Quote:
Originally Posted by Diny
It's not?  |
Diny: Coupe is a term that has several interpretations. It can be a 4 door or 2 door hard top car or a convertible.
BMW refers to their 2 door hard tops as coupes and their 2 door coupe convertibles as just convertibles. That is why I used that interpretation. Sorry for the confusion....
Some Jeopardy info below..
History
In the 19th century a coupé was a closed four-wheel horse-drawn
carriage, cut (
coupé) to eliminate the forward, rear-facing passenger seats, with a single seat inside for two persons behind the driver, who sat on a box outside (
see royal carriage illustration, right). Commonly, a coupé had a fixed glass window in the front of the body, protected from road dirt by a high curving dashboard. A
landau is a coupé with a folding top.
Through the 1950s opening-roof
convertible automobiles were sometimes called convertible coupés,
but since the 1960s the term coupé has generally been applied exclusively to fixed-roof models. Coupés generally, but not necessarily, have two doors, although
automobile makers have offered four-door coupés and three- and five-door
hatchback coupés, as well. Modern coupés generally have the styling feature of frameless doors, with the window glass sealing directly against a weather-strip on the main body.
The
SAE distinguishes a coupé from a sedan primarily by interior
volume; SAE standard J1100 defines a coupé as a fixed-roof automobile with less than 33
cubic feet (0.93
cubic meters) of rear interior volume. A car with a greater interior volume is technically a
two-door sedan, not a coupé, even if it has only two doors. Some car manufacturers may nonetheless choose to use the word coupé (or coupe) to describe such a model,
e.g., the
Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
Alternatively, a coupé is distinguished from a two-door sedan by the lack of a "B" pillar to support the roof. Sedans have an "A" pillar forward at the windscreen, a "B" pillar aft of the door, and a "C" pillar defining the aftermost roof support at the rear window. Thus with all side-windows down, a coupé would appear windowless from the "A" to the "C" pillars. These fixed-roof models are described as a
hardtop. A sedan with all its side-windows down would have a fixed "B" pillar, thus detracting the windowless appearance.
. Took it out today as it was 67F in Dayton Ohio. Yeah, it gets hot here once in a while...believe me.
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