Most other Japanese manufacturers never had true hardtops but they did market cars with a discrete center post and frame-less door windows. Unfortunately, these cars were never marketed in North America. Nissan even had 4 door hardtop versions of it’s Gloria which were made until the early nineties. While both Ford and GM had been slowly phasing out this feature from their cars starting in the early seventies, The Japanese manufacturers began to catch on and introduced many hardtop coupes. In 1955, a record-selling year for Buick was the year when Buick introduced 4 door hardtops (along with Oldsmobile who sold in less significant numbers that year). Buick, my favorite car brand pioneered both styles as it was the first GM division to offer a hardtop on the ’49 Roadmaster but that was soon followed by Cadillac and Olds later that year. And I always admired the cars that had no center posts. I was born in 1977, the year that GM, (who was the first to market both two door hardtops in 1949 and 4 door hardtops in 1955) stopped to make them. After a short three-year run, the Vigor was history, to be replaced by the better-received Acura TL. The 3 Series and the ES300 bracketed that segment perfectly, leaving no room for a hybrid of the two in the middle. It wasn’t as roomy, comfy and “premium” feeling as the Lexus, and it just didn’t click with the BMW crowd. Which is how some reviews at the time felt about it. Time to jump in indeed.īut the Vigor’s assault on this lucrative bot hotly contested segment of the market did anything but live up to its name. And of course, Lexus was making hay with its ES300. It has a five cylinder engine mounted longitudinally.Īnd with its transmission mounted (somewhere) below the engine, the five cylinder, essentially an Accord engine with an extra cylinder and a balance shaft, was able to sit quite far back in the engine compartment, resulting in near 50/50 weight distribution.Īnyway, it was thought that Acura could put the Vigor to use, slotting it between the pocket-rocket Integra and big Legend a way to compete with the BMW 3 Series, with a lower price tag. (the Japanese domestic market is a bit complicated). The Vigor was closely related to the V6 engined Legend (gen 2), and was the third generation of Vigor in Japan, developed largely to sell in the Honda Verno dealerships, unlike the Legend, which was sold in Honda Clio dealerships. Perhaps the most effective exponent of the faux-hardtop school sent stateside was the Acura Vigor, also known as the Honda Vigor in Japan, from where it made its very brief and ill-fated excursion to the land of hardtop inventors. No one took up the theme more fervently than Subaru, although they’ve dropped their frameless doors recently too. Some were genuine pillarless hardtops, but the hardtop “look” swept the industry, with frameless glass and narrow B pillars as well concealed as possible. And we touched on how the Japanese adopted the four door hardtop as the orphan that Detroit tossed aside. ( first posted ) A little while back, we took a hard look at hardtops, including the last affordable genuine hardtop sold in the US.
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