4 door convertibles?

[Capitalism, Ho!]

The most recent body I'm seeing is from 1975. Could we get some more modern 4 door convertibles?

[Arya]

I've never even heard of a four-door convertible, besides the Lincoln Continental? What's a modern example?

[Traceypup]

Caddilac Sedan Deville Convertible [dxsdcl7y7vn9x.cloudfront.net]

[Arya]

Originally posted by klutchfox:

Caddilac Sedan Deville Convertible [dxsdcl7y7vn9x.cloudfront.net]

Oh dear lord that's hideous!

[ssgtbaloo]

The Volkswagen Thing is the most recent one I remember. I suspect some of the four-door wranglers have soft tops, but I haven't checked.

[Just R.B.S]

They were some concept cars, or even a small amount of these like Chryslet 300C Herando (well, possibly the best one) and others, but there were no FULLY production cars with this body since VW Thing. On the other hand it's a game, where, to be honest, I'd appreciate a freedom to create modern variations of cars from the past.

[ssgtbaloo]

Are there any 4-door convertibles in the game (other than the 1955 Cadillac lookalike and the various SUVs with cloth tops)? I haven't stumbled across any. There used to be a few, produced by Lincoln and Cadillac, right up until the late '60s or early '70s.

[Traceypup]

Originally posted by ssgtbaloo:

Are there any 4-door convertibles in the game (other than the 1955 Cadillac lookalike and the various SUVs with cloth tops)? I haven't stumbled across any. There used to be a few, produced by Lincoln and Cadillac, right up until the late '60s or early '70s.

The full size sedan from '75 had a 4 door convertible, but it's a landaulet (rear seats only) and not a full convertible.

Roomy convertibles after that body are quite rare in the game to be honest, most models that have a convertible are quite small inside. It'd be nice to have a few more of the ~3.0M wheelbase sedans have a convertible option(and maybe a coupe) and more hardtop convertibles available as well, for some Bentley inspired luxury convertibles =P

[ssgtbaloo]

I've been reading up on the subject, and have found an article about this very subject[www.roadandtrack.com].

The relevant part:

" 'When you're doing a convertible, you're taking away a lot of structure,' Welburn says. 'When you make a four-door convertible, even more of the structure goes away, and the car would flex a lot.'

"This quandary is why sedans converted to convertibles are compromised. There are ways to deal with this structural flexing, but as Welburn notes, that would require adding a lot of weight to the car. 'Your fuel efficiency would really suffer tremendously,' he says. 'You could design it to meet all the regulations, but at the end of the day, after doing all of that, I think it would be a very, very heavy car—rather cumbersome.'

"In other words, the end result would be a gas-guzzling tank with the handling to match. So how did Lincoln and other carmakers pull it off a half century ago? Well, there weren't as many regulations for starters, and the engineering benchmarks were also much lower. 'You get in one of those older cars, and it's shocking,' Welburn says. 'It's a totally different world. That was the norm. Every other car handled like that.' "
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So any full-sized convertibles would probably be retired from production after the 1973 oil crisis hit. I'd bet that any contemporary 4-door convertibles* are SUVs with body-on-frame construction.

* The only one I can think of right now is the Jeep Wrangler.