Talk:Hardtop
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Hi everybody,
great article, thanxalot. But it makes hungry for more.
Human beings are far from functioning according to rational criteria only. So, I am happy that my regular usage of public transport vehicles (anyone interested in a great, comfortable system should visit Vienna) matches my convictions regarding environment protection. But I must confess the more decisive reasons are (a) cars cost more and (b) watching people is more entertaining than rush hours' stop-and-go boredom while facing red traffic lights.
Otherwise, I'd sure own a car. Or several. Four-door, notchback. For I don't regard it the best purpose of backseats to serve merely as luggage or coats rag - and if there are passengers in the rear, they shold be able to get in and out comfortably, also not bothering those in front who in two-door-cars must get out of the way each time. And I like neither the unwelcome draft nor things happening closely behind me I can't even watch, like I may experience as passenger - especially on a back seat - in a hatchback vehicle. Wagons may be different, but a passenger car is a passenger car, not a luggage transporter with human load being tolerated. Besides, it may be somewhat conservative, but with few exceptions a notchback sedan's side silhouette is the most elegant.
Still, four doors wouldn't be my only wish. Another, not that very urgent - but less rational, and much harder to fulfill - is a hardtop design. I insist in being able to keep draft off, and other weather phenomena, too (rain may be nice from behind a protecting windshield and roof or, if it's not too heavy and there's little to no wind, from under an umbrella, sun's nice if there's cool shadow, too) - thus I don't estimate convertibles. And understand the habits of the woman who, driving with canvas roof closed but windows open, inspired the hardtop design. The result is (well, to some extent, the illusion of) stability combined with the chance to freely chose any variation between a solidly closed room (offering some panorama-view impression) and sort of a most comfortable rolling loggia.
Result: my top dreamcars are four-door hardtop sedans. Luckily, the design of the era when most of them were built is precisely that of the car design styles I like most. The hardtop article is the most informative I ever discovered, thanks to all who contributed - yet, it leaves a few special questions unanswered. Perhaps you can add the answers.
(1) Draft. Most car-door windows easily can keep draft off, thanks not only to rubberlips which just touch the glass edges, but to frames (with additional rubber) on both the inside and outside. But how about inevitably frameless windows in convertibles and hardtop cars - are those veicles not recommendable for anyone with a higher risk of rheumatic syndromes? How tight can a closed four-door hardtop really be?
(2) Rear doors of pillarless cars. Their hinges have to be fixed somewhere - but that something lacks the additionally stabilizing connection to the roof frame, it has to keep standing solidly and untwisted for decades, on something not much larger than the palm of a hand. Are there known distortion problems?
(3) Absolute pillarlessness - no semi-pillars left at all. This, of course, is possible only in cars with suicide rear doors. Not like the famous edgy, carlength-eaves-gutty-characterized 1961-1969 Lincoln Continental: its 4-door-convertible version has a semi-mid-pillar on each side, hidden by the doors' bodies, and the 4-door sedan has even a full mid-pillar, its upper half covered with chrome-plated, elegantly slim masks. But like the '57-'58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, or the Mazda RX-8. Are there (attempts of) techniques for proper weather strips and for pillarless doorlocks, so any combination of open(ing) and closed/closing doors is possible? Or do in this case always the rear doors have to be opened last and closed first?
(4) Suicide rear doors with frameless windows. Are there any (except for 1960s Lincoln convertibles)? If so, then only with frames fixed to the glass, thus being rolled down and making the car a suicide door hardtop model, like the '57 Eldorado Brougham? Or even with edge-to-edge pure glass windows, no protective material added - or would that mean a too big risk of glass-to-glass crashes?
Most curiously expecting even more thrilling informations ;-) Joe (joeditt 12:11, 1 July 2007, UTC)
- (Responding to #1 'Draft') I have a MINI Cooper convertible (you can see a photo of it at the top of the MINI (BMW) page. It's only a two-door - but in this case, (as you'll see) it doesn't matter. Whilst it has a frameless door, there are rubber seals and a solid steel rail built into the roof mechanism for the window to seal against - so it's no different from a regular car door with a frame. In fact, even the hardtop MINI has a frameless door. The 'gotcha' is that when you pull on the door handle to open the door, the electric window winder has to very rapidly drop the window a quarter of an inch or so in order that it will clear the frame when you open the door - and move it up the last quarter inch to seal it when you shut the door. That works just fine most of the time - but (as a few people have found), if the winder motor or it's voltage regulator craps out, you can still open the door (the window kinda pushes past the rubber strip) - but when you slam the door shut again, you typically smash the glass! I've heard of mechanics doing this by mistake when they tried to close the door with the car's battery disconnected! But you don't have to worry about drafts. They seal identically well to framed doors on both the hardtop and the convertible. The MINI convertible has back-seat windows that go up and down too - these are also frameless and have a thin, fairly hard rubber weather seal attached to the outside of the front edge of the glass that ensures that the front edge of the back window seals up against the back edge of the front window. The back windows move slightly towards the rear and center of the car as they retract downwards so that they first unseal the rubber - then retract downwards. The rear windows have to retract in order for the electric roof mechanism to fold the roof down properly without hitting them. All of this window sealing and unsealing, opening and closing again happens at the touch of one button when opening or closing the roof. It's an elegant piece of engineering - a work of art - and it works very nicely! SteveBaker 17:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Steve, for your very detailed answer - sorry for my reply's delay.
Now, all you others (hello-o, anybody there???), how about questions 2, 3 and 4? I'll stay around for the next ... few decades, or so. ;-) -- joeditt (talk) 19:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- Here's a few more you haven't got:
- one pillarless hardtop saloon, the Facel Vega Excellence which had suicide doors and frameless windows - I don't know about the details. It had structural problems - the structure tended to bend, so that over time the door latches got worn and the doors occasionally came open in sharp corners!
- a few saloons built like the RX-8 - Lancia designs from the 1930s to the 1950s. The Aprilia, Ardea, Appia and Aurelia, and also (by the look of the picture on its page) the Astura. These had separate door-handles for the rear doors, visible from the outside - so I guess you could probably open the rear doors without the front.
- one series of saloons that seem to have glass going onto glass - the Sunbeam-Talbot 2-litre, then the Sunbeam-Talbot 90, then the Sunbeam MkIII. These have the glass in the rear door overlapping with the window behind. Again, I don't know whether there was some sort of seal between the panes - and of course, the window behind wouldn't open, so that's one less difficulty.
- and a coupe rather like the RX-8 - the 1999-2002 Saturn SC. This had the suicide door arrangement on the right-hand side only.
- Hope this is helpful towards (3) and (4)! AJHW (talk) 20:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanxalot! Now I know which pictures to search for to endlessly gaze at, until I get rectangle-shaped eyes with their white turning red and eventually ... wake up with the keyboard pattern imprinted into my forehead. Oooh. -- joeditt (talk) 19:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
