Two-Door vs. Four-Door Cars – The Long-Running War Between Germany And France

Once upon a time cars in Europe reflected the cultural traits of their country of origin unlike today, when they all look mostly the same. The most pronounced of these was the very distinct preference for two-door cars and station wagons in Germany versus the utter anathema for them in France. Until the 1970s, the French just wouldn’t touch a small two-door sedan or wagon and the Germans largely shunned four-door sedans and wagons, except of course the more expensive large cars like Mercedes.

Is there a national-psyche analyst out there willing to explain this?

Apparently not, so I guess I’ll have to give it a shot. One of the first questions an analyst asks is: How long has this been going on? I was curious, so I went back pretty far, all the way to the 1920s.

The first really popular car in this class in Germany was the Opel 4 PS “Laubfrosh” (“tree frog”, above), built from 1924 to 1931, which made Opel the largest car manufacturer in Germany as well as all of continental Europe, a title it would keep until the rise of VW after the war. It looks a lot like a slightly shrunken Chevrolet of the times, built only in 2-door form, open or a closed sedan.

Ford’s first new car specifically for Europe was the 1933 Model Y, designed specifically for the UK but it was soon built at Ford’s German Cologne plant. The UK version was available as a four door sedan, but not so the German version (above). And as best as I can tell from limited information, only two-door sedan versions of the larger Ford Model A, B and V8 were assembled and sold in Germany.

The FWD DKW  was consistently a top seller in Germany in the prewar era, and like its two-stroke engine came only in two-door variants, including a delivery van. Unlike in the US, there were essentially no station wagons in Germany at the time.

Although Mercedes sedans did typically come as four doors due to their wide use as taxis, commercial vehicles and the fact that even many private owners had chauffeurs, when they decided to build a smaller rear engine car—the 130H and subsequent 170H—it was only as a two-door sedan.

 

Not surprisingly, the popular Opel Kadett (1937-1940) was also strictly a two-door.

When the Russians took the tooling for the Kadett to build a badly needed mass-market car back home in the form of the Moskvitch 400/420, they insisted on turning it into a four door sedan. Update: a comment was left states that according to Opel Archives, a four door sedan was available in the last two years, but all of the remaining images are of two-doors.

It’s a given that Hitler’s Volkswagen, named KdF Wagen, was always going to be and only be a 2-door sedan (and cabriolet). Not that a moment’s thought was ever given to it being a four door, but Porsche was under tremendous pressure to meet its Hitler-mandated low price. And all the other “Volkswagen” concepts and production cars by other marques were all two-doors.

Of course the military derivative of the VW, the Kübelwagen, did get a four door body, perhaps a reflection of the priorities of the times. And yes, it was vastly more comfortable to ride in with its roomy interior, four doors and fully independent suspension than the gnarly Jeep.

After the war, VW never gave a four door sedan even a moment’s thought, if for no other reason than it could not keep up with the ever-growing demand for the Beetle. Realistically, it would have required a longer wheelbase too. That was left to the coach builder Rometsch, who did build 4-door VWs specifically for the taxi market. VW would not build a four door sedan until the 1969 model year with the significantly larger 411.

I could of course find more prewar examples, but it’s quite apparent that Germany had decided that the two-door format was the suitable one for its relatively more affordable sedans before the war. Teutonic pragmaticism? A two door is of course cheaper to make. A display of Germanic dominance, in making passengers climb in through the front door? If so, it makes this picture of Hitler in the rear seat of the 1938 KdF cabriolet prototype all the more remarkable. Is he looking at the lack of leg room back there? Maybe Hitler had a Dom/Sub thing going on?

When VW introduced its first new post-Beetle Type 3, did they not even consider a four door sedan? It would appear not. We know what Germans like, and the rest of the world will just have to suck it up!

Except in Brazil, that is, where the similar-size VW 1600 very much did have four doors, due to what the market demanded there for a car in its class.

How did the French feel about the Volkswagen? Maybe better not ask, although the Beetle did sell there in some quantities; I see two in this vintage shot. The VW had other qualities beside its two doors that made it pretty compelling, at least to two French owners.

Ford Germany’s first four door sedan finally arrived in 1957, with the Taunus 17M P2. But it sold in drastically smaller numbers than the two door.

Coincidentally that year was the same one when the popular Opel Rekord got its first four door sedan version. These were very common in my childhood but all I see in my mind’s eye is the two-door sedan. And of course the wagons were strictly two-doors. The significantly larger Opel Kapitan, Admiral and Diplomat were strictly four-doors, as they were heavily used as taxis, corporate transport and such.

One of the most commonly stated reasons was that Germans liked two doors because they were worried about children falling out the rear doors? I think not, as it was really quite rare for private families to afford a car, and even if they did, to drive much with them. It’s not like anyone drove their kids to school or lessons back then. A young family owning a proper car was more an ideal than a reality at the time. And can one really suggest that Germans were more protective of their children back then than the French or other countries?

I really can’t answer why this was so; calling Drs. Freud and Jung!

I’m not well qualified to dig deeply in the history of relatively affordable French sedans in the pre-war era, but let’s give it a shot. Clearly the really cheaper ones, like the Citroen Type C 5HP, the first French “Model T”, were simply too short to support a four door version. This was common with this class of light European cars, like the Austin 7 and such, given their conventional front-engine, RWD configuration.

I had to do some digging to try to find some relatively low-priced French four-door sedans from the pre-war era. I did find written documentation that Rosengart stretched their 747cc Austin Seven based LR2 in 1930 to make it a true four seater and that in 1931, a four door body style was offered. But Google Images could not find one; the best it could do was this somewhat larger 1097 cc LR6 sedan.

I did find this 1085cc 1929 Peugeot 201. This was Peugeot’s lowest priced car, but no two door sedan version was offered. This is hardly a fluke; it is indicative of a very clear preference, or even a requirement for success.

There’s also this Mathis TY, from 1933, with 1445 cc displacement. Again, four doors for the win.

And there’s also this Renault Celtaquatre sedan from the mid-1930s. These and the more common Citroen TA only came as four doors in the sedan versions. As did apparently pretty much all French sedans except apparently just the tiny Austin Seven-based Rosengart or possibly some obscure other really tiny ones.

So why did the French so strongly prefer, or even demand four door sedans? Is it because they are more sociable? Or have socialistic tendencies? Less concerned about the higher costs? Or were less protective of their kids? I’ll take my stab at it at the end of this article.

If there was ever any doubt about the French demanding four doors on even their lowliest cars, the Citroen 2CV puts them to rest. Conceived in the late 1930s as a genuine “people’s car” it reflects the numerous cultural, geographic and other differences from the German VW. The 2CV’s brief was to place comfort above all other qualities, given the very poor state of France’s roads at the time. Whereas the VW’s brief was to be able to cruise on the autobahn at 100 kmh (61 mph), the 2CV arrived with all of 375 cc and 9 hp, good for not much more than 50 kmh (31 mph). But it was eminently comfortable, with its remarkable ultralong travel suspension and of course four doors.

I think it’s safe to say that the 2CV embodies most perfectly what the French placed so highly: comfort above all else. And four doors are clearly more comfortable. And one can find other expressions of the love of comfort throughout the French experience.

So it certainly isn’t surprising that Renault built their new small rear-engine post-war car, the 4CV, with four doors. It spawned a long line of similar format cars all the way through the R10, which ended production in France in 1971.

Panhard’s new FWD small postwar car, the Dyna X, was of course a four door too. It too was the precursor to a long line of Panhard sedans, all with two cylinder boxer engines. Is this another French cultural trait, two cylinder cars with four doors? And of course FWD!  There were two-door coupes and cabrio versions of many French cars, but they were targeted at a different and significantly more expensive market.

Speaking of Panhard, they did build what appears to be the one main exception, in terms of a two-door sedan. This is their lovely 24 B (Berline), clearly a proper two-door sedan (or saloon) as there ever was. But…this was built under duress, not because Panhard actually wanted to create it. Panhard’s then-owners and overlords, Citroen, had vetoed a new four door sedan and wagon because they felt it would be too competitive against their own DS/ID range of cars (full story here).

So the best Panhard could do was to stretch the equally lovely (lovelier?) 24 CT Coupe (above) by 25cm and increase rear seat legroom to make it a legitimate sedan. That’s not how two-door sedans are normally created, but then these Panhard 24s are not normal cars; quite exceptional, in more ways than one.

Let’s talk about station wagons, as the same cultural preferences regarding the number of doors were fully on display there too. This in part reflects the different roles these body styles played in Germany and France. In Germany, this body style (here a Hansa 1100) was called “kombi”, short for kombinationswagen, or a vehicle that can be converted between multiple roles. Meaning, it was a vehicle intended to be used commercially by contractors, tradespeople, farmers, store owners and such but could then also be converted to take the family out on a drive into the country on Sunday.

But unless one needed this commercial/hauling function during the work week, nobody bought a kombi in Germany back then as a regular family vehicle; that would come a few decades later. Unlike in the US, where the station wagon was the hot new family body style, kombis had a very lowly image in Germany and other parts of Europe back then.

And invariably, German factory-production kombis were two-doors, like this DKW.

This included the largest production station wagons made back then, like this Opel Rekord, which was available only as a two-door wagon through 1966. Although four door sedan versions of the larger Opels had been available for some time, their share of the retail market was very low, bought mainly by taxi operators and other commercial users.

When VW introduced it all-new large 411 in 1968, there was both a two and four door sedan. But the wagon? No; two doors it was, and only two doors. By this time Opel and Ford had already begun offering four door wagons.

It’s not like VW couldn’t easily have used the doors from the four door sedan version to make a four door wagon version. What was VW clinging to?

No, this was not the way to have built a four-door 411 wagon, as another automotive site recently extolled. You need to use the shorter front doors from the 4-door sedan. This rear door extends too far back and it’s way too short for proper ingress and egress. But then this author has a tendency to be a bit…? Well, let’s just say he also argued that the single-speed “transmission” (actually a final drive reduction gear) in EVs is actually “a manual transmission”.  I digress…

This two-door wagon obsession also applied to the DKW F103 and its subsequent evolution as the Audi 60 through Super 90. Four door sedans were available, but no wagons, called the Variant, a term commonly used by VW. And no, there was no wagon in the larger Audi 100 C1 line; that wouldn’t happen until 1983, more on that later. This of course would finally change with the coming of the Audi 80 (Fox) and subsequent VW Passat (Dasher).

And no, Mercedes did not build any station wagons for some years to come (1978), when wagons were ready be accepted and even cool in Germany. This custom built (by Binz) 1956 300c wagon was ordered by a wealthy American socialite. This would have been absolute anathema in Germany.

And it is unnecessary to point out that Mercedes never built a two-door sedan after the war, as their low-end sedans were of course the favored taxis for so many decades.

Iit might also be useful to point out that unlike in the US and France, station wagons were not designed as people haulers; the VW bus and Kombi (and other similar sized compact but roomy vans) served that purpose admirably. There was just no market for large wagons.

France went a quite different way, building large four door station wagons that were often built on extended chassis like the long line of Peugeot RWD wagons starting with the 403 above. These typically came in two versions, the break had two rows of seats, with the rear one that folded down, targeting commercial hauling uses, and the familiale, which had three rows of (commonly fixed) seats for people hauling purposes.

Given their unique chassis, these Peugeot wagons were more akin to the American Chevy Suburban and International Travelall than the typical passenger car-based American station wagons.

Of course it wasn’t just Peugeot; Citroen made what was undoubtedly the ultimate station wagons, especially in the CX Familiale. The French preferred to ride in this to their resort or such than in a lowly VW bus.

Renault’s influential very compact R4 obviously had not only four doors, but with its hatchback it was a key pioneer as a crossover between sedans and wagons. It embodied a highly functional body type that would lead to the hugely common hatchbacks.

Like so many things in the early 1970s, the German – French two-four door culture war started to crack. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Renault that went first, with their two-door hatchback R5 in 1972. It wasn’t quite the first “supermini”, having been beaten to that title by the 1969 Autobianchi A112 and the 1971 Fiat 127, but neither of those had a hatch initially, so the R5 really did set the pattern. Why only two doors? A new young generation of car buyers were entering the market and as cars became more affordable and common in Europe, rear seats became relatively less important, especially for a young couple or single person.

The R5 did become available as a four (five) door hatchback in 1979, but it never sold nearly as well as the two-door.

And just a couple of years later, VW also threw out the old formula by offering their brand new 1975 Golf/Rabbit in both two and four door versions. Just like the R5, this was a true milestone car on so many levels, but in this case because it broke the grip that two-doors had on Germans. In fact, the four door Golf became the best selling version in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) as the four door hatchback suddenly lost any negative connotations, even for sporty cars.

The Mk2 Golf GTI even became available as a four door. What brought about this image change in perception about four doors in Germany?

The BMW Neue Klasse that appeared in 1962 only came as four door sedans, but had a decided sporty flair across the line. They quickly spawned a line of high performance versions, like the 1800Ti that became a favorite of a largely new genre of sporty sedans. Although the smaller and even more popular 02 series came only as two doors, the four door 5 Series essentially defined the modern sporty sedan, with zero negative image as a consequence. Old ideas about two and four doors were quickly crumbling, and of course two door passenger cars are now relegated to a very small segment of the already small compact/subcompact market.

This might be a good place to see just what were the last two-door sedans and wagons in Germany, a (very long) exercise we did for American two-door sedans here. The Opel Rekord E1 was the last to offer a two-door sedan, ending in 1982.

Rather surprisingly, although the two door sedan was dropped in the subsequent E2 series, the two door wagon (and panel van) was still listed as late as 1986, although the only photo I could find was this factory shot.

Coincidentally, Ford Germany’s last real two door sedan was also in 1982, the Taunus TC3. Ford had dropped the two-door wagon version some years earlier.

But the true German 2-door sedan laggard was the E30 BMW 3-Series, built all the way into 1994 (1991 in the US). So it was the ultimate two-door sedan as well as driving machine, having carved out a rather unique and very successful niche of its own. Subsequent generations were true coupes, with unique roof lines.

Just to be clear, there were four door sedan versions of many of these Opels, Fords and later also the BMW E30. For instance, the Opel Kadett B got one in 1966, but the key issue here is that the four door variants were primarily built for export, as other countries (especially France) were not nearly as enamored or even accepting of two door sedans and wagons as the Germans were. But good look finding survivors in Germany; they were and are very rare.

And by export, I don’t mean the US, as they were even rarer here. It’s important to remember that most smaller imports in the US were entry-level cars unlike in Europe, and as such the market for them was very price sensitive. The VW long defined that segment and any competitor that couldn’t compete with it on price was likely doomed. And Americans who bought these low-end imports didn’t generally have families, so two-doors it was, with very rare exceptions.

The German station wagon’s workman image got a major make-over in the late 1970s, when Mercedes threw in the towel and started building the W123 T series in 1978, (The “T” for Tourismus und Transport). I’m not sure just how quickly it caught on with retail buyers in Germany, but it was an instant hit in the US as the ultimate Yuppie mommie-mobile.

But the real station wagon image breakthrough in Germany came in 1983, with the Audi 100 (C3) Avant. With its steeply sloped rear hatch, it was very clearly positioned as a lifestyle car and not as a practical cargo or people hauler. Mercedes had a rather stodgy image in Germany, and the T Series didn’t really change that much. But Audi had a more youthful image and the Avant really propelled that forward. It initiated a huge swing in the wagon’s image: within a decade or so, wagons would handily outsell sedans across all brands and sizes in Germany, with sedans being seen as dull old men’s cars.

It took a bit longer for BMW to get on the new station wagon paradigm shift, with the 3 Series (E30) getting the Touring in 1987 and the 5 Series (E34) finally getting its in 1992. But the German market was by then well on its way towards shunning almost all things two-door.

So who won the war of the doors? The French, obviously. VW doesn’t build a single two-door anymore, including the Golf GTI (above) and the smaller Polo. The two door is officially dead in Germany! And not just in Germany.

Having pioneered the two-door hatchback supermini format, France adopted it with a vengeance. Think Renault Twingo, Peugeot 205, Citroen AX and Saxo, and their successors. But they all migrated to the four door body, including the very new R5 EV. Its rear doors may be well disguised, but they’re simply too practical to give up and they’ve become mandatory. And they’re not just for passengers; unloading a big haul from the hypermart or IKEA is just much easier. The two door is dead, except for the very few sporty coupes left. Have I missed someone? Probably, but it’s likely an outlier.

It should be noted that Germany and France were the two extremes in this battle of the doors. From what I’ve been able to pick up, the low countries (The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) tended to favor two door cars too, at least in relative terms. Italy and the UK were somewhere in between, fully accepting two doors in the small/smallest sizes but preferring four-doors as the sizes became larger, with a fair bit of overlap in between. In Austria in the ’50s when I was still there, it really depended on the country of origin of the cars. The two most popular mid-priced ones being the two-door VW and the four door Fiat 1100.

What’s undeniable is that France led the way with the universal adoption of the four door car. How to account for that? Easy. Has France not been the global fashion leader for a very long time? What’s harder to understand is why the Germans clung almost neurotically to the two-doors for so long. I think we really do need a psychoanalyst for that.

 

Related CC reading:
The Two Door Sedan (1920-2010) – Its Origins and the Last 2-Door Sedan For Each American Brand and Model by me

Automotive History: The Short And Odd Life Of The Two Door Station Wagon by me