This is a query we get on a semi-regular foundation: “What the hell is a shooting brake?” We admit, we do not often cease to outline the time period after we use it, and that is principally as a result of the elevated coronary heart fee, dilated pupils, and endorphin rush we expertise may, probably, be impeding our writing skills.
Let’s begin at the start.
Reading: What is a shooting brake
Also Read: Shelby gt350 vs c8 corvette
Table of Contents
HISTORY
The time period “shooting brake” comes from turn-of-the-century England, the place it referred to a automotive used to move a searching occasion and its gear. “Brake” referred to a chassis that was used to interrupt in horses. It will definitely simply got here to check with early wagons on the whole.
Within the latter half of the twentieth century, automakers had been a option to distinguish new vehicles just like the Volvo 1800ES and the Reliant Scimitar GTE from bigger five-door wagons and boxier hatchbacks. Trying again at the old fashioned shooting brakes they seen that the originals all solely had two doorways. Thus was the fashionable concept of a shooting brake born as a low, modern two-door wagon.
Also Read: How to rotary engines work
The press took discover with The New York Instances describing the bodystyle as “a sleek wagon with two doors and sports-car panache, its image entangled with European aristocracy, fox hunts and baying hounds” in 2006. Peter Horbury, the designer who led Volvo’s ’90s resurgence and who has not too long ago returned to the corporate, describes the idea nicely:
“[A Shooting Brake] is not your basic two-door hatchback, a body style with different proportions; the hatchback tends to be squatty, while a shooting brake is sleek and has ‘a very interesting profile.’ It makes use of the road space it covers a little better than a normal coupé, and also helps the rear person with headroom. Especially in America, every member of the family has their own car. The occasional use of the rear seat means you can do one of these cars, even if such a wagon lacks the everyday practicality of four doors.”
Also Read: Shelby gt350 vs c8 corvette
NOTABLE SHOOTING BRAKES
1960 Sunbeam Alpine Shooting Brake1965 Aston Martin DB5 Shooting Brake by Harold Radford 1968 Reliant Scimitar GTE1972 Volvo 1800ES1992 Aston Martin Virage Shooting Brake2004 Chevrolet Nomad Concept2006 Volvo C302008 Volkswagen Scirocco2008 Renault Mégane2011 Ferrari FF 2014 Volvo Idea Property
Also Read: Shelby gt350 vs c8 corvette
WHY WE FETISHIZE THEM SO MUCH
Also Read: How to fix scratched car
In each automotive critic is an inner battle; on one hand, we wish each automotive to be a hardcore, mid-engined monster on stiff suspension that will get 4 gallons per mile on account of a 14.4L V16. And on the opposite, we critically see the necessity for vehicles that may deal with all of life’s conditions. Most individuals can solely afford one automotive, so it must do the whole lot.
The shooting brake, in its trendy format, could be regarded as a 2+2 sports activities coupe with an prolonged roofline. Correctly completed, it retains the low roof and modern traces of a coupe, thus retaining the intercourse enchantment, however provides a number of the practicality of a wagon. There’s a ton extra cargo house, and the rear seats are appropriate for folks with heads, however the lack of intercourse enchantment inherent with these two sensible considerations is not there. Vehicles just like the VW Scirocco could be on a regular basis vehicles with out compromising both enjoyable or working into fixed annoyances of practicality.
Regardless of that, from a vital viewpoint, they’re incredible, there aren’t many shooting brakes available on the market. Within the U.S., the Volvo C30 was axed not too long ago, VW will not deliver us the Scirocco, there isn’t any level in even imagining that we would be able to purchase a Renault Mégane RS, and the Mercedes-Benz CLS Shooting Brake is really simply a wagon. The one new shooting brake you should buy within the USA proper now is the Ferrari FF, and that is actually not attainable.
This is the important thing to the place the press’ enthusiasm turns into a fetish: we like shooting brakes, we really feel simply influential sufficient to have an inflated opinion of the worth and energy of our personal opinions, and we’re always denied the few shooting brakes that do exist. The fixed craving with out even a lot as a press drive, for the reason that American press actually does not do something for French gross sales, results in this bizarre pleasure at any time when one thing just like the Volvo Idea Property is revealed.
So to Volvo we are saying this: do not flip the Idea Property into one more boring CUV. Go away it as is, make it AWD or RWD and create a cult basic just like the 1800ES earlier than it.
Also Read: Shelby gt350 vs c8 corvette
