“Coupe”, or in its French form “coupé”, is originally a technical term referring to the two-door automobile body style. These two-door cars are more of personal uses rather than carrying more than two people, since they have no direct entrance to the second row seats. Consequently, coupes have sleek lines and low roof and often boast better performance. When speaking of coupes, people tend to relate them to high-end, handsome and athletic vehicles.
As the market become more competitive, car makers spare no effort in expanding their products into all segments.Thus, more “mixture type”, mostly referred to as “crossover”, comes into the market. Although the term crossovers are now equivalent to cars with SUV or MPV body style, the original meaning is wider — it refers to cars with features from more than one traditional body style.
Nowadays we say that a high roof mini hatchback is a crossover e.g. M-Benz B-Class; a jacked-up estate car is a crossover e.g. Volvo V90 Cross Country; a low roof line SUV is a crossover e.g. BMW X6. How about the car that has features from sedan and coupe? It is indeed a crossover, but it has a much cooler name: 4-door coupe!
They first car marketed as a 4-door coupe is M-Benz CLS-Class. CLS shares the same chassis as E-Class, but has lower height, sharper roof line and higher price, of course. The word coupe now serves as a metaphor, describing cars with cool design and classy looks, sometimes better performance. Plenty of “coupes” then hit the market e.g. SUV coupe, 5-door coupe, gran coupe.
BMW released the 6-Series Gran Coupe and X6 later on. While 6 GC follows the steps of CLS, X6 is actually the first mover into the SUV coupe. It looks like a X5 with a shaved roof. The similar M-Benz GLE Coupe even has the word “coupe” directly in the name. As for 5-door coupe, the most notable one is Porsche Panamera. It is a large hatchback with a 911-style roof line. The Audi A7 Sportback can also be considered as 5-door coupe. Also, the cars mentioned here are all offered with high performance models e.g. X6M, AMG GLE63 Coupe, Panamera turbo, RS7 Sportback. Mercedes goes even further to introduce AMG GT 4-door as the flagship 4-door coupe. Though it sounds like a AMG GT with two more doors, it is still based on E-Class and thus highly related to CLS.
This marketing trick helps those sport car makers expand into traditional sedan segment. Porsche is the best example of this. Once upon a time Porsche only produced traditional coupes like 911, 928 and Boxter. However, in response to the shrinking profit, Porsche has to offer a larger coverage. That brings us Cayenne, Panamera and Macan. Panamera is actually nothing more than a low-roof sedan, or hatchback to be precise, but Porsche is trying convince customers that it still focuses on exciting performance cars. Apparently, Porsche succeeds.
Seeing from this point, I would suggest that Maserati Quattroporte is indeed the very first 4-door coupe. It has 4 doors, it is low, it is fast, and it looks exotic! However, Maserati still markets its flagship model as sedan today. Perhaps Maserati wants people to think of it as a sedan with high performance, rather than a coupe with plenty of comfort.
So, we will probably see more quirky coupes hit the market someday. Never underestimate the creativity of engineers and marketing officers!
