2-Door Timeline: Here’s How Coupes Have Evolved Over the Years

Although it might seem like a simple, straightforward term, the word “coupe” has grown to describe a startling array of automotive body styles.

The two-door template remains, at the core, how coupes are presented to the public, but many variations on the theme play around with passenger space, the shape of the silhouette, how you load in your cargo, and yes, whether there’s an extra door or two thrown into the mix.

Let’s take a deep drive into the history, the evolution, and the current status of the coupe.

The word “coupe” is derived from “carosse coupé,” a French term that was applied to carriages that had been sliced in size from large to small back when horses were still pulling passenger duty on streets all over the world. Over time, as carriages gave way to carriage-work and the nascent automobile industry began sprouting up all over Europe, “coupe” was borrowed to describe cars that featured a shorter, more truncated body as compared to their larger, four-door counterparts, and the accent was lost along the way.

Originally, coupes featured a two-door design, which separated them from four-door “sedans” that used their extra entry points to facilitate access the rear seats. Each of these vehicles also, for the most part, came with a fixed roof. Some coupes eliminated the rear seat altogether, choosing instead to focus the passenger compartment on a pair of occupants (most typically in sporty models).

One other element of coupe design that can be traced back to the carriage days is the translation of their chopped rear quarters into a sloping roofline that tapers toward the rear of the vehicle.

There are many other variations on how a traditional two-door coupe should look. These include features such as “hardtop” designs (which lack a B-pillar supporting the roof); a small, rear-hinged door to access the back seats (as in the Mazda RX-8); 2+2 passenger compartments (marked by a full-length center console that separates both the front and rear seats); and business coupes (which swapped out the back bench for a larger cargo area, often with direct access to the trunk).

There are also “fastbacks” (like the Jaguar E-Type and the original Ford Mustang) that included a severe roof slope that continued all the way to the back bumper. Some cars also borrow coupe styling while adding a hatch, though the vast majority of coupes feature a traditional trunk.

There’s a uniquely British class of vehicle dubbed the “drophead coupe,” which subverts the convention that this class of vehicle requires a fixed roof. A drophead coupe combined a convertible top, a two-door body style, and at least four passenger seats. Sealing the deal out back is an acute slope to the vehicle’s rear deck. The overall look imitates the appearance of a coupe but includes a soft, folding top.

Car designers are always looking to stand out from the crowd, so it’s no surprise that some automakers experimented with borrowing coupe elements and adding them to a four-door body as far back as the 1930s. These cars were often referred to as fastbacks and included models from Tatra, Plymouth, Hudson, and Lincoln. Never as popular as their two-door equivalents, the four-door fastback nevertheless hung around in the following decades, producing the occasional oddball like the first-generation Volkswagen Passat and the Citroën CX, vehicles that walked the line between hatchback and sedan with their coupelike roof.

Starting in the mid-2000s, a revival of four-door cars with coupe silhouettes began in earnest, triggered by the success of the Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class. In most cases, these cars avoided hatches (which had low-market connotations) and instead included a vestigial trunk to go with their plunging rooflines. Marketers dubbed these models “four-door coupes,” and while some of this styling language continues today, many of these models have evolved into “sportbacks” and “gran coupes,” which is how luxury companies like Porsche, Audi, and BMW prefer to label their high-dollar hatchbacks.

Hot on the heels of the four-door coupe craze came the concept of SUV coupes. Although a very small number of these vehicles adhered to the traditional two-door definition of a coupe (like the Land Rover Range Rover Evoque), the vast majority simply grafted a plunging roofline onto a lifted hatchback body style. The earliest examples included the BMW X6 and the Acura ZDX, but today, there are many models on the market that trade utility for style by slicing off headroom and cargo space with sharply angled rear styling.

Regardless of the number of doors or the exact details of their body shape, coupes have typically been sold to the public based on three main criteria.

The first is style. A two-door shape is often more pleasing to the eye than a four-door one because of the freedom its designers have to make the sheetmetal longer and sleeker. This impression carries over even to coupes that are simply traditional truncations of sedans, allowing a car company to sell the sizzle of a dynamic look despite pedestrian origins.

Next is luxury. Who is richer than the driver who doesn’t need easy access to the back seat? The two-door as status symbol gradually sprouted an entire industry of “personal luxury” coupes that presented the body style as an insulated oasis from the hoi polloi.

Finally, there’s the sportiness embodied by cars that only require enough interior space for a driver and perhaps a navigator, forgoing the rear passenger quarters entirely. Sport coupes trade convenience and practicality for their smaller size, lighter weight, and increased performance, and in doing so help dust nearly every other coupe with a little bit of adrenaline and excitement, at least in terms of image.

There’s one more angle car companies used to push coupes onto customers, and that’s price. It stands to reason that a car with fewer doors and (in many cases) a smaller size would cost less to build, and automakers were happy to position cheaper compact and midsize coupes at the bottom of their price pyramids as basic transportation for buyers who only needed to get from A to B with minimal fuss. In fact, the Ford Mustang—which has long since evolved into a symbol of sporty styling—was originally intended as exactly this type of conveyance, only gaining its muscle reputation once its popularity exploded past its humble origins.

In the market for a coupe of your own? MotorTrend offers a long list of resources dedicated to helping you pick up the two-door (or even four-door) coupe that matches your driving needs. Click here to read our thoughts on the best coupes currently available, ranging from the Ford Mustang performance coupe to the luxurious BMW 2 Series to the exclusive Porsche 911.