Three-box styling

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The design of car bodies following the Second World War progressed along a series of having their fenders and running-boards seemingly melted into the car body. The end result of this process was the three-box design, a term describing a sedan or a coupé in which the greenhouse reaches to the full width of the body and, despite slanted windshield and backlight can be seen as one "box", with another boxy shape serving as the hood and a third being the trunk. Classic examples are the American 1949 Ford and its European derivatives, called in American terminology "full fadeaway", in which the whole side is unsculptured over the whole wheelbase. Historically, the front and rear fenders, sometimes called "mudguards", were entirely separate from the body. Later, the front fenders extended to the frame and then reached downward in front to the bumper and downward on the sides to the level of the running-board. Then the front fenders became lobes alongside the hood and slightly lower than it, later extending rearward to be a crease ending either in the front door (e.g., the 1949 Mercury) or all the way to the rear fender (e.g., the 1948 Buick). The rear fenders became at first merely a bulge bolted onto the body structure, and then merely a bulge of the sheet metal of the body structure itself. The running-board disappeared. Later designs, such as fastbacks and many hatchbacks, do not get to be called "three-box designs", nor do convertibles (cabriolets, drop-head coupés) with their top down.^[1]

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