What is a car body? “A box made of wood, metal or plastic, in which goods and passengers are transported,” the driver will answer. “The most expensive and heavy element of a car,” the designer will add. “All other details are attached to it,” the engineer will clarify. And the designer will say: "the body is a work of art!" Interestingly, each of them will be right in its own way.
Wealth of forms
Under the Union, it was not customary to design a car body different from a sedan (Moskvich, Volga, Zhiguli) and a station wagon (Vaz 2104, Volga 24-13). On the roads of the country mostly only such cars ran. The monotonous stream of twin cars was occasionally diluted with limousines of the government fleet, foreign coupes, roadsters and convertibles. But the appearance of these machines was so rare that it was always perceived as an event, gathering onlookers around itself.
But those days have sunk into oblivion, and today, observing a busy highway, in a couple of minutes you can catch a glimpse of such car body types as fastback, hatchback, notchback, one-, two-, and even three-volume cars, medium-sized cars. And also amazing crossovers with station wagons, convertibles with pickups and SUVs with limousines. There are options where one does not understand at all which car body is used in this case. Indeed, now every automaker considers it his duty to release on one “platform” not three, as before, but three, five or even more different types of models, and it is probably difficult for even the creators to understand their classification.
Body types
A convertible is a passenger car with a soft top and side windows that fall. In international documents, only cars are called convertibles in which the side windows are removed and not lowered.
A cabless is a one-volume body in which the front axle is located behind the center point of the steering wheel. A large number of small Japanese cars, at first glance with a “carriage” layout, are actually bezpotniki. A striking representative of this type is Subaru Sambar.
A chaise is a passenger-type body with a soft awning instead of a roof and removable windows. Confusion is added by the fact that in Germany a cabriolet with a six-seater body, a folding roof and the ability to remove the racks of the side windows was called a chaise.
A van is a car body in which the cargo is separated by a partition from the driver. This type with small changes in the form of removable seats in the cargo compartment and without a partition between the driver and cargo volumes began to be popular since the 90s of the last century.
Combi is a two-volume body in which you can carry both passengers and relatively large loads (with the rear seats folded). The combi rear door facilitates loading and unloading. As you can guess from the name, in this type of body, the designers combined the capabilities of a sedan and a station wagon. Despite the fact that IZH-Combi has been produced for many years, the foreign word “hatchback” has become more popular than the Soviet name, which, unfortunately, has not taken root.
Wagon - a body that has two volumes, passenger and cargo, between which there are no partitions. The rear rows of seats are folding.
Some cars of this type, for example, Reno Espace, can be called one-volume station wagons. So the station wagon is not necessarily two-volume.
Roadsters are a fairly rare type of two-seater body with a soft roof.
Targa - usually a coupe or sedan with the ability to remove the middle part of a hard roof. A striking representative of this type - Porsche 911 Targa and Porsche 914.
Pickup - a cargo-passenger type body on one or two rows of seats, with a rigid partition separating the cargo from passengers, in the back of which there is an open area for cargo.