Coupé - History

History

In the 19th century a coupé was a closed four-wheel horse-drawn carriage, cut (coupé) to eliminate the forward-mounted, rear-facing passenger seats, with a single seat inside for two persons behind the driver, who sat on a box outside. If the driver had no roof over his head then it was a coupé de-ville. Commonly, a coupé had a fixed glass window in the front of the passenger compartment. The driver was protected from road dirt by a high curving dashboard. A landau is a coupé de-ville with a folding top. Where only the passenger compartment has a folding top but the driver remains covered, the style is known as a landaulet.

During the 1920s, the Society of Automobile Engineers suggested nomenclature for closed cars that included the following:

Coupelet

A small car seating two or three with a folding top and full height doors with fully retractable windows.

Coupé

An enclosed car operated from the inside with seats for two or three and sometimes a backward-facing fourth seat.

Convertible coupé

A roadster with a removable coupé roof. (technically not a coupe, but some car companies try and cash in on the cachet the word coupe brings)

Through the 1950s, opening-roof convertible automobiles were sometimes called drop-head coupés. Since the 1960s, the term coupé has generally been applied exclusively to fixed-head models. Coupés generally have two doors, although automobile makers have offered four-door coupés and three and five-door hatchback coupés. Modern coupés often have the styling feature of frameless doors, with the window glass sealing directly against a weather-strip on the main body.

Alternatively, a coupé is often distinguished from a two-door sedan by the lack of a B pillar to support the roof. Sedans have an A pillar forward at the windscreen, a B pillar aft of the door, and a C pillar defining the aftermost roof support at the rear window. Thus with all side-windows down, a coupé would appear windowless from the A to the C pillars. These fixed-roof models are described as a hardtop or pillarless coupé. Though, to confuse things even further, there are many hardtop/pillarless two- and four-door sedans. Targa top, or just 'T'-top models are a variation on the convertible design, where the roof centre section can be removed, in one or two sections, leaving the rest of the roof in place. Yet another variation on the convertible or drop-head coupé is the fully retractable hardtop. In this form the car has all the adantages of fixed-head vehicle but, at the touch of a button, the entire roof lifts off, folds and stows away in the trunk (boot). Retractables were built by Peugeot, in Europe and Ford, in the U.S., with the Fairlaine Skyliner, there has recently been a revival of this bodystyle.

During the 20th century, the term coupé was applied to various close-coupled (rear seat that is located further forward than usual and the front seat further back than usual) automobiles.

Manufacturers have used the term coupé in several varieties, including:

Club coupé

A coupé with a larger rear seat, which would today be called a two-door sedan.

Business coupé

A coupé with no rear seat or a removable rear seat intended for traveling salespeople and other vendors who would be carrying their wares with them.

Opéra coupé

A coupé de-ville with a high roofed passenger compartment such that the owners could be driven to the opera without the need to remove their large hats. These often had 'occasional' seats that folded for use by children or extra passengers, and allowed easy passage to the rear seats. These cars most closely approximated a motorised version of the original horse-drawn coupé. Often, they would have solid rear-quarter panels, with small, circular windows, to enable the occupants to see out without being seen. These opera windows were revived on many U.S. automobiles during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Sports coupé or berlinetta

A body with a sloping roof, sometimes sloping downward gradually in the rear in the manner known as fastback.

Four-door coupé

A luxury sedan with classic coupé-like proportions, also known as a totally new class of coupe. The low roof design reduces back seat passenger access and headroom. The designation was first applied to a low-roof model of the Rover P5 from 1962 until 1973, but was revived by the 1985 Toyota Carina ED, the 1992 Infiniti J30 and finally by the first model 2005 Mercedes-Benz CLS, which stands in Mercedes hierarchy between the E and S class, and has appearance of a classic coupe and sedan. The term was also used partly from marketing reasons. German press accepted concept of four-door coupe and adopted it to similar models from other manufacturers such as 2009 Jaguar XJ. Also, other manufacturers accepted it, producing recent competing models like Volkswagen Passat CC, BMW_F12 and even five-door coupe, Audi A7. The organization ADAC on its website also adopted this concepts. In Germany the definition of the coupe was finally divided into the classic coupe and 4-door coupe. This definition and concept of four-door coupe (instead of sedan) are evident in Germany, but they are not yet widely known in the rest of the world.

Quad coupé

Quad coupé is a marketing name for cars with one or two small rear doors with no B pillar.

Combi coupé

Combi coupé is a marketing term used by Saab for a car body similar to the liftback.

With the growing popularity of the pillarless hardtop during the 1950s some automakers used the term coupé to refer to hardtop (rigid, rather than canvas, automobile roof) models and reserved the term sedan for their models with a B pillar. This definition was by no means universal, and has largely fallen out of use with near-demise of the hardtop. Similarly, a Rover P5 saloon model came in a body style with a lower roof that was called a coupé. Technically, it was cut, as the original definition required, but it was not a shorter car body.

Today coupé has become more of a marketing term for automotive manufacturers, than a fact of the vehicle's design and technical makeup. They ascribe the term to any vehicle with two, three, and now even four-doors, for the term's perceived luxury or sporting appeal. This is because coupés in general are seen as sportier than sedans; hence a coupé would be marketed as a sportier vehicle than a two-door sedan.

While previous coupés were "simply line-extenders two-door variants of family sedans", some coupés have different sheet metal and styling than their four-door counterparts. The AMC Matador coupe of the 1970s had a unique design sharing almost nothing with the 4-door versions.

Even 2-door cars with a backseat are now being referred to as "sedans" in which the terms "coupe" and "sedan" are used interchangeably. Two-door sedans with front bench seating have phased out with the 1995-1999 Chevrolet Monte Carlo being the last model to offer it.

However, 2-door cars in general have fallen in popularity, with the popular exception of convertibles and 2-seat roadsters. Sedans, pickup trucks and SUVs/station wagons have had fewer 2-door models (especially ones with backseats) in recent years.