Oct 14: Sad passing

1956 Chevrolet Bel Air

Great pic for a dreary, rainy day like today, but what I wanted to show was one of the 1st four door hardtops. Hardtop vs sedan? The difference is that the "hardtop" does away with the centre post leaving an airy feeling. This configuration debuted in the mid '50's and were usually on the more expensive models of any particular car. They looked better than the sedans as they used a better looking roof line (my opinion).

1976 Buick Park Avenue

Every car had to have have a model like this and eventually even the lowly Corvair included one. One of my favorite styles was the relatively rare hardtop station wagon like this beautiful 1960 Mercury below. Some family friends had a '59 Mercury Commuter wagon and it looked great.

Sadly they slowly went away with the last ones being (I believe) the 1978 Chrysler products like this New Yorker.........

Why were they dropped? Probably the advent of air conditioning helped to bury them, as well as the safety czars who felt that with no centre post there was less rollover protection  -  they said the same thing about convertibles and look what happened to them. Recently, Mercedes has brought this style back with their two doors, but no news of any 4 door on the horizon.

I remember when my folks bought a new for 1966 Chevelle Malibu four door hardtop  -  immediately drove it around the neighbourhood with all the windows down in very cold but sunny weather. "Hey look what we just got!".

Ah, the good old days.

Until next time........