Car Body Styles Explained: Sedan, Coupe, Convertible, SUV, Van

A car's body style is the shape of the passenger compartment and the volumes attached to it — how many rows of seats, how many doors, whether the roof is fixed, and whether the luggage rides in a sealed boot, under a tailgate, or in an open bed. It describes the box, not the badge, the price or the engine.

That is the whole definition, and it is worth having straight because almost every argument about body styles is really an argument about marketing. A manufacturer will call a five-door hatchback a coupe if the roof slopes enough. A rental site will file a four-door saloon under Sports Cars because it is quick. Neither is lying exactly; they are describing something other than the shape.

What follows is the shape. We run about sixty cars in Los Angeles across seven of these bodies, so every section below ends with what the label means when somebody is standing in front of the car with a suitcase — which is the only test that has ever mattered.

The three-box idea, which explains most of it

Before the marketing names, there is a simple bit of geometry. Look at a car in profile and count the boxes: engine, cabin, luggage.

• Three boxes — a bonnet, a cabin and a separate boot with its own lid. That is a saloon, which Americans call a sedan.
• Two boxes — a bonnet and one continuous volume behind it, opened by a tailgate that includes the rear window. Hatchbacks, estates and every SUV on earth.
• One box — the windscreen starts almost above the front wheels and everything behind it is cabin. Vans and people carriers.

Count the boxes and you have placed the car before anybody says a word about it. Everything else — doors, roof, ride height — is a modifier on top.

Sedan and coupe: it was never about the number of doors

A sedan is the three-box car: four doors, a fixed roof, and a boot that is a separate sealed volume from the cabin. It is the default shape of the twentieth century and it survives because the sealed boot is genuinely useful — luggage out of sight, cabin noise out of the boot, and a shape that parks predictably.

A coupe is the same idea with the roof pulled down and the cabin shortened, historically with two doors. The two-door part is the bit everyone treats as the definition and it is the bit manufacturers abandoned twenty years ago. The proportion is the definition: a low roof, a long rear deck, and a cabin pushed backwards. Doors are a consequence, not a rule.

We have one of each argument sitting in the same garage. The AMG GT 43 has four doors and a hatchback tailgate and Mercedes sells it as a four-door coupe, which sounds like nonsense until you stand next to it and see that the roofline is a coupe's roofline. Meanwhile the Audi RS3 is a four-door saloon with five seats that every rental site on the internet, ours included, files under sports cars. The label on the website is a shopping aisle. The body style is the car.

Convertible, roadster, cabriolet, targa

All four mean "the roof comes off". They are not interchangeable, and the differences decide who can come with you.

Term	What it actually specifies	Here
Convertible	The umbrella term. A roof that folds or retracts, fabric or metal	Twelve cars here
Roadster	A convertible with two seats and no pretence of a back row	BMW Z4, Porsche 718 Boxster
Cabriolet	A convertible built on a car that also exists with a fixed roof, usually with rear seats	BMW 430i, Audi S5, Ford Mustang, MINI Cooper
Spider / Spyder	The Italian word for the same thing, used on mid-engined cars	Huracán Evo Spider, Huracán Spider
Drophead coupé	Rolls-Royce's own word for a convertible with four seats and a fabric roof	Rolls-Royce Dawn
Targa	A fixed roll hoop with a removable panel between it and the windscreen — not a folding roof at all	Chevrolet Corvette coupé

The targa is the term that catches people out, and one of ours is one. The roof panel above your head in the Corvette coupé lifts out by hand and stows in the boot behind the engine — a couple of minutes of work rather than a button at a traffic light, which puts the coupé and the convertible far closer together than the two words suggest. We wrote that comparison out in full in Corvette coupé versus convertible.

The practical rule for Los Angeles: a roadster is a decision about who is not coming, and a cabriolet is not. If a third person exists, the two-seat cars are out of the conversation before the colour is discussed.

SUV and crossover, which are not the same word

An SUV in the original sense is a two-box vehicle with a raised ride height built on a separate ladder frame, the way a truck is built. A crossover is the same two-box shape and the same raised ride height built on a car floorpan, in one piece, the way a saloon is built.

Almost everything sold as an SUV today is a crossover, including nearly every one in this fleet. The exceptions are the two that came from somewhere else: the Jeep Wrangler and the G-Class, both of which are still built on a frame because both are descended from military vehicles rather than from saloons.

Does the distinction matter to somebody renting for four days? Rarely, and it is worth saying so rather than inflating it. A crossover rides better, is quieter, corners flatter and parks more easily. A body-on-frame car tolerates being driven up something rough and looks like it would. Unless the plan involves dirt, the crossover is the better car and the word is the only thing you lose.

Van, minivan and truck

A minivan is a one-box passenger vehicle on a car floorpan, with sliding rear doors and a low floor you step onto rather than climb into. The sliding doors are the whole point: they open in a space narrower than the car, which is why a minivan works in a Los Angeles parking structure where an SUV's rear door does not.

A van in the full sense is a commercial vehicle — taller, longer, built on a frame, walk-through inside. Ours is a Sprinter converted to carry people in individual chairs rather than to carry parcels, which is a different vehicle from the same shell.

A truck, in the American sense, has a cabin and a separate open bed behind it, and the bed is not part of the cabin's air. That is the definition and it is the reason the Cybertruck is a truck no matter how little it resembles one: five seats in front, six feet of open bed behind, a wall between them.

What the body style does not tell you

Two things, and both catch people out at the counter.

The first is size class. Body style and size are separate axes, and the official American definitions have nothing to do with either badge or shape. The EPA classifies cars by the interior passenger and cargo volume and classifies trucks by gross vehicle weight rating, as set out in the EPA's own explanation of its vehicle size classes. One consequence surprises everybody: in that system an SUV is a truck, and so is a minivan. If a form, an insurer or a parking structure treats your crossover as a truck, that is why.

The second is seat count. A four-seat convertible and a four-seat saloon are not the same offer, because getting into the back of a two-door car past a folded front seat is a different experience from opening a door.

Which body for which day in Los Angeles

The day	The body	Why
Airport pick-up for four with luggage	Three-row SUV or minivan	Boot space behind the last row is the only number that matters
Pacific Coast Highway, two people	Roadster or cabriolet	The roof is the reason for the drive
Business days, one or two people	Sedan	Sealed boot, quiet cabin, parks anywhere, invisible in a forecourt
A canyon road and a camera	Coupé	The proportions photograph better than anything else on this list
Nine people arriving together	Van	One vehicle instead of a convoy of three
Anything involving dirt or a rooftop box	Body-on-frame SUV or truck	The only two bodies designed for it rather than around it

Every body in the fleet, sorted → Convertibles, roadsters and cabriolets in Los Angeles →