Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Three body styles with pillars and boxes

Typical pillar configurations of a sedan (three box), station wagon (two box) and hatchback (two box) from the same model range.

Wagon and sedan

Typical pillar configurations of a sedan (three box) and station wagon (two box) from the same model range.

Hatch and wagon with pillar layout

Diagram of a five-door hatchback (two-box) superimposed over the station wagon (two-box) from the same model range — in this case, both with a D-pillar.

Pillars are the vertical or near vertical supports of an automobile's window area or greenhouse — designated respectively as the A, B, C or D-pillar moving in profile view from the front to rear.

In American and British English, the pillars are sometimes referred to as posts (A-post, B-post etc.).

Applications[]

Consistently denoting a roof's successive structural member provides a reference point for discussion. As an example, rescue teams employ pillar nomenclature to facilitate communication when cutting vehicles, for example with the jaws of life.

Pillars are implied, whether they exist or not; where a design's greenhouse features a break between windows or doors without vertical support at that position, the non-existent pillar is "skipped" when naming the other pillars. Thus a 2-door coupé or a three box designed sedan could have its rearmost pillar called the C-pillar even in the absence of a B-pillar. Conversely additional doors will create additional B-pillars, the B-pillars are then numbered, B1, B2, and so forth.

Vehicles omitting the B-pillar were once widely called pillarless hardtops or hardtops. In the early 1970s, General Motors broadened their definition of "hardtop" to include models with a B-pillar: "up to then, everybody thought a hardtop was a car without a center pillar."[1]

Fahrzeug-saeulen

Pillars are implied, whether they exist or not; the non-existent pillar is "skipped" when naming the other pillars.

In addition to the pillar nomenclature derived from viewing an automobile in profile, some older cars have a two-part windshield or split rear window, with the two halves separated by a pillar.

See also[]

  • Automobile design
  • Blind spot (automobile)
  • Driver visibility

References[]

External links[]

Smallwikipedialogo This page uses some content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Pillar (car). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons by Attribution License and/or GNU Free Documentation License. Please check page history for when the original article was copied to Wikia


Advertisement