It’s not hard to buy a car that looks cool and is riotous fun to drive. I’ll have a Caterham Seven 420 CUP, thanks. But finding one with four proper seats that can swallow a whole family, or even more challenging, you and three adult buddies, is trickier. Hmm, hold the Caterham, please.
Sure, there are plenty of fast Audi, Porsche and AMG sedans, SUVs and wagons that are fun to drive and practical, too. But underneath the spoilers and big wheels they’re still sedans, SUVs and wagons, and for some people, that’s a problem. What if you want some of that practicality wrapped up in a sexy coupe shell? And for the purposes of this QOTD, we mean a proper coupe with two doors, not a sedan with a sporty rear window.
There are plenty of coupes around that claim to have back seats, but surprisingly few of them can be classed as proper four-seaters. And I’m not just talking about 2+2s like the Porsche 911 and Audi TT. Even the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, BMW 8-Series and Nissan GT-R, which look from the outside like they ought to offer decent room for four adults, are disappointingly small in the back.
Related: What On Earth Happened To All The Affordable Coupes?
The Toyota GR86/Subaru BRZ is another car that might seem like it would pass muster as a four-seater when you first pull open the door and flip the front seat-back forward to take a look, but isn’t much use for grown ups, and no good for kids in child seats either.
Going back a few years, the unfairly forgotten 2008-17 Volkswagen Scirocco sold in Europe did a great job of packaging Golf GTI and R mechanicals (though minus the all-wheel drive in the Scirocco R’s case) in a sexier wrapper that still managed to be reasonably practical thanks to to the wagon-esque rear end styling that preserved rear headroom.
But among new cars our vote has to go to the BMW 2-Series or 4-Series. The upcoming M2 might change our mind with its even more compact dimensions and the fact that it doesn’t restrict manual transmission availability to a lower-power derivative, but that’s going to come at the expense of some rear seat and trunk space. Right now, as far as we’re concerned, an M4 coupe looks like the perfect coupe-shaped blend of fun and practicality. Which coupe gets your pick?