There is something I’ve wondered about for an awful long time. I suspect that any human with the capacity to reason has; it is, as I’ve said many times before, a question a child might ask, but not a childish question.
This isn’t a problem of the past, though there are certainly many past examples. It’s a question for today, too, as we have popular cars like the Tesla Model 3 with a fastback design, yet with a trunk-like opening instead of a full hatchback. We need to consider why this may be, and see about either making peace with it or giving ourselves unto the unending fight to make this right. There is no in between.
Actually, maybe there is. Maybe there’s a lot of in between. Still, this is worth exploring. I suppose to start we should define what I mean about the difference between a hatch and trunk. Essentially, it’s like this: a hatch opens with the rear window, creating a very large rear door that opens into the overall cabin space of the car, allowing for a very large cargo carrying capacity, especially if the rear seats are folded down.
A trunk, on the other hand, is an opening that does not include the rear window; it provides a smaller opening to the cargo area, and is more of a separate compartment from the overall passenger space of the car. A folding rear seat may allow access from the trunk into the passenger area, though.
You can see the differences well in these early Honda Civic, which, for reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, was made in trunked format, and two types of hatchback, one that opened down further than the other. All on the same fastback-like body style! These Civics are an example where I really cannot understand the desire or benefit of that little trunk opening; you have a more restricted access to your cargo, you have to bend down awkwardly, and you can’t hold large objects that a hatch would allow. What’s the point?
That’s my fundamental issue with all trunk’d fastbacks. They just seem like they’re hamstringing the car’s utility for no real reason. Take Volkswagen’s Type 3 Fastback: the car is already a packaging triumph with trunks front and rear, so why didn’t they let the rear window open with the rear decklid? The rear trunk could have been substantially more useful if it were a real hatch. Was this to differentiate it more from the Squareback?
Maybe. I suspect this sort of reasoning is to blame for a lot of fastback-trunk designs. Like the Teslas Y and 3; both share an almost identical rear body slope, but only the Y has a hatch:
The trunk of the 3 opens quite high, essentially as high as a hatch, but the rear window remains in place, so you still have a more restricted opening for cargo:
It’s not terrible by any means, but it could have been so much more with a hatch! So much more flexible and useful! So why wasn’t it a hatch to begin with?
Cost-savings could be a reason; it’s more expensive to design a lifting hatch than a simpler trunk lid, and I think that has to be what explains cars like GM’s poorly-received Aeroback cars of the late 1970s:
There were Buick Century versions and Oldsmobile Cutlass versions, in two and four-door configurations, and they all had trunk lids that hinged at the beltline, just below the rear window, making loading awkward with this sharp-cornered lid right at face level. Awkward loading, limited space, and for what? A deceptive design? These should have been big hatches!
Those people could cram their skis in there way easier if that were a hatchback. Just saying. Oh, and it’s not like GM didn’t know how to make hatchbacks; they had compact ones like the Chevette and slightly bigger ones like the Citation:
I’ve heard the reason these A-body GMs had no rear hatch was because of GM’s legendary penny-pinching, but that doesn’t explain why the downmarket Citation and Chevette were able to pull it off?
A surprising number of fastback-style cars had options for both hatch or trunk configurations, like the infamous Ford Pinto:
In the case of the Pinto, perhaps the justification for the trunk was that the very large rear window of the hatch left all your stuff on display, and perhaps would entice ne’er-do-wells to try a little smash-and-grab. Maybe, but plenty of hatchbacks avoid this with smaller windows and hinged package shelves, so this still feels like a self-imposed limitation. Why didn’t Ford just offer a rear hatch door with the smaller window? Hinge locations could have remained the same, cargo would still be hidden, but all of the advantages of a hatch could have been retained? And it’d have been cheaper, as the second trunk’d body style wouldn’t have been needed! I just don’t get the point of the trunked design.
Citröen even had a version of the 2CV that offered a full hatch, called the Mixte, which resembled how the shorter-lived re-bodied, updated and upmarket 2CV-based car, the Dyane, handled its cargo entry. There’s no question the hatchback offered even greater utility than the traditional 2CV trunk, yet it never became standardized. Maybe on a 2CV, with its rear window set into the fabric of the roof, the change was too costly? Again, I don’t really get it.
Maybe the only trunked-fastback examples that make sense to me are sporty fastbacks like the Plymouth Barracuda or a Ford Mustang Mach I or similar. In the case of the Barracuda, I can see how getting that huge curved rear window to lift could be a difficult undertaking, and maybe wouldn’t be worth it for a car like this, whose focus really isn’t on flexibility or utility. Even so, a rear-seat pass-through was available, which did allow these to haul some surprisingly big stuff.
Still, overall, I just can’t see the point of a hatchback-shaped car not having a real, window-opens-and-everything hatch. Hatches are just so damn useful! Is this a stigma thing? I wouldn’t be surprised, knowing human nature, but maybe hatches are seen as too down-market, and people would rather sacrifice genuine utility for some inane idea about status? It’d hardly be the first time, I suppose, but still: it’s inane.
Someone help me make sense of why these exist. I need peace.
Top graphic image: GM
What has always bothered me more is publications referring to the hatch as a 3rd/5th door. Outside of teenagers, kidnappers, Autopians, and dishonest drive-in attendees, the mainstream does not use that as a door for human ingress/egress. Unless they offer direct access to rear-facing or jump seats, rear hatches are not doors.
I guess it was useful when the same car would have hatchback and saloon versions? It’s also the number of doors into the cabin volume, because the cargo area and the cabin aren’t separated out?
I agree it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense though. Except for weird things like a Veloster!
For the longest time, the maxim was that Americans don’t buy hatchbacks.
Then some genius decided to jack up the suspension an inch or so, tack on a bunch of charcoal-gray plastic cladding, and stir in the illusion of an “active lifestyle”. Boom! Puffed-up hatchbacks started selling like fluffy hotcakes on Fat Tuesday.
Lifted Wagons to me.
Cost is the reason. Full stop.
Hatches themselves cost more to make, like double a trunk
Hatchbacked cars need more lower bracing, which cost more
Roof clearance is worse, which means you need a taller car, which costs more
And people won’t pay more
Thus, no hatches unless there’s a corresponding coupe or it fits an image of the particular vehicle. There still is a perceived stigma around hatchbacks being less-than, like it or not. Especially in other regions like China which sedans-all-the-things.
And don’t try to compare class to class. Every program is run by different people and people inherently have their own preferences.
I was thinking structural rigidity as the main reason. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there were hatchback engineering mules of those GM aerobacks that were scrapped for reasons of cost and floppiness.
As to why the Citation and Chevette got hatches, I have a theory. They’re smaller, lighter structures overall, with less torque and FWD (EDIT: Chevette was RWD, but not exactly a powerhouse). Less bracing would be required. A larger, heavier hatchback (with more torque and RWD) would require significantly more bracing, which would, in turn, increase curb weight, thereby decreasing mileage. And that would run counter to GM’s goal with its late-70’s downsizing.
Is an AMC Gremlin the inverse of this?
Opening glass but no door, but probably equally impractical.
opening glass still qualifies as a portal hatch to me, but it is the least expensive to engineer, so likely why the AMC group went that route.
Judging from the comments, if you keep thinking about this, you’ll just go crazy. My advice: let it go and stop thinking about it so hard. Life needs mysteries. Makes things interesting.
I agree that hatches are the business.
My FB RX7 did it the other way around. No trunk, just a glass hatch that opens.
But despite the small dimensions of the car, I could do 2 weeks worth of groceries for my family with that car. I even had the rare back seat and it all still fit!
Related issue: why did Nissan fit a huge hatch to the 350Z and then make it impossible to load anything other than tiny things into it because of that massive strut brace?
I used to have dreams about sawing that out.
Things I hate about my GT86:
It isn’t a hatch.
That’s the entire list. I’m sick of the grief of posting an MTB through that tiny slot, just let me load it in like i did with my Z4 Coupe/CRX/S13 200SX/RX7.
A couple of times a month I consider buying something I wouldn’t enjoy driving just because it has a hatch. I get that the hinges would make the rear headroom worse, but even kids don’t fit back there, so who cares?
Would chassis rigidity suffer? Yeah, so it would handle as badly as all the other cool, fun hatches I’ve had. It’d be fine. It’d still be stiffer than an MX5, and they seem pretty good.
I can’t tell you why trunked fastbacks exist but I can tell you why I have owned hatchbacks for years. My last 2 cars have been Mazda 3 hatchbacks they are both functional and fun to drive. An SUV would be less so in my opinion. Yet I have hauled many things that you can haul with a small SUV. Where I live the roads are plowed well in the winter so fwd with decent tires can get the job done without 4wd. I would never buy any of the examples you mentioned with a trunk.
Small hatchbacks like the Mazda3 just make sense; that’s why I bought one. I can cram a lot into it when I need to — although there are times I wish its back was less fast, more square.
Honestly, small sedans seem space-inefficient and, at least to me, are generally awkward-looking. A prime example is the Fiesta sedan that Ford concocted for the US market because they didn’t believe a hatchback-only Fiesta would sell here. Any time I see one, I feel kinda sorry for it.
We had a hand me down 2012 Focus for a bit. it was cramped for 4 adults. the kiddos car seat failed to fit without the front seat being moved forward. it was actually not that simple to drop the seats since it required the seat bases to be flipped up and again the front seats often needed to be adjusted to flip them up. Basically it was not all that family friendly in my opinion. I cannot imagine that something smaller would be inherently better, though I do see Fiesta’s rolling around with a rear flip up hatch.
The standard hatchback Fiesta is quite a practical little thing. Of course, it’s a small car, you’re not going to get crazy amounts of stuff in it, but because it’s a hatch you can move a surprising amount if you fold the seats down. I had a number of small hatchbacks in that ‘B-Segment’ class over the years, and my brother has a 2012 Fiesta of the same generation that was sold in the US. I got sofas, washing machines, bikes, all sorts in little cars. I had a ’02 VW Polo, a ’16 Skoda Fabia, and a ’19 Seat Ibiza over the years. I’ve now got a Polestar 2, and that being a liftback it’s similarly practical.
Fitting child seats is a different matter – rear facing ones especially are so bulky (understandably so, they have an important job to do)
Yes the ’06 3 I had first was shaped more like an SUV, the ’16 I have now gave up some utility for styling but it is still useful just not as much
Separate trunk is an old people thing. Makes the car look like a sedan, which is more classy? In Europe, Opel imported
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Corsa#/media/File:MHV_Opel_Corsa_TR_02.jpg
from Brazil for that demographic.
I guess like bench seats and vinyl roofs in the US, no good reason.
the VW Rabbit, the Dodge Omni, the Chevette, the Pinto. and all the rest were cheapo cars with maximized space to make them sort of appealing. Few drove very nice, all seemed built for the price point and thus deemed lower tier cars.
In the 80’s and 90’s if you needed more space and could afford it you got the Wagon Version of a sedan, or maybe one of the first crossover designs. now they don’t even make many hatches or sedans, just Crossovers in all sizes. I suppose without a decent LSD front axle the tendency for small FWD things to just go directly in the direction the one wheel applying power is spinning makes a little bit of a case for pseudo offroad things, but I am not for certain how the raised wagon became as popular as it is.
Crossovers are the new hatchbacks. Designers use the fastback design partly for aero and partly for taste, but keeping the trunk separate for no good reason at least differentiates them from those horrible crossovers with their hatches.
Separating the trunk often helps with NVH and chassis rigidity. These aren’t insurmountable challenges, but it’s certainly not “no good reason”.
You are in the back seat of a car on a windy night in subzero weather. The driver makes a stop to pick up some bags of coal. He opens the hatchback and you can’t believe how fucking cold it is.
You are out doing a kidnapping and suddenly realize that you can’t put the victim in the trunk.
I’m sure others have reasons to not like hatchbacks.
Citroën solved that first one with the XM, by fitting an additional rear screen just behind the rear seats, and Skoda’s second-gen Superb and BMW’s 5-Series GT solved it by creating a “twin door” that could be opened with or without the rear glass, but these were all expensive solutions.
@Jason Noiles a little typo, it’s Citroën Dyane, not Dayne
Quite right, pronounced like “dee-anne” (as opposed to “die-anne”), except just one syllable and not two.
I’ve never understood it either.
If you wanted a separated cargo compartment, make it with a properly designed and clearly defined box area like a sedan.
My little gran coupe just has a trunk even though it looks like it should open the glass too. While disappointing, one thing I do appreciate about the F44 design is that the floor of that trunk opening/entry is all the way down at trunk floor level (like an SUV/truck) and it also has room under that floor (where my spare should be but isn’t).
I expected the Model 3 to have a liftback like the Model S. When I got to see one in person, I was very disappointed to realize it had a trunk. Fakebacks are so disappointing.
The way I explained trunks to myself is that companies that sell sedans in the US now are just selling them to have “sedans”, and if you want something more practical instead of strictly “traditional”, they’ll put you in a boxier hatchback or (more likely) an SUV.
I at least know that fastback versions of cars that come as hatchbacks/sedans in the US are sold in Europe. I hear cleverness and whimsy are legal there.
Is it also ”hatchback cheap”, poor people drive hatchback? A sedan is much better, even a Versa or Echo/Yaris or whatever Tercel it was you had. Whereas SUV good, even if a small SUV is a just a mildly lifted hatchback.
To some extent, there is/was something similar in parts of Europe: Fords (Scorpio, higher trim Sierras), Renault 25/Safrane, the XM, Saabs etc. could be fastback/hatch shaped at least in their home markets, but struggled elsewhere. Saab had traditional sedans as well (9000,900). And the germans were mostly sedans. Well, Audi had the Avants. Also smaller, cheaper cars with trunks (Corsa, Polo?) were deemed more substantial in the poorer parts of Europe. And wagons had a whiff of agriculture until the mid 80’s or so. But now all this SUV/crossover nonsense has made a mess of it all and killed most traditional sedans. Except the expensive ones. So we are left with 4dr hatches/fastbacks, wagons (endangered somewhat) and crossovers. With the sole exception of Corolla: sedan, hatch and wagon. And Cross, of course…
I feel like this piece needed a mention of the Rambler Marlin along with the Barracuda, just for weird’s sake.
Maybe it’s a mafia thing? With the hinged package shelves on the hatch back, they both handle dead bodies equally well. But live bodies are much more secure in a trunk.
Also, has there ever been a car with both? A trunk lid when you need to protect passengers from the elements and store relatively small items, but also the option for a hatch for skis or 8-foot long clam hoagies?
skoda superb
The oddball BMW 5-Series GT also had a two-way hatch that could be opened like a trunk or a full hatch.
That’s a fine looking car.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FG13Qc4X0AIsLSU.jpg
The Twindoor Skoda Superb was so wonderfully weird. The car was great – my parents had the estate version of that generation and it completely lived up to its name.
The Citroen XM could be ordered with what has become known as the 13th window. Essentially an extra rear-window that stayed closed when you opened the rear hatch. (yes, standard with 12 windows; front, rear, both doors had 2 windows (one sliding, one glued) and a C-pillar window).
Structural rigidity and NVH. At least that’s what I’ve been told.
If it’s true, I think it’s a worthwhile trade-off. A stiffer, more refined car is worth giving up the practicality of a hatch.
But I have my doubts that it makes that much of a difference, particularly with modern manufacturing methods.
The first two things that come to my mind are cost and regulation. I recall reading it’s much more costly to engineer and build a hatch that includes the (heavy) window than a trunk that doesn’t. Also, (and it’s the Civics at the beginning that made me wonder this), do any jurisdictions around the world tax differently based on these sorts of configuration differences?
I’m still angry over Cadillac for showing the Escala, then the production CT5 and CT4s were regular sedans despite the sloping rear lines. It would’ve solved the rear seat room complaints as well.
But who am I kidding… the CT5 and CT4 were just mildly refreshed CTS and ATS, couldn’t expect them to rework the structure that much.
No idea on this, but I can say the old CTS-V coupe had too much of a fastback as far as styling goes for me.
I honestly think it’s because American consumers associated the word “hatchback” with “cheap” early on and beancounters figured out they’d sell more cars with trunks than with full hatches. It’s the downside of cars being primarily emotional purchases. Practicality will always lose out to status and perception.
Definitely this for back in the day when the majority of the examples above were built. In addition, sound deadening/dampening was always better in the trunk versions of these which was a lot higher than cars built this century.
I think you’re onto something with perception. I also think it could have been “solved” by auto makers coming up with some stupid new name for it. Introducing the new Chauffeur-style trunk.
My first experience with a hatch was a 1961 Jaguar XKE. they never seemed cheap to me.
100% this. It’s why there are sedan versions of the Nissan Versa and Toyota Echo. They are 100% worse as far as utility and looks, but a cheap sedan is somehow better than a cheap hatchback, for reasons.
Probably why the last gen Camaros and most Corvettes up until recently were technically Hatch Backs, but never got that name attached to them officially.
Everybody knows once you go hatch you never go back.
That joke took a while to incubate.
Did it take all day to hatch this plot?
It’s no hatchbach, it’s a sedan masquerading as a hatch.