Drew Dowdell
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Posts posted by Drew Dowdell
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Ok, how about a Studebaker Champion? Surely that would be a family car. Willys Aero? Nash Rambler?
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Well, in your example the '49-52, '55 & '59 are non sequiturs, as there was no other size.
But... point made.
In parting, we're not here as 'the public'- consumer reports' message board is for them types.
Here, I would hope we aspire to be a bit better edumakated.
No other sizes?
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It wasn't hard to outpower GM's 1.4t...
Didn't you note the power output of the Chevrolet 130R concept?
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Woops! I meant Balth. I posted that from my phone.
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That must be one hell of a strong pole to not even be bent by nearly 4,000 lbs of Camaro traveling at that rate of speed.
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Why do you think that? He's gotta be in his upper 60's. If the man wants to retire, let him retire.
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I don't think anyone here is the "typical" car buyer Camino.
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We haven't had a "That will buff right out!" Thread in a while. Hit it guys!
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I dunno. A 560 horsepower awd all electric Mini-Cooper could be a hoot.
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Apparently we have been in a mild cycle this time around.
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It is transverse mounting of the engine that pushes the wheels back. The old dodge monaco and intrepid have their front wheels relatively forward.
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Because the cars that fit old-timer definitions are entirely out of production now and have been since the early '80s
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I think there is still a lot of confusion on the difference between foreign brand and foreign built.
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It's going to "look" RWD, but not actually "be" RWD.
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Yep, I agree. A wagon/estate has the same length as its sedan/saloon equivalent, whereas a hatchback would have a shorter rear overhang.
An A3 sedan without a longer rear overhang would look awfully truncated.
well... it'd look like a Golf.
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interesting that diesels are requested so often... but Mini Drivers are a unique bunch.
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Ford Edge?
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We should come up with our own names here:
Mine: Jeep Grand Cherokee Black-Ops
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I took crossovers out of the debate because of the pollution of the name by Honda and BMW lately.
But here is another one to ponder:
Ford Flex - Wagon
Scion xB - Hatchback
yet they have a very similar shape.
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I think the Malibu Maxx suffered in the market because of the ugly face (a trait of the sedan as well) but as long as you didn't look at the front, the rest of the car was kind of bulldog attractive. The interior.... well, that was another story.
The Magnum was most certainly a wagon no matter what Dodge wants to call it. The 300C wagon was called an Estate in Europe. You don't get much more wagon than that without using the actual word.
Interestingly, both the Commonwealth of PA and Progressive Insurance list our CR-V as a "Honda CR-V Wagon" on the respective identification cards.
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I think a suburban is a wagon
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Drew Dowdell - January 26, 2012 - CheersandGears.com
Yesterday on Facebook, Aaron Bragman a new friend I met at NAIAS, and I got into a friendly back and forth over whether the Audi A3 was a hatchback or a wagon. I insist that it was a wagon and Aaron insists it is a hatch. My original position is that the A3 is a wagon because of the third rear window. Aaron says no, it is an identical car to the Volkswagen GTI which couldn't be called anything but a hatch.
Now before I go on, I'm going to preempt some of the old timers here. For the sake of this argument, we are going to use body style definitions that apply to cars post.. oh... 1980 or so. That means a sedan is a 4-door and a coupe is a 2-door regardless of the existence of b-pillars or not. For the sake of sanity, we are going to leave out anything that would be considered a cross-over..... yes, I'm looking at you BMW.
2007 Volkswagen GTI - VW N.A.
2008 Audi A3 - Audi N.A.
Aaron further explains that the distinguishing factor is "...rear cargo room. It should be longer than it is tall. Which is not the case with the GTI or the A3."
While I begin to agree, I don't think that is the entire answer.
I started to doubt my "third window makes a wagon" criteria when I realized there were vehicles out there that were most definitely hatches yet still had a third window in the rear. The two examples that immediately come to mind are the Subaru Impreza and the Pontiac Vibe. That defeat in hand, I set out thinking how to define a hatchback opposed to a wagon.
My next thought was about the slope of the rear of the car, thinking that a more gradual slope could be a hatch and a flat back would be a wagon. That idea immediately got torpedoed by the 1996 Roadmaster with its sloping rear glass and the Chevrolet Sonic hatch or the original GTI with their flat backs.
I thought more about the Roadmaster as it was one of the last of the true big wagons from back in the day. What if it had been a hatch? What would a Roadmaster hatchback looked like? Had GM built a Roadmaster hatchback, they would have needed to cut the car off just behind the rear wheels! That would have made the Roadmaster hatch much shorter than the sedan; and there in was the answer.
1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate
So, the definitions I came up with are these:
Wagon - a sedan that had the enclosed passenger area extended around the trunk of the vehicle losing no length in the process.
Hatchback - A coupe or sedan that had its trunk, truncated, typically losing length.
Going back to the A3, this definition holds true. We recently ran an article on the potential A3 sedan coming in the next generation. That sedan would end up being 6 inches longer than the A3 5-door that started this whole debate. The Impreza hatch? 173 inches compared to the 180 of the sedan. The Vibe? 171 inches compared to the 178 inches of the Corolla it was based on.
While there may be some exceptions to the rule, I'm fairly confident that this rule will hold.
So what do you think dear readers? Is my definition fairly sound?
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well... not a turbo anymore.
Audi News: Audi: Hybrids For Fuel Economy, Diesels For Performance
in Volkswagen
Posted
I like. Every additional diesel model offered in the U.S. is a good thing and helps towards greater critical mass.