With the rise of EVs, we’ve talked before about how the word “frunk” is becoming part of our vocabulary, yet while this change is happening there’s another historic shift occurring within the automotive world.
Cars with traditional trunks are disappearing. The Chevy Malibu is the last gasoline-powered American sedan you can buy with one, and it’s going off to live with its SS454 great uncle up in the sky very soon. The shift to crossovers has relegated the traditional trunk-equipped sedan to a small minority of vehicles, and even most of those have such sharp “fastback” rooflines that it’s only a matter of time before they’ll finally end up with the hatchbacks anyone can see they desperately need.
Hot take: I think the sedan has not breathed its last. I do, however, think that in the future it’s going to be very different, and I’m not entirely happy about where I think it might go.
Give ‘Em The Boot
It’s sort of hard to believe how long cars have had trunks. The whole idea seems to date back to cars from a hundred years ago with an added-on box stuck to the rear of the passenger compartment for luggage; car design seemed to just integrate that into the basic form of postwar cars and it just stuck.
From a logical standpoint, a two-box shape vehicle can hold so much more than a three-box, yet there are benefits to a traditional trunk which people still like. Anything you put in there is protected from prying eyes. Smelly wet golf clubs won’t spread their odor into the passenger compartment. Road noise from the rear tires is typically cut down. Your Uber driver can stuff luggage in there without giving you a chill that an open SUV hatch would.
Back in the seventies, hatchbacks were briefly a popular thing until manufacturers released versions of the same cars with traditional trunks that just cleaned up in the sales department. General Motors famously offered hatchback-looking sedans (that weren’t hatchbacks at all) which the public soundly rejected; once they put normal-looking trunks on the back instead sales skyrocketed.
After launching the three-door hatchback, Honda later offered a notchback four door Accord. This thing was an instant, runaway success that dealers marked up to absurd levels; it would ultimately outsell the hatch and push it out of the lineup a decade later.
At about the same time, Volkswagen stuck a trunk onto the back of the world-beating Golf/Rabbit and called it the Jetta. Like the Accord, it eventually put paid to the hatchback models that spawned it.
History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it seems to happen just when you least expect it to, and in ways you wish that it didn’t.
Trunkenstein
Car design seems to be influenced by functional advancements (like aerodynamics) as much as pure aesthetic trends (tailfins, those stupid weird shapes on “C” pillars of current cars) in a desperate effort to be “different”. Sometimes it’s a bit of both. If you look at the way pickups and crossovers are used today, as well as how they tend to appear very similar, that points to a possible odd trajectory in their future.
First, let’s look at most pickups you see on the road today (at least in urban areas). The vast majority keep it classy by having the cargo bed totally covered. At the same time, most crossovers provide a “privacy” roll-out cover that’s almost always closed to hide the contents from passers-by. This all points to a desire for making a more secure area for cargo in these vehicles, but it’s not like you’d make a pickup with a regular trunk in back, right? Who would even think of doing that? Brazil, apparently. Ford trucks in this South American nation were subject to some very bizarre modifications from independent contractors.
From 1979 to the late eighties, Ford of Brazil sold the F-1000; this was essentially a Fifth Generation 1967-72 American Ford F-series reborn with odd attempting-to-look-updated trim details (c0mposite headlights! grey lower cladding! black window trim!). Coachbuilder SR Veículos Especials made this already bizarre machine even stranger by converting it to the F-1000 Deserter SR XK. At first glance, the Deserter looks like an AI image created from typing in the wrong prompts, but it’s a real vehicle. That’s a car-like trunk lid stuck on the back over the short bed.
For whatever reason, they didn’t make one or two Deserters and then had to crush them out of shame. No, they must have found enough takers that later another outside fabricator named Tropical Cabines took a big Ford F-250 truck, chopped the tail, and added a trunk lid and taillights that appear to have been taken off of a Focus sedan. Once again, I don’t know how many Ford F-250 Tropiclassics were actually created, but the answer appears to be “a hell of a lot more than you would think”.
Surprisingly, there were some “trunked” trucks and crossovers sold here in the US many years back, though they didn’t catch on. The funky two-seater Suzuki X-90 featured a trunk, and earlier generations of the Subaru Legacy Outback offered a standard sedan version alongside the much more popular wagon.
Naturally, this was a few decades ago, and much has changed in that time; the term “crossover” didn’t even exist back then. Also, back in the nineties, people would likely find it unthinkable that anyone thirty years later would be drawn to a jacked-up sort-of-truck “coupe” with a fastback for no particular reason, yet here we are. People actually buy these:
Why do people put these strange-looking conveyances in their driveways? My guess is that they’re trying to escape the “station wagon” feel of a typical SUV and somehow appear different. If that’s the case, will trunk-backed crossovers be next? I had to get a glimpse of just how bad this could be. Get ready for some Sport Utility Sedans, or SUS; I can’t think of a more appropriate name in this case.
Trunk In The Junk
We could certainly search for various SUVs or crossovers that might, maybe, lend themselves best to the add-a-trunk treatment. On the other hand, we could just get whatever utes I can find pictures big enough to Photoshop and proceed. Let’s absolutely do the latter.
The Nissan Rogue fits the “average crossover” wallpaper appearance norm pretty well, so it’s a good one to start with. We’ll lower the roof a bit over the tops of the doors, move the rear backlight forward, and somehow try to make this thing work. Taillights have to move down lower on what is now the trunk lid, and I’ve increased rear overhang just slightly.
Whoa, the Toyota Grand Highlander “sedan” looks a bit odd, but then again with that massive grille and blocky fenders, it’s not like you’re ever going to turn it into a Series III XJ6 any time soon. The extra mass of the rear cargo area on the standard Highlander sort of helps balance the heavy front end and…nah, you’d need a two-story building on the back of it to “balance” out that big face. Honestly, the grille-for-days part of this thing is far more objectionable than the roofline ever could be. Woof!
When I think “Buick” I always see a sedan. I know they’re trying desperately to dispel the image of a handicapped tag hanging from the mirror in a Cracker Barrel parking lot, but if there’s any brand that could use cars with trunks it seems like Buicks would be first in line to get fitted with one. Let’s try one of the little sport-utes, the Envision (full disclosure: such is my disinterest that I had to go back to the website twice to remember what these things were called). More overhang, moved the backlight, lowered the roof. I didn’t even move the taillights:
Here the larger (and soon to be replaced) Enclave gets the same treatment; the fender bulges work surprisingly well. I mean, it still looks ridiculous, but better than I expected, like the equivalent of a fender bender and not a near-fatal car wreck.
Yes, I’ll stop now, but you get the idea. I actually spared you from a few that were even worse. You’re welcome.
Get The Trunk Out Ma Face
Years ago, our parents saw someone with slightly flared jeans, and then within months some of them were wearing pants that made them look like elephants. Dynasty came on around your bedtime; your mom watched it religiously and weeks later she was wearing blouses that made her look like an American football player. The quest for the “next big thing” and “being different” can take us in odd directions.
Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but at some point buyers will hanker for a vehicle that isn’t a five-door SUV or a pickup truck. Minivans were once The Thing To Have but then over time became social albatrosses when they appeared everywhere; it’s easy to believe once-cool “outdoorsy” crossovers and SUVs will do the same thing. The escalating heights of new cars mean they can’t go back to a sedan with traffic towering above them (or so they think), so it’s possible that these odd Frankensteins could become a thing.
Prove me wrong. Please.