interesting article from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatchback#Hat...n_North_America Hatchbacks were popular for smaller vehicles in the U.S. and Canada during the fuel crises of the 1970s due to their practicality and convenience, but many customers, especially Americans, preferred trunks to hatches. Conventional wisdom is that Americans have always found the styling of trunked cars more elegant and dignified than that of hatchbacks, and that they bought hatchbacks during times of high fuel costs because they had to. The poor quality and basic nature of many hatchbacks also gave them a reputation for cheapness - driving a hatchback was a proclamation to the world that you were too poor to buy a regular car. So, as hatchbacks grew in popularity in Europe in the 1990s, they declined in popularity in North America in that same period.