If you want to go back far enough, you’ll find the term ‘Coach’ to mean ‘sedan with only two doors’.
The coupe (and its ragtop version, the roadster) had the ‘bump’ at back, which could be configured as either a trunk or a rumble seat (I told you it was old). The coach was an attempt at having both front and rear seats in the passenger compartment - the back of the car was vertical.
See ‘Model A’ Fords, 1928-1931. The terms are ‘coach’ and ‘tudor’ (two door) for the cheap version of a ‘sedan’.
Want to discuss ‘sedan’ vs ‘hardtop’?
I purchased a “new” car once off the lot that was a new car that someone else had factory ordered and then didn’t take delivery on that had add-ons that weren’t even OEM.
Looking at Google images, it looks like the Evo 9 has the wiper shaft through the rear glass. There’s an image of a low-profile wiper motor mechanism mounted under the package tray in this page.
Packaging this on another sedan shouldn’t be all the difficult, but I’d worry about air and water leak prevention over the long term for something like that going through the glass. Cars have water drainage all over the place that you don’t notice, but in this case the water would drip onto the package tray, and any air leaks would annoying you inside the passenger compartment.
No, “Tudor” was the name for the styling (such as it was), unrelated to number of doors. I learned to drive a stick on a 1929 Model A Tudor Sedan. 4 doors. They also made a Tudor Coupe, with 2 doors and a rumble seat.
By the 40’s, rumble seats were out, and “coupe” meant 2 doors.
IIUC, coupe applies to both 2-seaters and cars with back seats.
This is the obvious reason, and yes there is a big difference on the amount of water and crud that builds up on a sedan’s rear window then that of a station wagon or SUV, night and day difference. One air stream is coming over the top of the car, the other is mixed with the water coming from underneath, including the water spray by the tires, which are high speed water pumps, shooting water into the air and off the road, along with road grit.
I never felt the need for one in a sedan, but in a vehicle with a flatter rear window, it is needed at times.
I came in to post exactly this. I had a Ford Orion as my first car, although mine did not have a rear wiper. The Orion was the Saloon (Sedan) version of the Hatchback Escort, most of which (not all) had rear wipers. Note that after a certain point in time (presumably before 1993 going by the “L” registered vehicle in the photo), Ford dropped the Orion name and called them all Escorts, hence the car shown in The Angry Badger’s photo having an Escort badge.
My two previous cars were sedans, and both “should” have had a wiper. It was a big waste of energy to use the rear window heater to get rid of morning dew when I forgot to wipe it with a rag (as I invariably did). Now I have a hatchback with a wiper, and I haven’t used the window heater in months.
I got a hatchback a couple of years ago (LOVE it!) and for the first time in my life it has a rear wiper. Ok, it is the tiniest rear wiper in the entire world, but it’s because of the trunk. In my old Corolla there really wasn’t any place to put the mount.
Not sure you can make such a claim, the energy used is minuscule, especially if they would install a defroster anyway, the energy required to manufacture and install the wiper mechanism + the actual energy the thing uses I would think would far outweigh the electrical energy that the defroster would use. Additionally the wiper motor is heavier so a heavier car and more fuel needed to move the car. In that the 2 in 1 electric defroster could save energy.
Now if you want to talk about the time it takes and a possible a bump in safety, yes a wipe would be faster. The bump in safety is also questionable as the defroster may take longer however it usually gives a more complete field of view.
The defroster uses quite a lot of juice. It’s got to get pretty hot, remember. It’s certainly more than one or two strokes of the wiper. The wiper assembly weighs 524 grams (I just looked it up), so the impact on the overall vehicle weight is negligible.
Here is a link to a webpage showing several vehicles (saloons and hatchbacks) with rear wipers.
Several of the vehicles are hatchbacks - nothing unusual about a rear wiper there.
One of the vehicles could be a “fake” - I don’t recall the original Austin Mini ever having a rear wiper. But I believe all these are genuine:
Honda Prelude (Top picture) - Several versions of the Prelude had rear wipers on the saloon.
Fiat Tempra (Red car sixth picture down)
The Mazda 323 (blue car second picture, white car tenth picture)
I believe several versions of Nissan Skylines had rear wipers (red car, twelfth picture)
Not sure about the Peugeot 306 (Beige car, thirteenth) but the 406 saloon sometimes had a factory rear wiper.
Can’t find a picture but I believe the Ford Mondeo saloon sometimes had a rear wiper. In the same era as the previously mentioned Ford Orion.
The list I have given includes Japanese, German, Italian and French cars.
Note that while a car (saloon) is MOVING the aerodynamics can clear the rear screen but if a car has been parked somewhere overnight and dew or rain has covered the rear screen then a rear wiper is a godsend to those too lazy or too forgetful to manually wipe it before getting settled behind the wheel.
The one thing I can take away from all those pictures (good find, BTW) is that they all look a little bit wrong.
I don’t know why - I think it’s because there’s something sticking out of the inside of a corner - but it just doesn’t look good.
Combined with the fact that they’re not needed so much, I have to wonder if the reason they don’t usually have them is aesthetic as much as anything else.
Well that I agree with. A station wagon isn’t a sedan. But I’m pretty sure it’s a car. Admittedly the dividing lines are arbitrary and not always clear. Is an El Camino a car with a truck bed or a truck with car-like front end? What separates a minivan from a large SUV? But a station wagon is still a car.
