Sedan (automobile)
passenger car in a three-box configuration
A sedan (American English), or saloon (British English), is a passenger car in a three-box configuration with separate compartments for an engine, passengers, and cargo. Variations of the sedan style include the close-coupled sedan, club sedan, convertible sedan, fastback sedan, hardtop sedan, notchback sedan, and sedanet.
The sedan name derives from the 17th-century litter known as a "sedan chair", a one-person enclosed box with windows carried by porters. The first recorded use of the term sedan to describe an automobile body style occurred in 1912.
Definition
A sedan () is a car with a closed body (i.e., a fixed metal roof) with the engine, passengers, and cargo in separate compartments. This broad definition does not differentiate sedans from various other car body styles. In practice, the typical characteristics of sedans include the following:
A B-pillar (between the front and rear windows) that supports the roof.
Two rows of seats for passengers.
A three-box design with the engine at the front and the cargo area at the rear, although many exceptions exist.
A less steeply sloping roofline than a coupé results in increased headroom for rear passengers and a less streamlined appearance.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sedan (automobile)” as passenger car in a three-box configuration. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q190578. The Library of Congress control number is sh87000403. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sedan (automobile)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.