FAQ Friday: How Does Edmunds Define Crossover, Luxury, High Performance, etc.?
Edmunds' Home and New Cars pages divide vehicles into various "types" (a.k.a. "market segments" or "categories"), which helps readers to quickly focus their car search. Although while many cars' types can be identified just by looking at them (a sedan is pretty obviously a sedan), readers have told us they're sometimes confused: What's the difference between an SUV and a truck, or an SUV and a crossover? What makes a car a hybrid? Confusing consumers more are the automakers that try to create new category names (like "sportback") to make their vehicles stand out from the crowd or to avoid the minivan/wagon stigma.
For our latest article, Defining Vehicle Types, our data and editorial staff put their heads together to develop practical, user-friendly definitions for Convertible, Coupe, Crossover, Diesel, Exotic, Factory Tuner, Hatchback, Hybrid, Luxury, Minivan/Van, Mobility, Performance/High-Performance, Sedan, SUV, Truck and Wagon. For example, if a car's roof continues straight past the rear doors, it's a wagon, but if it dips when it passes the rear doors, it's a hatchback? (Think about it!)
Edmunds has plenty of other ways to categorize vehicles, such as price, size, fuel type, fuel economy, transmission, safety features, consumer ratings, seating capacity, features and so on. (Look down the left-hand side here for an example.) We're working on even more ways to slice and dice the wide, wide, world of cars so that, no matter what you're looking for, we can help you find it.
- Posted by
- Joanne Helperin September 4, 2009, 11:00 AM
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- Car Advice Articles, FAQ Friday
As far as hatch vs wagon, I always defined a hatch as the roof line extending to/past the rear axle.