How Did Hatchback Appear?
It is hard to believe that there were times when the world did not know such an essential thing as the hatchback cars. However, their appearance marked the new époque in the world of automotive industry. Nowadays many of us spell the word car and imagine a hatchback car. How did this well-known car body type appear?
At the moment when a car became fully technically convenient and there were no more problems left to solve, the thing that the cars were missing was the maximally universal car body. This need became very sharp in the middle of the XX century. The times of the individual design have gone and the times of owning a couple of vehicles for different purposes have not come yet. Society needed a car that could have satisfied the needs of as many consumers as possible.
What were the basic demand for that imaginary universal car?
- The salon that would be convenient for not less than 4-5 passengers.
- A small trunk for the basic everyday needs.
- The option of transforming the functional space for the heavy cargo transportations.
- The compactness of the entire vehicle.
- Simple chassis not requiring much expense.
These options could have been received only if the vehicle’s body space was one for the passengers and the trunk. Such two-volume concept have already been tried on universals even before the 1950s. Those universals were made of sedans with the trunk enlarged up to the height of the upper deck. In addition, they were conjoined with the salon with the help of the hard partition removal. But they were too long, bulky and expensive. The average customer needed something more compact and cheap. Therefore, the constructors decided to save on the inner space by making it one for the passengers an t the trunk, to use it in turn for one and another purpose.
The conception was that most of the time it should have been a passenger car. The most space is given to the seats, the little to the trunk. But if there will be a need to transport some luggage, the seats may be folded or even removed. The authors of the hatchback body supposed that such possibility would be occasional.
The hatchback mass production began from the Renault 4L in 1961. Its body had a box shape that contained two seat rows on a light carcass that allowed folding or removing to free the space for the large luggage. Low clearance and the fifth door that took all the back part of the body, allowed the biggest luggage items to be inserted. The chassis also were as simple as it is possible. The car met all the demands of the customers and come into the life of the automotive industry forever.