Rover P2 Sports Saloon

The first four door coupe, and chilled with it. 

The idea of a four door coupe — a rakish, coupe-style sedan that is lower and more sporting than its normal sedan sibling — is one that is taking hold now in China and has been bubbling away in Europe since the 2004 Mercedes CLS.  But the first one was the Rover P2 Sports saloon of 1937, and it might just be the most rakishly stylish of them all…  

Called a ‘four-light’ because it had four side windows (letting in light) and not the six windows of the longer (less sporting) normal sedan's cabin that it was based on, the design was mostly more sporting from having a lower roof-line; essentially its roof was ‘chopped’ being several inches lower than its 'six-light' sibling.  This shallower upper cabin combined with large wheels, long wheelbase and long hood — and very simple forms and few extraneous details — to make for rakish but reserved sports-sedan that lived by is proportions.  

Rover repeated the trick of offering a four-door coupe version of one of its saloons / sedans thirty years later with the P5 coupe that was also identical to its taller sedan sibling bar lower roofline and different side glazing (and different rear seats), and this is the four-door coupe many remember as the pioneer of this genre.  But it was the P2 Sports Saloon that was first true sports sedan, and perhaps also the most chilled and stylish of them all.