Gadgetory

first the basic body styles a sedan is a four-door a coupe is a two-door convertible can be converted from clothes to open regardless of the number of doors a stationwagon is a sedan with a rear box but there have also been two-door wagons and a hardtop is a four-door with no center pillar but it's sort of an archaic term now the fender hood bumper cover grill if your car has one combine together and called the front clip I've heard a lot of explanations for the term none of them make sense bender used to mean the kind of outboard fenders you imagine on a vintage car they originally were there to keep stuff from flying off the tires into your face on modern cars the fender of course is integrated it's this whole piece of sheet metal on the left and right front corners but it is detachable just after this whole front cliff stuff is something called the cowl this is very deceptively subtle a whole lot of the proportions of your entire car are determined by this top of the firewall any given two-door four-door convertible and wagon of the same model car will typically share a cowl and get much of their family identity from it now as you come around from the cowl you get what's called the greenhouse that's all this stuff up here your glass and your roof everything above the belt line which is this line along the bottom of the side glass the greenhouse is held up by pillars and you letter them going back a B C and if you've got a wagon or an SUV you might have a D by the way if the C pillar or the last pillar is really huge it's called a sail panel at the rear of the car is the quarter panel unless you drive a Model T you don't have rear fenders you have quarter panels quarter panels are analogous to front fenders they serve a similar purpose with one big difference they're integral to the body shell they don't come off unless you've got a torch oh by the way this piece of glass over here most folks call that the back window technically it's the back light because it's not a movable window at all unless you're driving a mid-60s mercury with the breezeway option that was cool in the rain the rear window shines Sun warm the styling shaped the back seat a vehicle's wheelbase is the distance between the wheels on the side of the car measured at the hub centers go the other way measure left to right and that's your track it's like 2 feet on this fiat key but on most cars wider is considered better this piece of bodywork underneath the door shut line between the wheels that's your rocker panel carry that line farther out beyond the wheels and those are your overhangs now you know the names of your cars anatomical parts helps you in a lot of ways as you watch and read reviews and it also helps you decode with the body shop guys talking about when he does your estimate you