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A coupe or coupé (kuːˈpeɪ, kuːp) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term coupé was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past participle of couper, "cut". TOC Coupé (kupe) is based on the past participle of the French verb couper ("to cut") and thus indicates a car which has been "cut" or made shorter than standard. It was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. These berlines coupés or carrosses coupés ("clipped carriages") were eventually clipped to coupés. There are two common pronunciations in English: kuːˈpeɪ () – the anglicized version of the French pronunciation of coupé. kuːp () – as a spelling pronunciation when the word is written without an accent. This is the usual pronunciation and spelling in the United States, with the pronunciation entering American vernacular no later than 1936 and featuring in the Beach Boys' hit 1963 song "Little Deuce Coupe". A coupe is a fixed-roof car with a sloping rear roofline and one or two rows of seats. However, there is some debate surrounding whether a coupe must have two doors for passenger egress or whether cars with four doors can also be considered coupes. This debate has arisen since the early 2000s, when four-door cars such as the Mazda RX-8 and Mercedes-Benz CLS-Class have been marketed as "four-door coupes" or "quad coupes", although the Rover P5 was a much earlier example, with a variant introduced in 1962 having a lower, sleeker roofline marketed as the Rover P5 Coupé. In the 1940s and 1950s, coupes were distinguished from sedans by their shorter roof area and sportier profile. Similarly, in more recent times, when a model is sold in both coupe and sedan body styles, generally the coupe is sportier and more compact. The 1977 version of International Standard ISO 3833—Road vehicles - Types - Terms and definitions—defines a coupe as having two doors (along with a fixed roof, usually with limited rear volume, at least two seats in at least one row and at least two side windows).

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Related concepts (4)

Coupe

Sedan (automobile)

A sedan or saloon (British English) is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo. The first recorded use of sedan in reference to an automobile body occurred in 1912. The name derives from the 17th-century litter known as a sedan chair, a one-person enclosed box with windows and carried by porters. Variations of the sedan style include the close-coupled sedan, club sedan, convertible sedan, fastback sedan, hardtop sedan, notchback sedan, and sedanet/sedanette.

Car

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