Pillarless Hardtops

Pillarless Hardtops

Occasionally cars have a break between windows or doors, but have no supporting material in the space. These non-supporting breaks are not considered to be pillars, and are skipped for purposes of the alphabetical naming scheme. Often these vehicles are known as pillarless hardtops.

The other automotive usage of the term "hardtop" is a body style known as the hardtop convertible. A hardtop convertible is a fixed-roof model designed to look like a convertible with the top raised. While some early models retained side window frames and B-pillars, by the 1950s most were pillarless hardtops, omitting the B-pillar (the roof support behind the front doors) and configuring the window frames, if any, to retract with the glass when lowered. Some hardtops took the convertible look even further, including such details as simulating a convertible-top framework in the interior headliner and shaping the roof to resemble a raised canvas top. By the late 1960s such modifications were often superseded by a simple vinyl roof.

A pillarless hardtop is inherently less rigid than a pillared body, requiring extra underbody strength to prevent shake. Production hardtops commonly shared the frame or reinforced body structure of the contemporary convertible model, which was already reinforced to compensate for the lack of a fixed roof. With such a reinforced frame, a hardtop was stronger and stiffer than a convertible, but both weaker and (because of the reinforcements) heavier than a pillared body.

There were a variety of hardtop-like body styles dating back to at least the [[1920s]. Chrysler Corporation showed a pillarless Town and Country hardtop coupe as a concept vehicle in 1946, but the car never went into produciton. The trend-setter for mass-production hardtops was General Motors, which launched two-door, pillarless hardtops in 1949 as the Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Holiday, and Cadillac Coupe de Ville. They were purportedly inspired by the wife of a Buick executive who always drove convertibles, but never lowered the top. The hardtop became extremely popular in the 1950s, and by 1956 automakers offered hardtop coupés and four-door sedans in a particular model lineup. In 1957, the first four-door hardtop station wagon was introduced by Rambler and this type of body design was soon offered by other automakers.

Throughout the 1960s the two-door pillarless hardtop was by far the most popular body style in most lines where such a model was offered. Even on family vehicles like the Chevrolet Impala, the two-door hardtop regularly outsold four-door sedans.

The hardtop began to disappear along with convertibles in the mid-1970s, partly out of a concern that U.S. federal safety regulations would be difficult for pillarless models to pass. The ascendancy of monocoque construction also made the pillarless design less practical. Some models adopted modified roof styling, placing the B pillars behind tinted side window glass and painting or molding the outer side of each pillar in black to make them less visible, creating a hardtop look without actually omitting the pillar. Some mid to late 1970s models continued their previous two-door hardtop bodies, but with fixed rear windows or a variety of vinyl roof and opera window treatments. The U.S. industry's last true two-door and four-door hardtops were in the 1978 Chrysler Newport line.