A hatchback is a car with a hatch-type rear door that often opens upwards and often a shared volume for the passenger and cargo areas.
When the body style of a car is described as a hatchback, typically it refers to a utilitarian small car (especially in the U.S.); however hatchbacks are also used on sports cars, SUVs, and large luxury cars. Compact hatchbacks are very popular, and midsize liftbacks (a type of hatchbacks) relatively popular, in Europe. Hatchbacks are also popular throughout Asia and North America, and is the most common body type for city cars and economy cars sold in Asia.
The modern form of the hatchback body style was developed through the 1960s and rose in popularity through the 1970s.
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| Ford Focus. Courtesy of carscoops.com |
Characteristics
The distinguishing feature of a hatchback is a hatch-type rear door that opens upwards and is hinged at roof level (as opposed to the boot/trunk lid of a saloon/sedan, which is hinged below the rear window). Most hatchbacks use a two-box design body style, where the cargo area (trunk/boot) and passenger areas are a single volume. The rear seats can often be folded down to increase the available cargo area. Hatchbacks may have a removable rigid parcel shelf, or flexible roll-up tonneau cover to cover the cargo space behind the rear seats.
When describing the body style, the hatch is often counted as a door, therefore a hatchback with two passenger doors is called a three-door and a hatchback with four passenger doors is called a five-door.
Estates/station wagons and hatchbacks have in common a two-box design configuration, a shared interior volume for passengers and cargo and a rear door (often called a tailgate in the case of an estate/wagon) that is hinged at roof level. An estate/wagon typically differs from a hatchback by being longer (therefore more likely to have a D-pillar). Other potential differences of a station wagon include:
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steeper rake at the rear (ie the rear door is more vertical)
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a third row of seats
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rear suspension designed for increased load capacity or to minimize intrusion into the cargo area
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the tailgate is more likely to be a multi-part design or extend all the way down to the bumper
Liftback
Liftback is a term for hatchback models in which the rear cargo door or hatch is more horizontally angled than on an average hatchback, and as a result, the hatch is lifted more upwards than backwards, to open.
The term was used officially, among others, by Toyota, for example to distinguish between two 5-door versions of the Corolla E90 sold in Europe, one of which was a conventional 5-door hatchback with a nearly vertical rear hatch while the other one was a 5-door liftback.
The term "fastback" is sometimes used interchangeably with "liftback", but in a fastback the rear of the car should have a single slope from the roof to the rear bumper; in a liftback, not necessarily so.
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| Opel Vectra C GTS. Courtesy of Wikipedia |
In Europe, the term "liftback" often implies a three-box design with a profile similar to a sedan, although the length of the third box (the rear one) varies. It may be nonexistent (Nissan Primera P12), very short or vestigial (1985 Toyota Celica liftback) or long enough for the vehicle to be confused with a conventional sedan body style which may be offered alongside it (Mazda 6 GG1, Opel Vectra C, many others). While today many such cars feature smooth, curved lines making it difficult to tell where one "box" ends and another one starts, the same applies to sedans, which makes the two body styles even more difficult to tell apart at first glance.
Liftbacks were the mainstay of manufacturers' D-segment offerings in Europe in the 1990s (they were already popular in the 1980s) and until the late 2000s. It was common for manufacturers to offer the same D-segment model in three different body styles: a 4-door sedan, a 5-door liftback and a 5-door station wagon. Such models included the Ford Mondeo, the Mazda 626/Mazda6, the Nissan Primera, the Opel Vectra/Insignia and the Toyota Carina/Avensis. There were also models in this market segment available only as a 5-door liftback or a 4-door sedan, and models available only as a 5-door liftback or a 5-door station wagon. Often the liftback and the sedan shared the same wheelbase and the same overall length, and the full rear overhang length of a conventional sedan trunk was retained on the five-door liftback version of the car.
Audi, BMW and Mercedes were not part of this trend in the 1990s; they did not offer their D-segment and executive cars as 5-door liftbacks back then. However, starting around the year 2009, Audi and BMW started to roll out such liftbacks, referring to them as "Sportback" (Audi) or "Gran Turismo"/"Gran Coupe" (BMW). Interestingly, this occurred not long after some other manufacturers, although certainly not all of them, started to drop D-segment liftbacks from their European lineup.
The second-generation Skoda Superb (2008-2015) is a car that blurs the line between liftbacks and sedans. It features an innovative "Twindoor" trunk lid. It can be opened like in a sedan, using the hinges located below the rear glass; or together with the rear glass, like in a liftback, using the hinges at the roof.
In the USA, 5-door liftbacks are much less popular but growing in popularity. Although the Tesla Model S is a liftback, the manufacturer prefers to refer to it as a sedan.
