The coupé got its name from carriages that were literally cut short
The word coupé means cut. It first described shortened horse-drawn carriages with no rear-facing seat, then passed to cars with a sloping or clipped roofline, usually with two doors. Since the 2000s marketers have stretched it to four-door saloons and even SUVs, and car critics have pushed back.
In the 18th century coachbuilders trimmed the berline carriage into a shorter version with no backward-facing seat, usually with a fixed glass window at the front of the cabin. These berlines coupées soon became simply coupés, and they were thought ideal for women going shopping or paying social calls. Early coupé cars copied the layout, with the driver out in the open and two passengers enclosed behind him on a bench.
By the 1910s the name had settled on enclosed two-door cars holding the driver plus one or two passengers on a single bench, and in 1916 the Society of Automobile Engineers defined a coupe as an enclosed car seating two or three, sometimes with a fourth seat facing backward. The 1977 edition of the ISO 3833 standard insisted on two doors and a fixed roof. Americans had adopted the one-syllable pronunciation by 1936, and the Beach Boys sang about a Little Deuce Coupe in 1963.
Variants multiplied. Club coupes offered a full-width back seat reached by tipping the front seatbacks forward, hardtops dropped the pillar between the side windows, and some late-1930s American coupes had no rear seat at all, leaving room for travelling salespeople to carry their stock. Opera coupes sometimes included a compartment for top hats. The 1932 Ford three-window coupe became the classic hot rod.
Four doors reopened the argument. The Nash Advanced Six was offered as a four-door coupe back in 1927, but the idea really spread after the 2005 Mercedes-Benz CLS, followed by cars such as the 2010 Audi A7. Their low rooflines cost back-seat headroom, and the guide Edmunds declared that the category does not really exist. Carmakers now also sell coupe SUVs with four side doors and a hatch.
Source: Coupe
