• by Tanya Gazdik , Staff Writer, December 7, 2016

In the 1980s and 90s, before the SUV became king, there was no shortage of cars with hatchbacks. They were incredibly practical and made it easy to pack all of your stuff into an area much bigger than the traditional car trunk. If you had a bike that needed hauling, they were a necessity. 

Everything old is new again: Enter the all-new Euro-inspired 2017 Honda Civic Hatchback. Arriving recently at dealerships across the country, it is the first Honda hatchback in the U.S. in more than 10 years. It’s long overdue. Not everyone wants or needs the size of an SUV, but everyone has stuff that needs to be moved around. 

Chevrolet, citing 9% growth in the segment last year, also is rolling out a hatchback model for its top-selling Cruze. The first-ever Cruze hatch offers 47.2 cubic feet of cargo space when the second-row seats are folded down.

Compared to their sedan counterparts, hatchbacks offer more flexible cargo capacity using a wide rear hatch that opens up to the car's interior, rather than a trunk. And hatches today offer so much more pizzazz than their predecessors did. 

There’s long been this idea that Americans won’t buy hatchbacks, says Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Cox Automotive’s AutoTrader.

“In reality, Americans are buying hatchbacks by the millions — they just happen to be called sport utility vehicles,” Krebs rightly points out. “Now automakers are introducing hatchbacks to address a niche of buyers who want the practicality of a hatchback but want a car, not a sport utility vehicle. I suspect many of these will be quite successful.”

For automakers, it is a way to breathe life into the sagging car segments, she adds. Practicality, versatility and utility are reasons consumers buy them. Why not offer that in a car? 

“Should gas prices ever spike, automakers who have a small hatchback car in their portfolio might be well positioned if and when consumers downsize or shift back to cars, though we don’t anticipate that happening anytime soon,” she says. 

Millennials are a great market for small car hatchbacks, Krebs says. Affordability is an issue with Millennials, especially the younger ones, and larger, pricier sport utilities may be out of reach. Hatchbacks give them an alternative: A lower-priced small car but with some of a utility’s versatility.

“Subaru is an excellent example of a success, selling cars and car-based hatchbacks,” she says. “Subaru has been a phenomenal success story. It has found the sweet spot for consumers in a largely car-ish portfolio.” 

Hatchbacks currently represent about 4.8% of light-vehicle sales in the U.S., but analysts at IHS Automotive say that share will grow to 6.6% by 2020. The hatchback is the most popular light-vehicle choice among Europeans. Almost 40% of new passenger vehicles on the continent are 5-door cars. That means most manufacturers already have hatchback designs in production. Most could be easily adapted to the American market if the demand from customers is there.

Back to the Honda Civic hatchback. RPA created a 30-second TV spot that showcases the sporty and aggressive styling of the new Civic. With its distinctive exterior design, the Civic Hatchback exudes an unmistakable swagger. To bring the Civic Hatchback’s dynamic styling to life, the “Made Mean” TV spot imagines an underground factory space where a renegade crew of robots builds the vehicle. The edgy spot highlights the Civic Hatch’s stylish features, such as its black matte grille, to draw attention to its unexpected attributes.

The “mean” theme suggests the Civic Hatch has some of the toughness of a utility, Krebs adds.

Honda expects the hatchback to make up 15% of total Civic U.S. sales, the automaker recently told WardsAuto. Honda says compact hatchbacks racked up 175,000 sales in 2015 in the U.S., and that figure is projected to grow steadily through 2022, thanks to newcomers to the market, as well as lifestyle and consumer demands. The European design of many compact hatches also is seen as motivating new-car buyers, according to WardsAuto.

No longer eco-boxes like their forefathers, a range of stylish 2017 hatchbacks is garnering second looks, including the Ford Focus, Volkswagen Golf, Mazda3, Toyota Prius, Subaru Impreza, Honda Fit and Mini Cooper. Unlike their “big brother” SUV models which have base prices around $30,000, these models have a much friendlier sticker in common. With the exception of the Prius (MSRP from $24,685) and Mini Cooper (MSRP from $20,950), every single model is under $20,000. If you have a little more cash to spend but still want the sportiness and functionality of a hatchback, there is the Fiat 500X, Audi S7, Lexus CT and Nissan 370Z. 

Similar to other segments, there’s something for everyone, but they all have that practical storage element in common. These definitely are vehicles worth checking out.