From the moment I made my first move to get a car of my own onwards, I was told that four-doors weren’t worth the time or effort. They were engine donors. They were derby cars. But I didn’t believe my uncle, my cousin, my stepfather, or just about anyone who tried to ram it into my head that a four-door couldn’t be cool. I’ll admit that it took some undoing, but I’ve come around. But where did it really start? It certainly wasn’t in the 1973 Chrysler Newport that my cousin Vance had. For years I remembered the big brown Chrysler with the super-snotty engine as a four-door sedan, but recently pictures of that car were unearthed and showed that the monstrous C-body was actually a two-door hardtop. Guess I fell out of a plum tree a little harder than I thought. That means that up until 1994, the fastest four-door I’d ever ridden in that made any impression at all…was a 1984 Chrysler E-class. Fail…even with the turbocharged motor.

In fact, the first fast four-door that did anything for me whatsoever was seeing the 1994 Chevrolet Impala SS. Like most people, I hated the 1991 refresh from the start: it was effectively a potato with headlights and half-assed rear wheel well openings. It looked horrid, like a late 1970s Buick with the bolt-in fender skirts. Radius the openings properly and paint it black, however, and suddenly I had to have one. Everyone had to have one. This was a muscle car that made sense for the everyday family! When the vice-principle of my middle school showed up to work one day in a green model, I was sold hook, line and sinker. I was making due on car #2, a 1979 Olds Cutlass that belched white smoke by the ton when it did run, and was a far cry off from the speeds the Impala promised. Remember, this was 1994: the Impala’s 15.0 quarter mile time was jaw-dropping for a sedan that should have been killed off a few years prior.

Fast forward about ten years or so and we get to one of the most infamous cars I’ve ever owned: known in certain circles as “Warhammer”, this 1987 Dodge Diplomat AHB was my baby…and my most spectacular failure of a project car ever. By the end of the summer of 2005, the car was all but finished…it only needed interior and I would’ve been happy. I have no statistics that can give you an idea of how fast it was, and you’ll have to ask me in person about how I know it was swift…it’s only trip down the strip showed just how much I sucked at rowing gears. But it was what it was: a 360-powered ex-cop car with a four-speed sticking up from the floor that surprised everyone who ever rode in it. This car had issues, especially when I brought it up to Washington State, but when it was good…oh, brother, I couldn’t have asked for better. I still caught hell for choosing a four-door, even from David Freiburger himself (though, to be fair, I asked him to roast my car) and I couldn’t be bothered into caring what my friends, who drove 5.0s and Corvettes, thought.

Move forward another ten years, and look at where we are at now. Family four-doors with moderate modifications in the nines. Lightly modified cars are in the 11-second range with ease. Twenty years ago, the fastest Mopar sedan sold was a 3.5L Eagle Vision TSi. Now, you have Dodge Chargers and Chrysler 300Cs with snotty Hemis moving bulk better than UPS. When Americans started to learn that Australians knew how to rock, they clamored for their cars, and got three helpings: the Pontiac GTO coupe, the Pontiac G8 sedan, and if you know how to work a cop auction, the Chevrolet Caprice PPV. Ford…well, Ford Australia knows what to do and they don’t even need to use a V8! Their Barra 4.0L inline-six is a turbo lover’s wet dream, but fret not, because their Miami V8 (a Coyote 5.0 with a blower) is a fine match, and their prior Boss mills are just as good. Shame we never saw the Falcon come back to the States, gearheads would’ve loved it.

None of this is new, so why even write something about it? A couple of days ago I got in touch with an old friend, someone I haven’t talked to in almost twenty years. He was pleased to know that I was still playing with cars, but when I told him about Project Angry Grandpa, that’s when I heard it: “Dude, why are you even bothering with a four-door car? Trans Ams, Camaros, hell, your Imperial seems pretty cool. Why would you even waste one dollar on that Chrysler?” When I got my first car, in 1995, the brand-new Camaro Z28 was tripping the quarter mile at about the 14.0 mark, slightly quicker. A fourth-generation Camaro is two seats, enough plastic to make DuPont happy for a minute or two, a few rattles for good measure, and as far as I’m concerned, not enough room for my frame without a seat modification. Or, I can have every option I want, enough room to sleep in the car, looks that wouldn’t make a cop think twice and the ability to run that number all day, every day if I felt so inclined. And there are legions of gearheads around the world that have four-doors, with plates, that run a hell of a lot harder than I do and still daily-drive them outside of the races, on pump gas, with a car that will idle and hasn’t been stripped into a purpose-built machine.

The good old days…You gotta love it.