The only reason I could think of is that it is possibly safer…? instead of a door with parts and prolly lots of wires and such… to a more impact worthy car side.
Or maybe because it costs less for the car makers… so they are just too lazy and decide to only put 2 doors.
Or less of a hassle… so the car owner doesn’t have to worry about locking ALL FoUr of the DoOrs! and making sure aLL the windows are rolled up so nobody can break in!? (Which I do believe they have fixed with… what, power windows/locks?)
But I believe 2-door cars are just impractical… and makes it more work for the car owner and their passengers to have to… push the front seat up, crawl in there… and then get belted up and such.
Unless of course, the car only has 2 seats… but what is the purpose of that as well? unless you just want a ton of trunk space…
I have a Ford Mustang convertible with two doors. I have a backseat, but nobody ever rides back there, so I don’t need four doors. And I think a four-door convertible would just look silly. Why have doors I’d never, ever use?
So, the answer is, carmakers have two-door models to appeal to buyers like me who simply don’t want a larger car.
Trunk space? Ha! Can’t even fit a suitcase in that one.
OK, so it’s not your typical car, but most sports cars have a similar design, 2 seats, little trunk (although it’s usually in the back), but fun to drive.
Of course, all of thosa advantages are negated by the fact that it’s a pain in the neck to find enough space in the parking lot to open those long two-door-car doors that give minimal access to the back seat…
What are your dimensions? I’ve never had trouble climbing out of my back seat even in a tight Massachusetts parking lot. Neither has my father and he used to play left linebacker.
When we were raising 5 kids, my wife had a station wagon and I had an RX7. That way I couldn’t get stuck with more than a couple of the kids (this of course was back before all the rules on seat belts, children’s seats, etc.). Today, I had a standard pickup, with two doors and my wife has traded from a Miata to an RX8. which gives you all of the advantages of a 2 door, with a bit of the four door feature. If you can’t tell the person in back cannot open his door without the door in front being open. It also got top rating in going around curves.
The RX8 is a sweet, sweet car, but I’d think it would be better as a conventional two door. Those back doors aren’t big, and I’ve heard that they add something like fifty pounds to the car.
On very small cars two doors can make more sense as on a four-door each door must be very small, making it quite hard to get out. Obviously this is more of an issue outside the US.
You want the simple answer?
People buy them.
If nobody bought them, no car maker would make them. Since car makers continue to build them, somebody somewhere is buying them.
Well as for the 2 door car’s being smaller; that is not always the case.
My friend drives… a Ford Thunderbird (1994 maybe?). It is a long, car. Two door.
I drive a 1987 Dodge Shadow. It’s a short car (prolly a few feet shorter). Four door.
Why did they not make the T-bird a 4 door…
My car fits just about great with 4 doors, just enough room without being cramped. But for his car being considerably larger… it is much less comfortable with 2 doors… making people have to crawl in and such.
Insurance costs, I’m sure. Not having a rear seat must put the car into another (more expensive) insurance category. “Oh, you’re not driving a ‘family’ car? You damn, reckless, hot-rodder.” Yeah, this is a conjecture, but I remember when I was considering a Del Sol instead of a regular Civic, the insurance was substantially higher on the two-seater.
On the other hand, I rarely, if ever use the rears seats on my full-size, four door car, for people anyway. It still comes in handy for throwing the case of beer or the bag of apples. In the trunk, they’d end up at the front of the space, and I’d have to crawl inside the dang thing to reach them (and I’m 6’2").
As for the doors, well, essentially what everyone else said boils down to “cost.”
1 – It’s not like I custom designed my car. Otherwise, it might look like this. Notice, four seats, two doors.
2 – That’s where I keep my groceries and other purchases when I go shopping. (I keep golf clubs in my trunk, just in case a game breaks out on the freeway or something.) Also, the rear seat is useful for carrying stuff around because the trunk is slightly smaller due to the fact that it is a convertible.
3 – I have carried people in my backseat like, uhm, maybe two or three times since I’ve had my car. I would have felt bad if I had told my friends to take a bus. (“Never, ever” was a bit of hyperbole in reference to extra doors, not extra seats.)
4 – (nitpick) My statement did not “beg the question,” it “led to a question.” Saying “I have two doors because two doors are better, and two doors are better because I chose two doors” is begging the question. (/nitpick)
About time. It looks cool. It says “I don’t need no steenking rear doors for no steenking kids. I am single and available, if you play your cards right.” It also reduces weight and gives a more rigid body, both of which are desirable on sports cars.
My car has two doors. I decided I wanted the car I wanted and it so happened that it had two doors. I’ve had it for four years and no one has ever sat in the back seat; such as it is.
In fact, for 99% of the time the only person in it is me, so I could probably get away with one door, if such things were made.
Maybe I should get one of those bubble car jobbies which open up at the front!
So it’s like someone said; car manufacturers make 2 door cars because there’s a market for them. Not everyone has 2.4 children and a few dogs.
On a side issue ; when I went to buy this 2 door car I now have, the man in the first showroom that I went into said he didn’t have any of the model that I wanted in stock, but would I consider this lovely 8 seater MPV people carrier, instead?
Wot?
Why yes, instead of this nippy little sporty number for me and me alone, I’d like a big old deisel bus, you clever old salesman, you.
I bought it at a different garage, you won’t be surprised to hear.
For a given make and model, they are less expensive – to manufacture and therefore to purchase as a consumer. They appeal to an element of the market that constitutes a large-enough fraction to warrant continuing to make them: single persons who may at most take a single other person as a passenger; young married couples without kids (and older married couples with no kids at home, such as myself and my wife); couples with smaller children (for reasons already given) – the occasions we’ve used our rear seat in our two-door car have been to transport our grandchildren when taking them to places they needed or wanted to go. In many “fastback” and “hatchback” cars the rear seat will fold down to give extensive cargo space, permitting one to use it either as a four-passenger vehicle with small quasi-trunk area or a two-passenger vehicle with extensive rear area for transporting larger or longer objects.
