Volkswagen, at least air-cooled-era Volkswagen, has a very strange relationship with four-door cars, and it’s not a relationship I understand. For most of the air-cooled era, VW was pretty staunchly two-door focused, something that I generally associated with German car market preferences, though I don’t pretend to fully understand those, either.
My personal daily-driver cars have generally been mostly two-door cars, at least in part because a good number of those have been Beetles, but even looking at the my non-Beetle daily drivers – a Nissan Pao, Volvo 1800S, a Reliant Scimitar, a Yugo, an Isuzu Pickup, and so on – they’ve all been two-door cars. Until the 2CV finally made it back into the world of the running, I’d never realized the joys of four doors, and while I don’t think I need the extra pair of doors, I get the appeal. But I’m not sure VW ever really did.
Which is kind of strange, since the first car that Volkswagen technically built in real numbers was a four-door car: the wartime Kübelwagen:
But then, after that, VW went decades without a four-door passenger car – I mean, if we don’t count the Microbus, which is sort of a different category because it’s a van, even though VW sold it as a “Station Wagon” and, let’s be honest here, that likely filled most of VW’s four-door-like requirements, even if those had sliding doors.
Okay, but back to non-van passenger car four-door Volkswagens: it took VW until 1968 to actually build and sell four-door cars, and the ones the came out with were a bit, um, unexpected. First, there was the Type 181, which we know here as the Thing, which was a sort of modernized Kübelwagen, a military/utility/fun car:
Not only did it come with four doors, you could turn it into a no-door car, as you see above. But the cutouts there should show you where the doors go, you’re pretty smart. The other four-door VW introduced in 1968 was the Type 4 Sedan: 
I always thought the Type 4s were really interesting cars, despite them being somewhat of a failure for VW, sales-wise. They were a real attempt to modernize the technological DNA of the company that started way back in 1938 – air-cooled, rear-mounted, horizontally-opposed engines and torsion bar suspension and so on – by making cars with modern unibodies, updated front suspension, and such advancements as electronic fuel injection and so on. The VW Type 3s started some of this, but it was the Type 4 that really attempted to drag the VW concepts into the modern world. Now that I think about it, the Type 3 wagon, the Squareback, was only two-door as well, but none of the Type 3s had four doors like the Type 4 family did.
There were three cars in the Type 4 family: a two-door fastback, a two-door wagon, and a four-door sedan. Now, here’s what I don’t get at all: why wasn’t the wagon given four doors?
You’d think out of all of the cars in this lineup, the wagon should have been the one with four doors. It was absolutely pitched as a family car, and that’s when you want four doors, right? Because you always have people, either in their larval kid state or grown, getting in the back seat!
I don’t get it at all. Ads of the era, as you can see above, definitely showed the wagons being used as family cars, but that mom would have to wrangle those squirmy kids into the back through the front door, and if anyone has to pee in the back seat, a minimum of two people are getting out of that car.
Now, sure, the four-door sedan could be a viable family car, and I’m sure was for plenty of people. VW’s clever packaging and flat engine design meant there was great storage room front and rear, even in non-wagon form:
Here’s a nice cutaway, too, showing how roomy these things were – remember, all that area up front is a trunk, too:
…but even so, a wagon would have been even better, in many cases. And it’s not like the design of the wagon couldn’t have had that rear door. I mean, look:
There’s plenty of room back there for a back-row door. Compare it to the sedan:
There’s even a body panel seam right where a door edge could be! Why wasn’t this section a door? Look, a door would have fit there just fine:
I really don’t understand what VW was thinking here at all. I’m pretty sure the rear door from the sedan could have been made to work here, too. They were developing these bodies at the same time, and no one thought to make the sedan and wagon the same up to the C-pillar, and have a four-door wagon? They must have considered it, right? But why did they abandon it?
It’s not like the Type 4 wagon had, say, sporting pretensions and was trying to be a shooting brake, or something. Sure, VW was happy it had more power than previous models, but this was pitched as a family wagon. Maybe it was a safety thing in an era before common child locks? Keep the kids trapped back there?
And, it’s not like VW didn’t know how to build four door wagons; the VW Brasilia (or Igala, for the Nigerian-built versions) was based on the smaller and less sophisticated Beetle Type 1 platform, and yet they still managed to have a four-door wagon version of that car:
All of this is to say that I’m baffled by VW’s late ’60s to mid-’70s thinking. Could a four-door Type 4 wagon have maybe saved that doomed class of air-cooled VW? Maybe? Probably not, as the liquid cooled FWD cars were definitely coming no matter what, but who knows?
If anyone has any theories to explain this weird fixation on two-door wagons, I’d love to hear it.
Jason there is an old wise saying. The efficiency of 4 doors is lost on the person driving the car. Certainly air cooled engines work better on a short wheel based and hence 2 door car but extended wheel based shaped for transport air cooled is not as effective
My father bought a 411 4 door brand new back in the day. Some impressions:
Body integrity was excellent. It was easier to close the door if the window was lowered a bit. I hadn’t seen anything that solid until my W123 Mercedes came along.
It had the best fresh air ventilation ever. Incoming air was cool most of the time and air conditioning was usually not needed in California climate.
Handling was very good, if power was down a bit.
VW contacted him one day after a year or so of ownership and told him that a certain production run was determined to have inadequate paint coverage and he got a free repaint as a result.
At the end of it I don’t know why he sold it, but it was replaced eventually by … A Volare wagon.
I did notice several of the 411/412 series caught fire, weak fuel injection lines seemed to be the culprit.
“why wasn’t the wagon given four doors?”
Because 2-door wagons will always be cooler than 4-door ones.
Just like 2-door pickups are cooler than 4-door ones.
Just like a 1970 2-door Chevelle is cooler than a 4-door one.
Funny 2 door wagons are cooler than 4 door wagons unless the wagons are air cooled.
I was thinking along the same lines. But I just couldn’t fit that joke in there in the short time I had available to post.
There are so many of these mysteries. Like, why in the era of declining birthrates are vehicles getting bigger with more seats? Why are glass roofs somehow now a replacement for outward visibility to the road? Why is Jason Jr. having a timeout in the backseat? What did he do?
Hell, I own a Type 4 sedan and this always baffles me, too.
’68 Type 4, the “Chevettenvagen”
About the time my folks were getting rid of their ’74 VW Rabbit POS I was very much a VW squareback fan having a ’67 and so did my brother, a cousin, and a friend. I tried talking my folks into getting a Type IV VW wagon, but since it only had two doors, that was nixed in favor of a Honda wagon. I tried!
a kid could pee in the back seat without anyone getting out of the car!
That’s why everyone gets out of the car!
Jason, can you not see that the wagon uses the much longer front doors of the two-door sedan? That’s why your graphic of your design for a 4-door wagon doesn’t work. When car companies build 4-door wagons, they use the doors from the 4-door sedans, with the shorter front doors. If you had used the 4-door sedan as the basis for your 4-door wagon, it would look vastly more logical and buildable.
As to why VW didn’t build a 4-door Type IV, as others have said, Germany had long been in the thrall of 2-door sedans and wagons. 2-door sedans from low-price high-volume makers such as VW, Ford, Opel and such vastly outsold the 4-door versions. It’s a cultural thing; in France you couldn’t give away a 2-door sedan. It might be an interesting psychological exercise to determine why this was so.
German families preferred two doors as “insurance” against the children accidentially opening the rear passenger doors and jettisoning themselves out of the vehicles. That is until the child safety locks were fitted to the vehicles in the 1970s and 1980s.
I’d like a 2 door wagon. With a proper straight roof and vertical rear window.
Maybe a Slate?
Something with tradition and the market. The Opel Kadett and Ford Escort also didn’t come with 4/5 doors in the station wagon, in Germany, at that time.
4 doors was luxury! Like a Mercedes or other big expensive ones!
I remember when my dad brought home a (used) Ford Cortina station wagon, in the late seventies, with 4/5 doors, and thinking “Wow, are we rich now?” 🙂
I can’t speak to the focus on two-door cars. I came here to lament the fact that VW never brought the handsome Type 3 notchback to the USA. i had the chance to buy one around the turn of the century, but didn’t. It’s one of the ones that got away.
There’s a few for sale on The Samba.
This one is real nice.
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2765074
Back in the day before doors with “kiddy locks” (and seat belt usage) were a thing, people actually LIKED 2-door cars for hauling sprogs around in. The kiddos were never strapped in, so were roaming free, and thus could easily open a door and remove themselves from the gene pool. And because kids were just tossed back there, there was no concern about ease of access to buckle the little dumplings into giant safety capsules.
I had neighbors back then whose 5yo kid did exactly that. Opened the back door of the family truckster and fell out. The parents were deaf and so had no idea for a while that kiddo was missing! Thankfully, she survived as the car was only going 25mph or so down our street. I was in Jr High when that happened, so probably circa 1981.
It’s one of the reasons “personal luxury coupes” were such humongous sellers in the US back in the day. Nobody cared about how easy it was to get kids in and out of them. My parents certain did not give a single thought to my or my brother’s comfort in the back of their cars (Grand Prix or 911 during my formative years), we were lucky to be getting taken anywhere to start with. My grandparents always had huge boat station wagons then though, the Old Man was a boater, so needed to tow dingies and carry gear back-and-forth to the boat. And all of us cousins and friends of cousins in the way back playpen on occasion. Being a cheap Yankee, he never stumped up for the Plywood Pleasure Palace fancy versions. Just plain sides, sticky vinyl, an AM radio and no A/C. Usually Mopar.
4 door sedans were considered more formal and better suited to hauling adults around. Though that said, I too find it odd that VW didn’t make the wagon both ways – no good reason not to that I can see. Probably figured it would end up costing too much vs. the 2dr wagon.
Nice dash ornament on that Thing, BTW. 🙂
While that is true, US automakers stopped making 2 door wagons after the early to mid 60s. By 1968, no US make made a 2 door wagon anymore (soon changed by the Vega and Pinto, but they’re a bit different and smaller than the type 4). So I think generally by that time that wasn’t as much of a concern
Wagons were a very different thing in the US when the average car was a huge boat to start with. Those personal luxury coupes that were so popular had as much or more trunk space as the typical compact Eurowagon anyway.
In Europe, if you had a 2-3 kids and could only afford a small car you needed the extra space that the longroof provided in a way that just wasn’t the case in the US. Wagons were for people like my Old Man, or those who had their own basketball team of sprogs to haul around. Four door wagons in Europe were generally large cars like Volvo 240s and Peugeots for much the same reason – lots of stuff to haul around. Small by US standards, but HUGE over there.
Also perhaps worth noting that those Volvo and Peugeot wagons were among the pioneers of child safety locks on the rear doors in the ’60s and ’70s, which effectively gave them the same “safety” benefit as a two-door wagon, that unruly, unbelted kids wouldn’t be able to open a door and fall out.
Very true, but the average European couldn’t afford them. Not that 411s were exactly cheap – part of the problem with them.
In 1970 wagons were the go-to kid haulers in America but in Germany they were mainly bought by tradesmen who needed them to be a work van during the week and a family car on the weekend.
Families with just one or two kids did not generally buy wagons even then. At least not in my neck of the woods. You needed a Brady Bunch size family, or hobbies such that you needed one.
Though always the occasional oddball. I am a single guy with no kids and I have generally had a wagon in my stable for the past 30 years. Hobbies.
The 411 was in the same mid size class as the Volvo and Peugeot. And notably, when the 411/412 was replaced with the Passat a few years later, it launched only with a 4 door wagon. I think VW was just out of touch with the market. The whole 411/412 project was a failure and a dead end
Not really, they were quite a bit smaller, even if they ended up in the same nominal class by the weird way the US classifies cars. The Passat was an effort to go rather upmarket and compete more directly with Volvo, Saab, etc. while the Golf\Polo competed in the cheap car market. They did offer it in a 3dr hatch too though. The 3dr family car was not even remotely dead, and of course that was a HUGE part of Saab’s business in those days, Saab never making a proper wagon until 2006, and 3dr ‘combicoupes’ until 2002.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1974-1981-vw-dasher-passat-b1-vw-finally-enters-the-fwd-era/
The 411 was most definitely a dead end – the last gasp of the 1930s original air-cooled platform that had long-outlived it’s sell-by date, and very much a car of the 60s. Tastes definitely changed as teh ’70s went on. If I had unlimited garage space and funds, I would love to have a 411, I think they are cool. though I think the Squareback (type 3) is even cooler.
The 411 was also an attempt to go upmarket, just an earlier one that failed. The b1 Passat is really not all that big, the 411 is longer, wider and taller than the Passat according to Wikipedia. Yes the Passat had a 3dr hatch, but the only wagon was a 4 door.
A failed attempt based on outdated technology. The Passat was bang up-to-the-minute modern. That they were similar in size is neither here nor there.
Tastes were certainly changing as the 70s went on, but 3dr family cars remained popular in Europe into the ’80s and beyond. The fastbacks simply overtook the full-on longroofs in popularity.
A bit smaller and MUCH cheaper. The 412 wagon cost about as much as a Volvo 245 and more than an AMC Sportabout V8 that had the entire accessory catalog thrown at it, in a 1974 Road and Track comparison test
Jeep made a two-door Cherokee for a very long time. Maybe that’s more classified as a truck, but certainly an American vehicle maker.
Wasn’t the pinto wagon a five door?
That’s an interesting theory. My upbringing was a little different since by the mid 60s my parents were stickers for seat belts and had us in child seats or harnesses. They also weren’t into wagons so we had four door sedans all along. Even dad’s BMW was the rare 4 door 2000 instead of the more common 2002. Due to circumstances our kids lived in small sedans or hatchbacks until our youngest was 13. It’s a symbol of being an empty nester that we have a small 2 door hatchback and an extended cab pickup. If it’s a family outing our kids have the big cars
My grandfather was actually also a stickler for seat belts – but only in the front seats. We kids could roam the back seats and way back of the wagons all we wanted – go figure. He witnessed a head-on collision where the passenger was ejected through the windshield and face planted into a tree. From that day forward he was religious about it. My grandmother generally refused to do so until the day it became illegal in Maine not to – though once I got my permit/license, I simply wouldn’t start the car until she buckled up, and I was more stubborn than she or my grandfather was about it.
But that was VERY much the exception 40+ years ago to be a seat belt user. My mother and stepfathers never, ever did when I was a kid, and neither were we kids buckled up in their cars until my grandfather rubbed off on me. So at least in front seats, I was a belt user from about the 5th grade on. But to be honest, not regularly in back seats until well into adulthood. Stupid, that.
I’m a single who likes to drive and has lots of hobbies that involve carrying stuff, so my daily drivers have generally been a pairing of a convertible and a station wagon for decades now. With sundry other stuff like my Land Rover and the preceding SUVs that I bought to tow a boat and because I needed a 4×4 that could get into our family “camp” when we were doing some renovations up there. It’s 4×4 or 4-wheeler to get up what is laughably referred to as the “driveway”, which is really just a barely maintained track through the western Maine woods for a few miles to get to the lake.
I wonder whether it was because the rear glass would have been too long? If you try mapping the back end of the wagon onto the four door taking the wheel center as the base I think you would end up with a huge glazed area.
Just have the glass go only part way down, or not retract at all
Did you have to be a GM designer back in the 80s?
I’ve thought about this previously as well, and my theory is that they’d sold plenty of (also two-door) Type 3 “Squareback” wagons over the years, so why mess with success?
I pity that boy in the back of the white wagon in the Family Fun photo. He looks so…
Poor Hans. Older sibling may have their shirt on backwards. but they are outside and here I sit. Mama is having funsies with baby sister, but here I sit. Papa will unload the cargo before he remembers me. Perhaps. Cousins are already playing croquet, and readying the RC plane. Here I sit. My blank stare may eventually burn a hole where the fourth door should be, yet here I sit. Here I sit. Poor Hans.
That’s not Hans, that is a young Peter and he is planning to get even. Thiel family vacation photo. Notice the proto-drone in the grass in The back of the photo.
Whoa whoa whoa, don’t put that evil on the lovely Type 4.
Oh, if anyone pees in the back seat, I’m pretty sure everyone is getting out.
I saw that but couldn’t figure out how to make that joke so thank you!
Maybe it was marketing? Like, they wanted the wagon to cost the least so more families could afford it, and they figured small kids are going to be find crawling in the back?
Super weird choice that I hadn’t noticed before, and now I’ll notice it whenever I see one of these…
It was said about the Type 4 sedan, marketed as VW 411 at first that the number stood for “four doors, eleven years late”.
Of course, 411 used to be the number for information. Maybe if Jason meets one in some empty, dimly lit parking garage, it will answer all his questions.
I SHALL DRAW AN OCTAGON!
THE ULTIMATE BATTLE OF JASON VERSUS MY CAR COMMENCES AT DAW—oh, wait, you mean they meet for info? That’s fine, too. I’m pretty sure all it’s gonna do is piddle oil on the ground, though.
Weirder still was the Opel Ascona A wagon which was marketed as one of Germany’s first “lifestyle” wagons and replaced the Kadett B 4-door wagon…but was itself a 2-door.
There was a version aimed at hunters. In lieu of a 4WD you got a limited slip differential, increased ground clearance and stiffer springs. And then came the Subaru wagon and took the entire segment.
It could be that they had some bad, evil people at VW back in the day. Probably some guy with a Monacle and a scmimss on his cheek, holding a cigarette pinched between the thumb and forefinger, giggling with delight at the chaos this caused…
“Scmimss?”
Schmiss, my bad.
Today I Learned!
Four doors. Passenger cars. Day to day usefulness and utility. Next question.
I still want a Type 3 wagon. This hasn’t helped, Jason.
I briefly had one as a project a few years back. It was so cool, but it was also a total heap. I found out the hard way that anything Type 3 specific that isn’t shared with T1 or T2 is much harder to find, both in parts and in knowledge online. I found 2 separate sites that were somewhat Type 3 focused with decade old “signing off for the last time” posts, and who knows how much longer they’ll still be up. Such a sweet package, but definitely more challenging than a beetle to own.
I bought a bunch of stuff from these guys .
https://vwispwest.com/
They are more type 3 specific than type 2 and 1.
Fair prices and honest.
I’ve owned two of them – a 1970 Squareback in cobalt blue, which my father gave me when he bought a 1984 Toyota Corolla, and a 1971 in Texas Yellow. The 1970 was an absolute peach of a car and the car in which I learned to drive. Unfortunately, it was totaled when I was rear-ended by a Corolla (see a theme?) my senior year of high school. I owned the 1971 during college and grad school, and eventually gave it to my sister-in-law. It was a bit more of a lemon, although a later Gene Berg motor build made it a bit more reliable.
Even then, outside of West Coast Metric, parts were difficult to find.
I’d love a Type 3 anything, but preferably a fastback, however, prices seem to have gotten even more ridiculous than Beetles for a non-rusty/non-trashed example. Still not as crazy as Ghias, but getting there. The pricing run-up on air cooled VWs is sort of why I wound up with a Corvair
do itttttt
Sold both our type 3’s late last fall.
70 and a 71 .
With a truck load of spares .
The same couple bought both of them ,one was blue for him ,yellow for her.
Honestly I’m happy they are gone as they didn’t get driven enough anymore.
Could the intention have been that, without rear doors, children can’t open them themselves—whether intentionally or by accident—so the parents remain in full control?
The Bishop and I, the Bishop’s cousin and four adults drove around in one of those 412s… Child safety was NOT a design priority…
My 63 Vw crew cab pickup has 3 doors , no passenger door on the left side.
It also came from from the factory (like all of the air cooled Vw trucks) with fold down side gates for the bed .