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Used to be no one would touch a fordor


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The kids in there 20's and 30's call them a more door now. They love them because they are cheap and they still get to play . Most of these kids only were around the sports cars that had two doors. If you think about what has been an option for 2 door cars in the last 20 years. Mostly econo cars and sport type cars. Even most trucks have more than 2 doors now.

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Mark I was looking at the Orange 4 door 32 Ford at the Detroit Autoama , man that car is very nice. No B Pillar . When the doors are open up it is something . Funny most of the Magazine picture mention this but do not show a good photo of it with the doors opened up.Just remember these are the same people that put a picture across the center of a Magazine, the biggest no no in layout design.

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I think that as modelers and car collectors age into Boomer years, they're more interested in the kinds of cars they grew up with in their families. Same goes for station wagons. You can see a growing interest at Mecum and Barrett-Jackson auctions for nicely done 4-doors and wagons, though not exactly a groundswell. Old pickups are really experiencing a resurgence of interest.

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You can still find lots of steel original 4 door cars. No one wanted them until now. If you find a steel '20s-'40s car, it's in the $10k range if it's a complete car but completely rusted out. I can find 4 door cars any day of the week for $15K completely finished (not riddler finished, but nice)

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Time was, 4-door body styles were little more than "parts cars" when it seemed that all any rodder or restorer wanted was a roadster, touring car, perhaps a coupe. Finally, the increasing scarcity of those popular and sporty body styles pretty much forced newer entrants into the hobbies of street rodding and restoration to look for good, solid examples of other body styles.

Art

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I still think the rise of 4-doors in general, is partially because of things like car seats for kids. It's a pain to install both the seat and the kid in the backseat of a 2-door car. When car seats became a requirement for carrying young children, fewer people bought 2-doors. And there are a lot of guys in the hobby now days taking their kids or grandkids with them in their collector car. 4-doors makes that a lot easier.

In the old days when I was a kid, and we weren't buckled up, much less in a car seats. People like my parents bought 2-door cars back then because they felt their kids were safer with only 2 front doors. No back doors for the kids to play around with and/or to fall out of the car with.

Scott

Edited by unclescott58
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I can't wait to get started on some more Quadraportes. I have an Infiniti J30, a Lexus GS400 (or whatever the toyota version of that is), a Nissan Cefiro is on my list of cars to get as well as a Q45. VIP cars are quite popular right now in the import scene and they aren't VIP if they aren't 4doors.

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You can still find lots of steel original 4 door cars. No one wanted them until now. If you find a steel '20s-'40s car, it's in the $10k range if it's a complete car but completely rusted out. I can find 4 door cars any day of the week for $15K completely finished (not riddler finished, but nice)

For starters, in the 1920's there were virtually NO all steel 4dr sedans--for that matter, very few all-steel car bodies period. That was still the era of "composite body construction", meaning sheet metal panels attached to a wooden structure, with closed body styles having wooden bows across an opening, covered with a layer of chicken wire (yes, CHICKEN WIRE), a layer of cotton batting (same thing as a cotton mattress pad), and a rubberized canvas cover over that.

While a roadster, coupe, or even a 2-dr sedan body of that era could be fairly lightweight, even rather sturdy (except in a serious collision), 4dr sedans were much heavier, and their bodies tended to flex badly over time--and in a crash, they often simply disintegrated into wadded up sheet metal and a pile of splinters.

Even all steel 4dr sedans, which came about in the middle 1930's were significanly heavier than their 2-dr stablemates, which probably discouraged many hot rodders for a few decades more.

Art

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