the US was short, with the last one made in 1978. We’re going to look at them all, by decade, so roll down those windows for a better view.
Undoubtedly someone is going to point out that the 1949 Kaiser Virginian was the first 4-door hardtop. Technically yes, in terms of the definition of a 4-door hardtop being a 4-door sedan without a B-pillar. But practically speaking, removing the little window pane between the front and rear doors took some doing; it was not just a roll-down pane. Good luck finding an image on the web with one fully open. Realistically, the whole point of a 4-door hardtop was to be able to enjoy rolling all the windows down, not to get out the tool kit and disassemble the one in the middle.
The reason it existed was because Kaiser really wanted a convertible and couldn’t afford to create a proper one, so they just cut off the roof of a four door sedan and filled in the B-pillar with that pane. And then they also offered it with a hard roof.
1955
The real thing appeared for the 1955 model year on GM’s B-Body, in the form of the Buick Century and Special Rivieras (above).
And the Olds 98 and 88 Holiday sedans.
In real life, they didn’t look quite as low, long as in the brochure renderings. The Buick’s rear full-wheel cutouts tended to make it look even shorter but supposedly sportier.
The Olds version looked a bit sleeker thanks to its two-tone side trim and lower rear wheel opening. These B-bodies had been new in 1954.
1956
Given that Cadillac had pioneered the 2-door hardtop in 1949, it’s a bit surprising that GM’s premier brand didn’t do the same with the 4-door hardtop. The Sedan DeVille arrived for 1956, with its very coupe-like roof. It’s important to point out that these GM 4-door hardtops had completely unique roofs, unlike some others as we’ll soon see.
For decades, I assumed that Cadillac simply used the coupe roof on the 4-door hardtop. A few years back I decided to resolve that once and for all, and with some careful visual examination and measurements, determined that the 4-door roof was just a bit longer, extending further into the filler panel between the rear roof edge and the trunk opening. They are not the same.
The Buick C-Body Roadmaster Riviera also got this roof in 1956. The open wheel wells really change the looks of it compared to the Cadillac.
Chrysler didn’t waste any time jumping on the 4-door hardtop bandwagon. This 1956 Imperial look quite imperious. But unlike GM, they simply converted the 4-door sedans.
This created a technical issue, as the tall rear roof’s tall window wouldn’t fit in the door as a single pane, so they came up with this clever scissors arrangement.
Chrysler made lemonade out of this limitation by advertising them as the “First Sedan-Sized 4-door hardtop.”
The big news in 1956 was in the lower price segments, which were not about to be left behind. Chevrolet’s new 4-door hardtop was available in both Bel Air and 210 trim levels.
Pontiac shared the same A-body, but it was elongated at both ends.
Ford was caught napping and rushed their Fairlane Fordor Victoria out by January of 1956. It followed the GM pattern quite closely.
The big surprise was that Rambler gave their new 1956 cars a hardtop too, and only a 4-door one as there were no 2-doors of any kind on this 108″ wheelbase platform.
They even showed a 4-door hardtop station wagon in their brochure, but there’s some question as to if they were actually built. And what a wild woodie version this was. We’ll do a dedicated post on all the 4-door hardtop station wagons.
Plymouth, Dodge and DeSoto also got their versions, although there’s not a lot of them out there anymore. This is the Plymouth.
As is apparent, these also used the scissors window arrangement on the rear doors. It always surprises me that the great majority of these 4-door hardtops are posed and shot with the windows closed.
That was very much not the case when they were new, as the manufacturers were eager to show off the visual impact of their hardtop looks.
I shot this ’56 Mercury Monterey Phaeton back in 2014 at a drive-through bank.
1957
The big news in 1957 were of course the dramatic all-new Chrysler Corp. cars. At the top of the pecking order was of course the Imperial.
With the Chrysler next in line.
The DeSoto was the unloved middle child.
Then the Dodge.
And the low-priced Plymouth. It’s quite obvious how they all shared the same basic body except for the Imperial.
1957 ushered in the very expensive and limited-production Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, which only came as a 4-door hardtop with a brushed stainless steel roof, air suspension and a near-endless array of standard features.
It was also unusual in having suicide doors. This opened up the interior in a whole new manner.
The plebeian Cadillacs got new bodies in ’57, and all of them were hardtops, 2- and 4-doors. This would be the case for some years to come. The hardtop was now the standard…of the world.
Buick’s Roadmaster shared the new C-body with Cadillac, as usual.
There were also the B-body Buicks, like this Special.
Ford got a new body in ’57 too, and the 4-door hardtop Victoria was available in Fairlane and Fairlane 500 versions. Extremely few seem to have survived, if a Google image search is an indication.
Mercury also had a new body this year, and the Turnpike Cruiser with its canted rear window was one of the more ambitious models that year.
Lincoln was a bit late to the 4-door hardtop party, arriving in 1957 with the Premier Landau.
1958
The literally big news in 1958 were the GM A-bodies, now significantly larger than their predecessors. At Chevrolet, the hot new hardtop was the Impala, but only as a 2-door coupe. The Bel Air four door hardtop was a notch down in exclusivity. Like the larger B/C bodies, the GM hardtops now all shared the same roofs as the regular sedans.
As usual, Pontiac worked hard to make their A-body version look bigger yet. And they succeeded.
Also new in 1958 was the Edsel. The lower trim versions shared the Ford body.
And the higher trim Corsair and Citation used the Mercury body.
Ramblers had a major facelift for 1958, and an extended-nose Ambassador was the top of the line.
But by far the most ambitious new car for 1958 were the all-new Lincoln and Continentals. It’s a bit hard to believe these really were production cars, they look so other-worldly.
I can’t stop when it comes to these.
Here’s a Continental 4-door from the rear. These were all hardtops, and with the retractable rear window, they were perhaps the ultimate hardtop.
1959
Of course the big news in 1959 were the all-new GM cars, now sharing the same body in all the divisions. The Cadillac 4-window version works better than the 6-window version to my eye.
But to each their own.
The ’59 Buick design was chosen to be the basis for the other divisions, and it rather shows as it is the most organic of them all. Quite dramatic.
The Oldsmobile was perhaps the least organic of the bunch, but its front end was among the best.
The 1959 Pontiac originated the Wide-Track look and the split front end.
The Chevy needs no further words; it speaks eloquently for itself.
The new ’59 Ford looks so conservative in comparison.
The Edsel was toned down quite a bit for ’59 too. Same basic body as the Ford, but lacking the Galaxie’s Thunderbird roof.
The ’59 Mercury is more dramatic, if not quite in GM’s league.
The ’59 Chrysler Corp. cars were just facelifted ’57s, so I’m not going to parade them all here. But let’s give the 1959 Imperial Crown 4-door hardtop a worthwhile glance.
But the one that most deserves to end this gallery is the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, as it previews Cadillac’s styling direction of the next decade. Suddenly it really is 1960!
Other Parts of This Series
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
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops – Hardtop Station Wagons Of The 1950s
All Those Glamorous Hardtops, Appendix: How Common Were Four-Door Hardtops?
Related CC Reading
Curbside Classic: 1956 Buick Century Riviera Four-Door Hardtop – See And Be Seen
Car Show Outtake: 1949 Kaiser Virginian – The Non-Hardtop Hardtop
Curbside Classic: 1959 Pontiac Catalina Vista Sedan – Wide-Tracking To Success
Want a “Truly Beautiful” 1959 Cadillac? Then the Brougham Might Be Just Your Thing – Suddenly It’s 1961!
You pulled together a *lot* of information for us, Paul—and the image searching must have taken plenty of time, too. I learned a lot, and will surely be back to re-read later today!
What an epic post!
There’s some real treasures here. I loved my breezy ’62 Electra 225 Riviera.
“Given the immediate popularity and glamour of the 2-door hardtop that was first introduced by Cadillac in 1949, it was just a matter of time—five years, precisely—before the first four door hardtops appeared.”
To eliminate ambiguity, it’s worth noting that neither of the above were first of their genre, in international terms, as both 2 and 4 door Hardtops had debuted elsewhere pre-war.
Yes, there are a number of antecedents. I decided not to do a history of the 4-door hardtop, but just a survey of American production 4-door hardtops in the 1950s, as the title spells out.
Paul thank you for your courteous response.
“just a survey of American production 4-door hardtops in the 1950s, as the title spells out.”
Forgive me, but the first word mention of any ‘homeland qualifier’ emerges not in the title, but literally within Chrysler’s “Sedan-Sized’ advert.
One of the many facets I love about your wonderful site is that CC welcomes the wider world, albeit understandably from the American focus.
I’m sure this wasn’t attempted in your country, but a particular frustration of mine was seeing the false claim originally promulgated by SAAB itself, that their 99 model was “the world’s first turbocharged production car”. Elsewhere this misinformation was regurgitated for decades, beginning about 40 years ago, and continues to appear even in specialist publications (eg: UK’s Classic and Sports Cars, June 2023). In similar vein I couldn’t count how many times I’ve read that GM invented the Hardtop in 1949, full stop. Thanks again for all you do.
Tim, I appreciate all of our international readers but the reality is that 90+% of our readers are from the US or Canada. So the default here is American cars, unless otherwise stated. I like to keep titles short and concise, thus I do not put “American” in essentially any titles.
Realistically, it would look kind of silly to have “American” in the title of this post. I’m sorry if that comes off a bit provincial. It’s just practical.
It simply does not get better than a ‘Four Door Pillarless Hardtop’. So much better than the lesser more common two door hardtops and uniquely American.
A great article, but you might have added the 1965 to 1967 Chevrolet Corvair Sport Sedan (4 door hardtop) and perhaps the smallest 4 door hardtop ever built.
Loved this article, thanks for presenting it.
Another petite but pretty pillarless 4-door.
The title of the post is “The 1950s”. The Corvair is from the 1960s. Next time.
I wouldn’t say uniquely American. Although not often exported (most of the world only gets the pillared 4-door sedan) apparently the Japanese have a soft spot for the 4-door hardtop. They were rather popular in the Japanese home market and maybe they still are. There’s a gray market business in Salt Lake City that imports a fair number of them and resells them, right-hand drive and all.
Four-door hardtops were popular in Japan through the ’90s, although they eventually lost out to SUVs and more European-style sedans.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many gorgeous cars all in one post!
The 4-door hardtops I’ve owned (’58 Cadillac, ’62 Mercury Monterey) had less structural rigidity than the sedans. You could see the front door vibrating in its door jamb as you drove along the highway. If you put your hand up there, you could massage your fingertips while driving!
Bit of trivia: The 1958-60 Lincoln and Continental 4-door “sedans” were not sedans in the truest sense. They were slightly modified hardtops as this excerpt from the April 1960 Consumer Reports explains. It’s kind of interesting that Lincoln would offer both 4-door “sedans” and 4-door hardtops during these years. It would probably be hard to visually distinguish them when the windows were up.
At the end of that era Ford built exactly two (2) four door hardtop prototypes. I want to say this was for the 1973 model year.
I always wondered what happened to them….
In person the impression you get from a ’55 Buick is *bigness*. In a picture like that side view of the peach car with no context other than itself, it has the proportions of an Opel Rekord.
We had a ’56 Roadmaster sedan and a ’56 Holiday 88 in the extended family until the 80s, so I was familiar with how frumpy and fat-looking the sedan was in comparison, despite the full rear wheel opening. It was much more than a pillar removal. Not surprising that Cadillac went all-hardtop in ’57.
We also discovered in the 70s that driving the 88 with the front windows all the way down shattered them at the leading edge. There was a fair amount of window-rattling on bumps when all the way up. The seals were fabric-covered something, not soft rubber as in the 60s, and the glass had thick frames.
Who introduced non-framed side glass?
The white 58 Lincoln with the pink and gray dressed couple…..what’s that long black thing on it’s roof? Just seems odd.
Great article BTW!
Maybe I`m jumping the gun, but its interesting to see that the `65-`69 Corvair was the only 4 door hardtop that GM ever made.
I don’t understand your comment / statement….
“the ‘65-69’ Corvair was the only 4 door hardtop that GM ever made ?
GM built 4 door hardtops with Chevrolet badges for 20 years from 1956 through to 1976. Mainly on full size bodies.
Love 4 dr hardtops, my favorite body style, had/have 4 Olds versions, and have posted my ’69 Cutlass Holiday Sedan several times so will spare you here. Currently appraising a very low mile all original loaded to the gills mid-’70s Delta 88 Royale 4 dr hardtop, Olds had de-emphasized the Holiday Sedan moniker by then for some reason.
Never realized it before but wonder if the phantasmagorical ’58 Lincoln was the first to have lower rear fender “skegs” as Olds and Cads had a couple years later?
What a great collection! Especially for old guys who grew up seeing these when they were introduced. Love them all! Suddenly, it’s 1946! And Chrysler tried to build a two-door hardtop. Seven were built before the cost of production precluded continuing this model.
Four door hardtops are great cruising cars. Yes, most if not probably all, had less structural solidity than a corresponding pillared four door sedan, but they look so good with all the windows down! I had a ’57 and ’56 Cadillac four door hardtops and I think they are the perfect blend of practicality and “sporty-ness.” I can imagine that side impact protection was reduced. Thanks for all those beautiful photos, ’50’s cars were painted in such nice pastel colors. My favorite was the ’56 Chevy, a very attractive car that was affordable and attainable.
My experience of four door hardtops isn’t very smile inducing. The ones I have driven all seemed to vibrate and rattle much more than a comparable sedan. The two doors were better but not by much.
My uncle had a 1973 Sedan DeVille four door hardtop. When it hit a bump, you could see the whole car flexing!
Those 71-76 GM B/C bodies were particularly bad for flex.
This is true to an extent, GM called them something like the Torque-box frame and the were intentionally designed to flex. They were developed jointly by Olds and Buick then used by all 5 divisions, Olds having had expertise in the excellent ’61 perimeter body & frame, also designed to have some flex. It was all about ride.
My own experience is that the 71-73 B & C body cars seemed looser and more floppy than the last few years. Our ’75 DeVille and ’74 and ’76 98s (all my daily drivers) were much improved and quite acceptable compared to my friend’s ’71 DeVille… that thing the front fenders almost seemed to be wildly flapping over bumps… crazy.
Not sure but I believe that GM may have upped the gauge on the sills/rockers or floors to improve that characteristic at some point as the body was always intended to provide much of the torsional rigidity.
Unfortunately Dad, who could have told me, passed in ’03, he knew the gauges of all the sheet & galvanized steel sold to the Detroit big 3 + 1 from Sparrows Point, and many of their body engineers (he himself was a ME PE) as he was manager of that division of Bethlehem Steel from ’70 to ’83. Fisher Body was his biggest customer. He told me once that Chrysler was the last one to abandon heavy gauge sheet for new thinner high strength steel (GM in ’77).
Anyhow my own experience with the later C-bodies of this generation was that they were much improved in rigidity over earlier ones and entirely acceptable in rigidity, again all 4 dr hardtops. I’d love to ask a Fisher body engineer of that time about it.
The federal bumper standards probably forced them to stiffen the frames & bodies. The windows on Grandma’s ’72 Calais made noise against the rubber seals on bumps until someone told us about WD40. The rest of the body seemed okay.
Those 1958 Lincolns and Contis look like concept cars that made it all they way to production mostly untouched.
Thank you for the tour of these early 4d Hdtp cars. In my college years during the later ’80s, I was flipping through older cars as daily drivers, and a four door hardtop with fender skirts came on my bucket list.
The closest I got was a 1972 Pontiac Grandville. Wouldn’t you know it, the second of a two year hiatus for skirts on big Pontiacs. But, answering a classified ad for a 4d Hdtp, I didn’t know it was without skirts until I saw the car. In was in such good shape, I decided I couldn’t pass on it. I did enjoy lowering all the power windows in that car, but the reality of allergies meant the AC became more important than the pillarless experience.
Some people were 4d Hdtop people, our neighbors had three, possibly 4 consecutive Chevy hardtops. I can’t recall if the ’57 Bel-Air was a hardtop.
The only other 4d Hdtp on our street of 11 homes was a 1973 Chrysler New Yorker. Two came close in the form of pillared hardtop Oldsmobile Ninety-Eights from 1966 and 1970. A few, including my Dad, came close with pillared LTDs after Ford exited the true hardtop market after 1974.
I suppose the reality is that it is much easier to make a safer car with a B pillar than without. I’m not holding my breath for their return, but I do love the look of these cars!
My only memorable experience with a 4 door hardtop from the 50s was examining an elderly 55 or 56 Buick in the mid 70s. With the doors closed and the windows up, the front windows overlapped the rear windows by close to an inch at the top. I never saw whether it was rust or just long term frame sag.
I don’t have access to it at the moment, but I have seen a photo of a mock-up Studebaker built of the 1957 sedan. One side had the normal sedan styling while the other side was styled as a 4 door hardtop. I doubt it ever made it to something drivable, but it was quite attractive, with a very un-Stude-like roofline.
On the Rambler, somewhere I developed the idea that those 1956+ 4 door hardtops used a thin removable center pillar for making the windows seal. I have never seen an actual version, so can anyone say whether this is true?
The Rambler hardtops appear to use the same glass as the sedans, and on the hardtop there is a rather larger than normal bright metal vertical edge to cover the area between the windows where the pillar is on the sedans. But it’s attached to the window and goes down with it.
A collector friend of mine demonstrated how AMC’s solution works on this wife’s ’58 Rambler Super four-door hardtop. The stainless-steel U-shaped B-pillar filler piece is attached to the rear door window frame with small springs hidden inside. Below the beltline, the lower part of a shaped to follow a roller that urges the filler to slide over the window frame as the unit is lowered. He did mention the springs were weak on his wife’s Rambler windows, had to be helped a bit to assume their proper position when the window was back up.
I was floored by how simple and ingenious that solution to the problem was coming from AMC of all companies. Far more ingenious than the 1956 Mopar solution!
Aha; so that’s how it worked. Very clever. Thanks for cluing me in.
Paul, I found it interesting that you chose that particular black `58 Ambassador Custom 4dr. HT for this article. I recall this car was sadly stolen at a car show about a year or two ago. Never heard if the car was ever located, but hope it was. You can count all that remain of that HT model on one hand and remove a couple fingers! An extremely rare car today!! There is a `58 bronze Ambassador HT wagon known of, and it’s reported to be the ONLY one known left!
Found it
Aha! Looks quite nice but how on earth where they going to deal with the exposed area between the doors? A removable panel or window like the Kaiser Virginian? I can’t imagine how they could do it otherwise.
S-P was so broke they were never going to have to worry about how to make the rear windows function, no money left to tool a four-door hardtop.
Considering how poorly their 1957-’58 four-door station wagons sold, perhaps spending on a four-door hardtop would have been a better gambit.
Hardtop-ness has never been of particular interest to me, but this was fun to look at just to see most of the 1950’s full-sized cars shown in one post. What did catch my eye were the various rear wheel well opening shapes. I really like the circular Buicks; the Olds and Chevy don’t look particularly special, but the Cadillac shape seen on the ‘56 is very elegant. The ‘56 Ford shape is similar, but the detailing around it is awkward. A Ford will never be an Cadillac. The ‘58 Lincoln wheel wells are just weird … like the entire car.
The hardtop body style is a piece of history never to return. Crash regulations, high back seats and seat belts would ruin the whole look. Glad that I experienced them but time marches on.
i was among those impressed by this article. kinda wish there was a CC collated navigation table as good as Aaron’s ate up with motor site, because this kind of content deserves to be listed on some sort of easy to access category indexes like his articles have. perhaps a collaboration in that direction to include some of the sublime CC posts similar to this one on a link page at ate up…
As a 2 door coupe guy that calls out “door farm ” when i see 4 doors, I will give these a break as they were part of the history, just not what I’d want to own.
Cadillac from 57 on until the demise of all hardtops did offer a full-frame door glass model in the series 75 limo and sedans…no hardtops there.
This old guy thanks you for the trip back in time.
Thank you for this article! Probably my favorite bodystyle–no kidding. 2dr. hardtops of course are everyone’s favorites, but with a long line of 4dr. hardtops in my family they bring back many fun memories,
I noticed one of the rarest 4dr. HTs pictured was the `58 Rambler Ambassador–in partiuclar the black one shown is among maybe 2-3 (if that!) remaining today. Unfortunately, this same car was stolen at a car show a couple years back. My bet is, it’s overseas already in someone’s “collection”. I can only hope the owner got it back, but this was done by someone who knew exactly what this car was. It was nice to see it again here as a reminder of it. Always wished I saw that car in person to take in the beautiful restoration.
My bad. I forgot to say the 65-69 Corvairs were the only 4 door hardtop COMPACTS GM ever made.I stand corrected.
The major concept to understand with the four-door hardtop is that it is essentially a four-door convertible sedan body structure with a steel top attached.
Pre-war, the four-door convertible sedan body was the most difficult to engineer and build, required the most braces, gussets and strengthened frames plus multiple unique-to-the-body-style ancillary components. Along with the additional assembly labor made them the most expensive models catalogued.
Postwar carmakers did a very effective job of overcoming many of the prior limits of developing such a complex structure, making it affordable for the masses, albeit without the folding top.
Interesting article with great pictures.
I don’t have an issue with four door cars, as long as they are void of that sedan ‘B’ pillar. I have been driving since 1967, and avoided buying any 4-door sedan with the ‘B’ pillar. Four door sedans are for old people and I might be old but still young at heart.
Great uncle Leonard bought a used 56 Mercury Montclair Phaeton hardtop sedan. Near the rear windows was a “Phaeton” script. He would point to it and say “Look here, it’s a Phantom”!
LOVE the colors of these cars
Great story, Paul–thank you ! Though I was a high-school senior in the fall of ’59, and still an avid car-watcher and reader, I somehow missed the ’59 Eldorado Brougham–until now–with its next-generation fins and sublime simplicity. (“Why are the most expensive hats the plainest ?” “Madam, you pay for the *restraint* ! . . .”)
The tendency for the ad agencies to stretch/lower the images of autos under their care is quite noticeable here–a habit they seem to have cemented as the ‘fifties wore on ?
Absolutely loved the incredible photos of 4 door hardtops. Those from the 50s to 1964 were so very beautiful to me. My father had a 1956 Olds 98 hardtop that I loved – so much so that I still am crazy about the hardtop – and even more so the ‘’56 98 Starfire Convertible. Cannot tell you how much I love these posts. . I devour every one – whenever I receive it. Huge fan of all ‘50s cars.
Great article, I never realized there were so many 4 door hardtops back then. I’ve always liked the 55-57 Chevy, but only the 2 door models, however, the 56 chevy 4 door hardtop would be one I’d consider buying as well.
Good article. But let’s not forget when Cadillac introduced the 2dr. hard top in 1949 so did Buick and, Oldsmobile. In fact the hardtop from GM was inspired by the wife of a Buick Executive. She always drove convertibles but, never put the top down. In 1949 It was Cadillac Cup DeVille, Buick Riviera and, Oldsmobile Holiday sedan. In 55, 4dr hardtops came out. I still love the looks of 2dr hardtop. They where sometimes called hardtop convertible. The 1946 Chrysler hardtops was made for Chrysler executives.
That white on red 1956 Chevrolet BelAir hardtop is a vision forever seared into my memory. That was my father’s company car for the 56 model year, brought home one evening in the late fall of 1955 . . . . . and was promptly used to rush me to Mercy Hospital, unable to breathe with a temperature of about 105. Turns out I had lobar pneumonia, had passed out by the time we reached the hospital, and supposedly was pronounced dead at one point.
While I was a sickly kid until the age of nine (got my tonsils removed, took care of everything), this is the one illness I remember vividly including most of the ride to the hospital, laying in the back seat.