MrObsessive

Amen Brother! It's the very reason I refuse to buy a 4 door car today. The gymnastics someone our size has to do to get in and out is waaaaaaaaay too annoying. Throw in the vision blocking way too thick B pillars....and driving itself becomes torture!. I struck kind of a compromise when I bought my Saturn coupe.............semi 4 door, but the front doors are long enough where the rear door pillar isn't blocking my peripheral vision.

Here Here!! I've been waiting for GM to reintroduce a true hardtop coupe ever since they quit making them in the '70's! Now if they can pass the rollover and side impact standards let's see the return of a FOUR DOOR hardtop!!

Okay..........I thought I read somewhere that Volvo had engineered a side impact system that worked like an airbag but come out of the top of the doors. I remember the pic I had seen was in a pillarless car. I dunno..............one of the main reasons I dislike 4 doors is because of that vision blocking pillar! I'm 6'3", and I have to have the seat as far back as it'll go. That side pillar blocks my left peripheral vision as well as when I'm at an intersection and trying to see traffic coming on the right. Yeah I could move my head around......sure......but it's still annoying just the same, and makes a lot of cars look so ungainly. I drive a Saturn Quad Coupe which Saturn considers a "hardtop" but it too has the pillar when the doors are shut. At least the doors are long enough, thus the pillar is far back enough that it doesn't block my view.

It should...........Mercedes has intro'd a new CL coupe for 2007 and I'm sure they figured on the new standards while they were designing it. What I'd like to see is the return of the 4 door hardtop! I figure if they can put pop up rollover bars in convertibles, why not into 4 doors for rollover protection?

Make that a HARDTOP coupe and all will be right with the world!

We can only hope! It looks that way to me too..............I like this styling feature and I'd like to see it as some kind of trademark for Saturn.

Hmmmm.........Why can't good 'ol american style be the mainstream?? I think that's a direction that has been lost for waaaaay too long now. Case in point is the Chrysler 300.........while not mainstream as far as Camry standards are concerned, the car sells like gangbusters! Believe you me, had GM done something like this before Chrysler, we may not even be having this discussion now. True, FWD has its place among smaller cars, but must everything have been FWD for the past 20 odd years including full size cars?? Ford seems to have gotten the message with the Fusion (though FWD) which is mainstream, but still has an american style to it. BTW, to illustrate how great the American auto industry once was...............for 1965, the Big 3 had ALL NEW bodystyles for their full size lineup-----meaning the full size line was totally redesigned from the 1964 line. When's the last time we've seen that?? Now they want to hang on to the same ugly body style for 6-7 models years! The current Monte Carlo comes to mind.