SEDANS REBORN AS ‘FOUR-DOOR COUPES’
Call it what you will, the growth of this new body style is indisputable
The Wikipedia entry on coupes has a Current Usage sub-heading. The ISO International Standard 3833:1977, the global rule book delineating coupes and other car body styles, is “Now Under Review.” For the past 10 years, an asterisk has hovered next to the definition of that word, as automakers have tried to squeeze their sedans under the two-doorcar label, marketing the sleeker ones as “four-door coupes.”
The Audi A7 is a good example; so are the BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe, the Tesla Model S, and the grandfather of the body style, the Mercedes-Benz CLS. The title fits the Kia Stinger, and a case can even be made for the Honda Accord, which dropped its two-door coupe trim this model year.
As sales of two-door, closedroof cars continue to plummet, more automakers, especially luxury ones, are offering fastback four-doors in their ranges. That’s because car buyers looking for practicality often opt for a crossover or SUV, and they purchase a sedan only because they really want one.
“The sedan is becoming less of a rational choice and more of a lifestyle one. The sedan is the new coupe,” says Karim Habib, the Montreal-raised new head of Infiniti design. “So it’s giving us designers the ability to push even more in that direction, to make it lower, more elegant.”
The Japanese automaker’s Q Inspiration Concept — Habib’s first effort for the company, unveiled this week in Detroit — has four doors, but a rakish roofline, too. “Sedan” doesn’t feel like it fits here.
“A ‘coupe’ just means it’s an attractive shape, a lower roofline, a car with less function and more emotion,” offers Robert Lesnik, director of exterior design for Mercedes-Benz.
When the company’s CLS debuted in 2005, it was revolutionary: a handful of cars had been marketed as “four-door coupes” before, but none had embodied that title quite the way the CLS did. More than 150 engineers were involved in making the concept a reality, and imitators sprang up almost immediately.
“In my opinion, it’s one of the most influential car designs ever,” says Lesnik, who worked at VW and Kia before starting with Benz in 2009. “I can confirm designers at other automakers were putting pictures of the CLS up on their (inspiration) boards and saying to each other, ‘See? It can be done!’ ”
The third-generation CLS that arrived this year is more than 10 years removed from that original, but Lesnik says the roofline hasn’t changed much at all. It hasn’t had to, and rivals like Infiniti are still vying to fill the growing niche segment in new, interesting ways.
“At Infiniti, because we don’t have an in-line six or behind-thefront-axle engine, the A-pillar is much further forward, and that’s been kind of the challenge, to create a dynamic and balanced proportion without having that visual advantage of the long hood,” explains Habib.
“For us as designers trying to figure out how to make that architecture work, it’s been a learning experience, but it’s been fun as well.”
It seems like every automaker has been going through that same learning experience. The 2019 Honda Insight also broke cover in Detroit, as did the 2019 Toyota Avalon, and both have rooflines that “join the A-pillar and the C-pillar in one shot line,” as Lesnik puts it, pushing them out of the traditional “three-box” sedan design and into four-doorcoupe territory.
The shift seems to be happening in two parts. Sales in the traditional coupe category, the one belonging to low, sporty two-door cars, are drying up, and over the past five years, models there have been getting the axe, from the Hyundai Genesis Coupe to the Altima Coupe to the aforementioned Honda Accord, a 30-year veteran of the segment.
At the same time, crossovers and SUVs have become a sort of default for new-car shoppers, what Habib calls “all-arounders,” vehicles that can be everything to everyone. That default used to be the traditional “three-box” sedan, but that body style, too, has seen declining sales.
In Canada, the U.S., and Europe (sedans are still doing OK in China and Japan) automakers are handling the fact four-doors are being pushed out of that default slot by filling the emptying coupe niche with sporty, low-roof fourdoors.
The lines aren’t necessarily all that clear-cut, though. Habib’s former employer, BMW, is even adapting that one-curve roofline to its SUVs and crossovers and marketing them as “sport activity coupes.” But Habib doesn’t mind the widespread adoption of this styling trait.
“It may be less exclusive now, but having more of them doesn’t make it less elegant.”
Though the rising popularity of the four-door coupe can’t be disputed, the words used to describe them can — and are — even 13 years after the CLS first went on sale. Some consumers and car enthusiasts are pushing back hard against “coupe” being used for anything besides a twodoor car.
“I remember when the CLS first debuted at an auto show in 2003, and many people liked the car,” recalls Lesnik. “A lot of people still like the car. They just don’t believe it’s a coupe.”