[spacemanspif]

Originally Posted by E.Roy

So it appears the sedan is 180.3" long, a whole 5" longer, which to me makes no sense. Why cut down the interior room on a hatch?

I worked at pepboys about a year ago and we had 2 feistas for delivery cars, 1 hatch and 1 sedan. And these cars were the first time I noticed what car companies were doing with these small cars. The sedan definitely had a larger trunk than the hatch and I always thought that the hatchback had a completely useless cargo area.

Best I can tell is that Americans don't like station wagons because of the stigma of being "old lady cars" or whatever. So instead of extending the roof over a sedans trunk, they chop off the trunk and add a door and just like that the magazines call it a "hot hatch" so people want to buy it. In the mean time, people who want a useful vehicle like a wagon are left with nothing but what the Germans have to offer....

To me its stupid to cut a car down but I see tons of hatches running around town all the time. Best I can figure is the salesman says "the sedan has 50cubic ft of cargo space, but the hatch has 62, so its got more space for when you go on vacation with the family" and people eat it up...except the hatch has vertical space that is useless unless you want your luggage falling on top of your children...


Off my soapbox and back topic: The wheel skirt threads all seem to say that skirts have more impact as the wheels get closer to the back of the car. Could the added Cd be from the turbulence caused by the hatch's wheels being closer to the back of the car?