Browse over 9,000 car reviews

Why Australia is falling out of love with the sedan

The Mazda CX-5 is Australia's top-selling SUV.

So long, sedan.

I just got a new car. It's a station wagon, bought second hand. I've had three cars in my life now — two wagons and a hatch — and I expect I will go through the rest of my life not owning a sedan.

I've not nothing against them. It's just the sedan is dying in this country.

SUVs and utes are the main suspects in the murder.

Even in the "passenger car" segment of the market, hatchbacks are giving sedans a hard time. The top selling car in Australia is the Mazda 3 — most of which are sold in hatch form.

(The word sedan comes from the sedan chair — a throne with a little roof and four poles attached so one could be carried by one's servants if walking seemed likely to inconvenience.)

Exactly why the sedan was ever big in the first place is unclear. It's just a car with a separate luggage compartment. Why did that so excite generations of drivers?

Certainly, the sedan's pre-eminence among cars goes back to the very beginning. The Model T Ford had space for a large chest (or "trunk") to be attached at the rear.

The sedan for a long time had a lot of prestige

Perhaps the idea of travelling separately from your luggage is a hangover from the days of ships and trains and horse carriages, where the expensive tickets gave you a nice seat well away from where things were stowed. But a separate low boot seems inefficient from a design perspective.

The wagon, hatch or SUV are much better for anyone who sometimes needs to move a few chairs or a few bikes or a few dogs.

Efficiency is not the big issue obviously, because the sedan for a long time had a lot of prestige.

The Queen travels in one. The US President travels in a stretched one. Sports cars may have been the most expensive cars, but sedans were what you bought to show you made it. They were the executive's car. The man's car. The car that suggested power.

No longer. These days that job is taken by SUVs.

The success of SUVs means even Lamborghini is launching one

Porsche recently launched a new four-door sedan — Panamera — and a new SUV. The sedan has sold 52 units this year and the SUV — Macan — has sold over 1800. That's in addition to the other Porsche SUV, the Cayenne, which has sold over 1100 units. Did you think Porsche was still a sports car company?

The success of SUVs means even Lamborghini is launching one, to be called the Urus. It is due out in 2018 and it is a thing of such hideousness it will make car-lovers tear at their own eyeballs. No doubt it will sell like hot cakes.

The top selling SUV in Australia is the Mazda CX-5, which costs about $30,000, weighs 1450kg and is 1.71 metres tall.

SUVs have come to dominate in Australia for two reasons. First is the driving position. It is nice to be able to see further down the road. If I ever get an SUV it will be because I'm tired of staring at the bumper bar of the SUV in front and having no idea what's happening in the traffic.

The second is the safety benefit the SUV owner gets. A big SUV will generally come off better in a crash. (Off-road driving has very little to do with the popularity of SUVs, many of which are what they call "hatchbacks on stilts.")

But this is an arms race. If we all try to buy taller cars for safety and better visibility, then the advantages disappear. We still can't see past the SUV in front and if it crashes into us, both of us are risk. Meanwhile, the roads get bit less safe for people driving small cars, pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists.

The end of the sedan is an especially sad time for Australia because our national cars for so long — the Falcon and the Commodore — were mostly sedans.

And they really were our national cars in the late 1990s. In 1997, the Falcon sold 72,000 vehicles and the Commodore sold 77,000. They were the undisputed top two.

But in the last decade, the market splintered dramatically, with many more models on sale. The top two cars then sold as many as the top four cars now.

Will the SUV continue to dominate? I wouldn't bet on it. Autonomous cars could be about to arrive and change everything. The future of cars right now looks especially weird — and very different to an SUV.