I know my appreciation for full-size, two-door, 1971-1973 GM hard tops defies reason, logic even. They're too long, wide and heavy. They don't handle particularly well, they're not especially powerful, inhale gas, shudder and shimmy, even the most expensive of them have interiors with the soul of a Tupperware bowl and they're sloppily assembled. Through my foggy goggles, though, the big brutes have a larger-than-life quality to them; there's an elan or "Hollywood" about them that's transcendental, cool and mysterious; were these really created by a team of mere mortals? Same goes for their "family-sized" convertibles. Above is a 1971 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe, looking magnificent even trimmed with a damn vinyl top.
Sadly, during my wretched wonder years, whether it was looming government roll-over regulations, that never came to fruition, '70's fashion trends or a combination of both, hard tops started disappearing, replaced by clumsy "colonnades" like this 1976 Chevrolet Caprice. Along with the five-MPH "safety bumpers", all that was alluring about hard tops of yore went out the proverbial opera window.
The term "hardtop" is oxymoronic since not all cars that aren't convertibles are "hardtops", technically anyway. In automobile vernacular, by definition, a hardtop is a vehicle with a fixed roof that lacks a center-post or pillar that emulates the look of a convertible with its top up. While somewhat stiffer than a convertible, "hard tops" are sheer fashion statements; the lack of a center post doing the vehicle's structural rigidity no favors. I liken my father's 1972 Cadillac Sedan deVille to having the backbone of a cardboard box. A soggy one too.
Hardtop styling dates as far back and the mid-nineteen-teens but General Motors spurred its popularity after World War II with their 1949 Buick Roadmaster Riviera (above), Oldsmobile 98 Holiday and Cadillac Coupe deVille. The motif that combined the open, airiness of a convertible with the "performance" of a fixed roof car trickled down to Pontiac and Chevrolet for 1950 and hard tops, pun not intended, took off.
Hard tops became so popular that by the mid-Fifties, every manufacturer not only had two-door hard tops, but four-door and even station wagon hard tops. The wagons, though, fell out of favor by the mid-Sixties, above is a 1961 Dodge Polara. Knowing how much a two-door hardtop can shimmy-shimmy, I can't imagine what a rattling soda can these things must have been. If not fresh out of the showroom, then eventually.
Although for years cars with center posts or pillars were sold alongside their hard top brethren, and were typically lower priced, for model-year 1974, the GM "C-body" Cadillac Coupe deVille, Buick Electra and Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight two-door hard tops were replaced by two-door sedans with a fixed, center post. Above, left is a frumpy and dumpy "colonnade" 1975 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight, to the right a 1973 Ninety Eight resplendent in hard top glory. The B-body, or shorter wheelbase version of the C-body, Pontiac Bonneville and Chevrolet Caprice (like our red '76 here) got a similar post "look"; perhaps a (misguided) notion to convey the exclusive new aesthetic of the tonier C-body's?
Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac offered a hybrid post\hardtop design on their 1974-1976 B-body LeSabre, 88 and Catalina, respectively; above is a 1975 Pontiac Catalina. While I applaud the effort, through my bifocals, the look doesn't work. It's far too fussy, there's too much going on especially dressed with a vinyl roof. Leave it to GM to even try such a thing and partially succeed in doing so. Ford tried something similar during this time and fell flat on their five-mile-per-hour safety bumpers.
Giving credit where credit is due, the funky dog legged roof on the B-O-P's (subjective) is most certainly more handsome than our dowdy Caprice here. Curiously, Chevrolet sold an "Impala Sport Coupe" in 1974 and 1975 that was a true "hard top". For 1976, the "Sport Coupe" was gone, buyers stuck with the only the box-on-box "Custom Coupe" or one of these if they opted for a full-size, Chevrolet two-door. These cars do have their fans, though. For more, read my soliloquy on "Glass House Donks".
There was never any clear-cut data gleamed that definitively found two- or four "post" sedans were safer in roll over than a hard top was. Again, "post" sedans were less expensive than hard tops, buyers literally paying more for less, and the same is true today. I found this "triple-red" Caprice on Facebook Marketplace recently for sale down in Nashville with a reasonable (I guess) $7,500 asking price. Just 76,000-miles on it too. If it was a 1971 or 1972 hardtop like the car featured in the video at the top, seeing the shape this is in, it would command two- to three-times as much. That makes me believe I'm not alone in my sentiments.
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