A sedan or saloon (British English) is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo. The first recorded use of sedan in reference to an automobile body occurred in 1912. The name derives from the 17th-century litter known as a sedan chair, a one-person enclosed box with windows and carried by porters. Variations of the sedan style include the close-coupled sedan, club sedan, convertible sedan, fastback sedan, hardtop sedan, notchback sedan, and sedanet/sedanette.
Definition
A sedan () is a car with a closed body (i.e. a fixed metal roof) with the engine, passengers, and cargo in separate compartments. This broad definition does not differentiate sedans from various other car body styles, but in practice, the typical characteristics of sedans are: a B-pillar (between the front and rear windows) that supports the roof; two rows of seats; a three-box design with the engine at the front and the cargo area at the rear; a less steeply sloping roofline than a coupé, which results in increased headroom for rear passengers and a less sporting appearance; and a rear interior volume of at least .
It is sometimes suggested that sedans must have four doors (to provide a simple distinction between sedans and two-door coupés); others state that a sedan can have four or two doors. While the sloping rear roofline defined the coupe, the design element has become common on many body styles with manufacturers increasingly "cross-pollinating" the style so that terms such as sedan and coupé have been loosely interpreted as "'four-door coupes' - an inherent contradiction in terms."
When a manufacturer produces two-door sedan and four-door sedan versions of the same model, the shape and position of the greenhouse on both versions may be identical, with only the B-pillar positioned further back to accommodate the longer doors on the two-door versions.
Etymology
A sedan chair, a sophisticated litter, was an enclosed box with windows used to transport one seated person. Porters at the front and rear carried the chair with horizontal poles. Litters date back to long before ancient Egypt, India, and China. Sedan chairs were developed in the 1630s. Etymologists suggest the name of the chair very probably came through varieties of Italian from the Latin sedere, meaning "to sit".
The first recorded use of sedan for an automobile body occurred in 1912 when the Studebaker Four and Studebaker Six models were marketed as sedans. There were fully enclosed automobile bodies before 1912. Long before that time, the same fully enclosed but horse-drawn carriages were known as a brougham in the United Kingdom, berline in France, and berlina in Italy; the latter two have become the terms for sedans in these countries. It is sometimes stated that the 1899 Renault Voiturette Type B (a 2-seat car with an extra external seat for a footman/mechanic) was the first sedan, since it is the first known car to be produced with a roof. A one-off instance of a similar coachwork is also known in a 1900 De Dion-Bouton Type D.
A sedan is typically considered to be a fixed-roof car with at least four seats. Based on this definition, the earliest sedan was the 1911 Speedwell, which was manufactured in the United States.
International terminology
In American English, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese, the term sedan is used (accented as sedán in Spanish). In British English, a car of this configuration is called a saloon (). Hatchback sedans are known simply as hatchbacks (not hatchback saloons); long-wheelbase luxury saloons with a division between the driver and passengers are limousines.
In Australia and New Zealand, sedan is now predominantly used, they were previously simply cars. In the 21st century, saloon is still found in the long-established names of particular motor races. In other languages, sedans are known as berline (French), berlina (European Spanish, European Portuguese, Romanian, and Italian), though they may include hatchbacks. These names, like the sedan, all come from forms of passenger transport used before the advent of automobiles. In German, a sedan is called Limousine and a limousine is a Stretch-Limousine.