A sedan is a passenger car with four doors and a distinct trunk that is separate from the rest of the cabin. Trunks are defined as entirely enclosed cargo holds that are separated from the cabin by the back of the rear seats and the fixed platform below the rear window. Many sedans have rear seats that fold down to lengthen the trunk, should you have any cargo that is too long to fit otherwise. The body of a sedan follows a ‘three-box’ design. The front box houses the engine, the middlebox is for passengers and the rear box is the trunk.
Hatchbacks can be a bit tricky to define. What was once seen as a cheap, economic, two-box car has evolved into something much sleeker with elegant, sweeping rooflines, two or four passenger doors and a hatch on the tail (often referred to as the 3rd or 5th door). The cheaper “econoboxes” still exist, but now there is a market for luxury hatchbacks as well.
There is also an entirely new breed of the hatchback, which may look like a sedan but has a rear hatch incorporated into its sporty roofline. These are generally small or medium-sized sporty or luxury cars. Manufacturers often erroneously refer to these as four-door coupés, since their rooflines are reminiscent of some retro coupés.
The most prominent difference between hatchbacks and sedans is that hatchbacks have a far larger ratio of the cargo hold to car size than sedans. They are also easier to load and unload thanks to the vertical height of the hatchback’s cargo hold and the location of the hatch’s hinge – around chest height
Most hatchbacks come with a removable package tray that slots in exactly where you would expect it to in a hypothetical hatchback shaped sedan – below the rear window and spanning the cargo hold to the rear seats.
The seats conveniently fold down if the already spacious cargo hold isn’t enough and the large hatch door makes it possible to load very bulky objects that wouldn’t fit inside a standard trunk. Sedans’ cargo-carrying capacities are restricted by the short opening of the trunk and the height of the fixed rear package tray.
The two potential downsides of hatchbacks are as follows:
1) If it doesn’t come with a cargo cover or you accidentally misplace it, all of your cargo will be visible to whoever walks past your car (obviously, this is more of a security concern in some areas and less so in others).
2) The rear area is open to the cabin. Your typical hatchback tends to be a slightly louder ride than its sedan counterpart.
There are several selections of both sedans and hatchbacks on the market, you’re sure to find a model in one style or the other that suits your needs.
