BACKROAD COLUMN
Who Killed the Sedan?
If you owned a Nintendo Game
& Watch Fire device in the early 1980s, your childhood was probably awesome. Controlling two trampoline-wielding firemen in a bid to bounce evermore frequent jumpers from a burning building into an ambulance seemed the best way to kill several months of your life. I nagged and begged and eventually cajoled my mother into buying one in 1984 – and then played it till my fingers bled – ah, the sound of Bryan Adams on stretched cassette. Those were the days.
With no app store peddling hundreds of new games a month, no Spotify and no Netflix either, life was simpler then. On any given week there would be only two or three television shows worth watching, provided you were not partial to a daily dose of Loving – ugh! This left ample time to ride your BMX, build a fort, or fall out of a tree.
Unless you had hippie tendencies and drove a Beetle, cars came in one body style, the three-box sedan. They also came in just three flavours: L, GL, or GLS, which was already a great improvement on “Would sir like his Corolla with two side mirrors or just the one?” Ah, the ubiquitous Toyota Corolla: everyone had one, unless you had a bit of money or the company was buying, then you would cruise around in a Mercedesbenz Ballade. Of course there were also Sentras, Jettas, and Meteors, but Corolla was the everyman-choice, precisely because there was not much choice.
But then some bonus-driven clever clot in marketing reckoned we needed more options. Before long there was an Avante and a Conquest parked alongside the Corolla on showroom floors. I blame the hatchback. Sportier, and more useful than a sedan, it paved the way for a body style proliferation. I am not saying that was the exact moment the cancer began – coupés and station wagons had been around for decades – but the situation metastasised spectacularly from there, eventually engulfing the entire industry.
Remember when buying a BMW was as simple as 3, 5 or 7? A quick look today reveals a grand offering of 26 basic body styles. Over at Volkswagen you get a Golf, a Golf with more head room (Golf Plus), a Golf with more boot space (Golf Estate), a Golf with more seats (Touran) and a Golf with increased ground clearance (Tiguan). Not just that, but the array of available drivetrains, styling packs, equipment levels and driver aids is simply dizzying.
What’s missing? Well, when last did you see a Jetta? Sure sedans are still around but they’re increasingly niche. Earlier this year Ford announced it would be actively stripping all sedans from its North American product portfolio by 2020 in favour of more profitable pickups, SUVS and crossovers. The era of the coffee-stained, doughnut-coated Crown Victoria cop car is long gone.
Just as a couple of jumpers were destined to fall to their unfortunate deaths in the mad frenzy of playing Fire at an advanced stage, today’s car model excess is bound to result in casualties. Will the traditional three-box sedan be one of the first?