Shooting-brake

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Past: The Reliant Scimitar GTE, the British shooting-brake per se

Present: A BMW Z3 Coupé

Shooting-brake is a car body style originally used to describe bespoke versions of 2-door luxury estate cars built for use by hunters ^[1] as well as golfers, riders, polo players and other sportsmen. In modern usage "Shooting-brake" generally refers to any 2-door hatchback with a squared-off rear, although some manufacturers have referred to other types of vehicles as a "Shooting-brake".^[2]

The body was usually custom built. An early manufacturer of shooting brakes was Albion Motors of Scotland. There are existing examples of custom-built Bentley S2, Mercedes 300, and also the Aston Martin DBS Shooting Brake.

VG, a small US coachbuilder, offers a model named VGD Shooting Brake.

Some modern manufacturers, such as Audi, have recently referred to some concept cars as shooting brakes. In French-speaking countries estate-bodied cars are often referred to as the "break" model. Sometimes the longer title of "Break de Chasse" has been applied — with chasse being French for hunting, and the phrase therefore meaning "hunting break".

[edit] History

A brake,also known as a break, was a type of horse-drawn carriage used in the nineteenth and early 20th centuries. It was a large or small, open-topped vehicle with four wheels and designed for country use . The form usually met, the "shooting brake", was designed to carry the driver and a gamekeeper at the front, facing forward and up to six sportsmen on longditudinal benches, with their dogs, guns and game carried alongside in slat-sided racks.

In the early 19th century, a break was a large carriage-frame with no body, used for "breaking in" young horses. By the late 19th century the meaning had been extended to also mean a large waggonette.