Sedan vs Coupe: The Difference Is Not As Simple As It Used To Be
Remember when shopping for a new ride meant deciding between a four-door sedan or a sleek but less practical two-door coupe? Well, those days are long gone, and thanks to advanced manufacturing methods, versatile new platforms and the need to fill every niche, the motoring world is packed with body styles your dad wouldn't know what to do with.
However, both the coupe and sedan body styles have been around for decades, and while each has undergone some interesting and sometimes baffling changes, they have largely stayed true to their original forms. We look into the pros and cons of both, as well as how they have evolved over time.
Sedans
The term 'sedan' used to refer to a 17th century conveyance that comprised of a flat base with a row or two of seats, and four poles sticking out of it at each corner. In an automotive context, sedans refer to a four-door three box body shape, with a conventional trunk at the rear and the engine up front.
This body style was first seen in the early 1910s and quickly became a default for front-engined vehicles thanks to its logical and space-saving layout. Vehicles as diverse as the Toyota Corolla, BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz S-Class have all used this body style for decades.
One of the drawbacks of this design is that it separates the cabin from the cargo area, which limits its practicality when trying to load bulky items. Unless, of course, you happened to own a 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 75, which was over 252 inches long and had a trunk that could swallow a small hatchback.
These days sedans are a dying breed, although volume sellers like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord still use this body style, the shift to SUVs has severely eroded the sedan market.
Coupes
A coupe is traditionally a two-door hardtop with a sloping rear roofline which gives it a sporty profile. The word coupe is from the French coupé, meaning "cut," referring to a horse-drawn carriage cut short to seat only two people. Coupe cars were around as early as the 1900s, but it wasn't until the 1930s and 1950s when manufacturers would routinely offer coupes in their model lineup.
While a sedan tends to have its engine up front in most cases, coupes can have them in the front, middle or rear, mostly depending on whether they are based on an existing design, and their intended usage. In the US, the 'Business Coupe' was an early favorite, designed as a two-door vehicle without any rear seats to accommodate a large trunk, it was intended for the traveling salesman and Ford, Chevy and Plymouth all made models like this up until the late 1950s.
And while a coupe certainly looks sportier than a sedan, it doesn't always have seating for just two occupants, there are several popular models out there that offer (small) but usable rear seats as well. The Porsche 911 is one of the most recognizable and most long-lived coupes around, and the only one with a rear-mounted engine and the option of four seats.
While this body style is usually reserved for enthusiast or sporty vehicles, it has also been used to spruce up pedestrian models as well, like the AMC Pacer and low-end variants of the Toyota Corolla and Chevy Nova. Vehicles like the Chevrolet Corvette have been offered as coupes for decades, retaining the rakish two-door profile even when it switched from a front to a mid-engined layout.
Body Style Appropriation
As consumer needs and manufacturing capabilities evolved, some manufacturers began experimenting with hybrid designs that tried to incorporate the best of both styles. Four-door hatchbacks, two-door sedans, and several vehicles with names like "Sportback" and "Liftback" have all tried to combine the practicality of a sedan with the sporty styling of a coupe, some with more success than others.
While vehicles like the Rover SD1 from the 1970s had a five-door hatchback design, it wasn't until the 2004 Mercedes-Benz CLS that the two styles were successfully morphed in to one cohesive design. Called a four-door coupe, the CLS had frameless doors, a swooping rear end with a low roofline, yet it was still spacious enough for four occupants and much more visually striking than the equivalent E-Class sedan.
Since then, there has been the Audi A7, Volkswagen CC, and BMW 4 Series Gran Coupe among many others, and whether they are called four-door sedans/coupes or five-door liftbacks, they are all trying to combine the two rather disparate body styles into one.
The future of sedans and coupes
With sedans a slowly dying breed (apart from the unbeatable Toyota Camry), and coupes mostly limited to sporty and low volume offerings, the rise of the four-door coupe/sedan is sure to continue. Audi recently dropped its A4 sedan and A5 coupe/Sportback, incorporated them into a single four-door coupe model, also helpfully called the A5.
The Tesla Model S has always been a four-door liftback, as is the current generation Acura Integra. But the body style that is truly taking over is the SUV. They have also undergone this body morphing process, once again instigated by German manufacturers, and while the story of the crossover and SUV Coupe is for another day, we are seeing more and more manufacturers gravitating to a do-it-all body style that tries to bring together the best of each body style into one offering.
That relegates both the sedan and coupe to one-trick-pony status, but limited sales figures tend to translate into high desirability once they become classics. Historically, coupes have been the more valuable collector cars, this is partly because the cars themselves were more desirable to begin with, but a sporty silhouette of a coupe body style has a way of making even mundane cars seem more alluring.
Practicality and interior space are less of a concern when you are buying a car as an investment rather than for transport. Sedans tend to be less sought-after, unless you are looking at high performance sporty models like the BMW M5, and there have been quite a few impressive sports sedans over the past few decades. Let's hope that they will be around for many more years to come.
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This story was originally published June 18, 2026 at 12:15 PM.