Now that we’ve nailed that whole cupholder thing, it’s time to tackle the important stuff: trunk hinges. I reckon trunk lid hardware is an excellent indication of a given model’s overall build quality. Bad hinges, bad car. Great hinges, great car. There’s a range of important factors here: materials quality, appearance, reliability, longevity and action. To wit: I was appalled when I pressed the Maybach 57S electric trunk closer and watched the rear lid descend like an old, poorly made guillotine (don’t ask me how I know). My Odyssey’s tailgate closes in a more graceful arc. So, again, here’s the deal: email robertfarago1@gmail.com with your nominations for best trunk hinges, your rationale and a jpeg (or link to same). I’ll post them in a gallery. Then Eddy and I will choose the top ten based entirely on your wit and our whims. Thanks, in advance for your help.
The Cadillac Allante had some pretty attractive trunk hinges. They were of the lay-flat variety.
I don’t have a visual to share with you, but I’m pretty sure that someone else can scare that one up.
On the image above, my guess is that those are either Bentley – or more likely – Rolls Royce hinges.
I reckon this is something of a bell-weather for a vehicle’s quality.
I thought that’s what headliners were for.
–
The picture shows a set of Phaeton hinges.
I’ve never seen a trunk hinge that makes me think “That’s sexy” before.
Let me be clear: the picture in the posting makes me want to gently run my hands all over that trunk hinge.
I’m going to go get a drink now, as I think about the implications of that desire.
A bellwether, not “bell-weather,” is the leading sheep in a flock.
Wow, they don’t protrude into the trunk at all. That would nearly double my Miata’s trunk space.
SLLTTAC
Doh! Text amended.
1st Gen Dodge Stratus.
I nominate them simply because they got out of the way and didn’t intrude on the trunk. They were also designed to make the trunk swing up high enough to where it didn’t intrude on you loading the trunk, and that was cool too.
It is a VW Phaeton with Campagnolo hinges (Yes the bicycle company). Campagnolo makes some of the most elegantly engineered bike components in the industry. The did briefly foray into the auto industry.
More engineering probably went into the illustrated trunk lid hinge than an entire Pontiac.
Honda/Acuras
have lousy, cheap luggage crushers. I asked my Acura Service Manager why they use a $1 trunk lid hinge on a $50,000 car. He said they ran out of 50-cent ones.
German cars seem to have well designed trunk lid hinge. This photo is a BMW 3-Series.
vw jetta.
the hinges don’t go into the trunk.
good enough for a 16k car, plus, the trunk is 15 ft^3
People,
I know it’s a PITA to send your chosen example of automotive hingological excellence in an email to robertfarago1@gmail.com with a jpeg (or a link) and a brief rationale, but them’s the rules.
Comments left here may entertain and inform, but they do not qualify for official consideration.
… Eddy and I will choose the top ten based entirely on your wit and our whims.
Does Consumer Reports know you’ve stolen their secret car comparison formula?
@ihatetrees —
Consumer Reports may have whims, but they’ve never had wit. (+1 anyway.)
I was going to suggest that anything with fold-flat, parallelogram hinges (B&B — what’s the proper name?) is automatically good, but then I remembered that my wife’s Grand Prix trunk lid shifts forward while opening, dumping snow and ice in the trunk in winter.
MERCEDES BENZ S-CLASS 550.
(If you want, I’ll take pictures of my trunk to post here).
They aren’t even hinges – just, two curved plastic covered arches that slide in and out effortlessly.
If you push a button in the car or on the trunk itself, it automaticaly opens and closes for you.
I like the fact the design keeps it from pinching my golf bags and my suitcases.
My 2009 Lincoln MKZ has as an efficient hinge design as that poser VW. Imagine that.
My buddies 2009 Audi A4 looks like a 1980 Olds Cutlass. Teardrop that intrudes on the cargo. Probably works, but very cheap.
Flashpoint –
That is a nice feature, and one the Lincoln Town Car has had for years.
Ford Focus sedan-ours is the “old” body style. They don’t protrude into the trunk and the gas struts do their job. Simple design, too.
I liked the old English style — external, chromed, and looking like they came off a 1920s refrigerator.
There’s really only two designs, goose necks and the much nicer articulated gas strut hinges.
Pull shut electric latches may have been fun to show off when people got new Cadillacs back in the 1980’s, but they are completely pointless, and annoying, on a sedan trunk.
The above pictured Phaeton’s articulated gas strut hinges definitely win the eye candy award, but they are no more functional, and probably less durable, than those on a Hyundai Sonata.
It’s surprizing how many expensive cars stick with the shitty goose neck hinges, including the above mentioned Mercedes.
Hiding the goose neck behind side trunk panels just kills trunk space, articulated gas strut hinges win by a mile.
@UltimateX
Campy has a long history of providing magnesium and alloy wheels to Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa and Abarth
Skoda Superb Twin Door gets my vote. The Swiss Army knife of hinges. Demonstration at 1:22.
Not all Phaetons have the Campy hinges. In the US, they were part of the “Technology package”. Only one of my two Phaetons had ’em; the other had the pressed-steel hinges found on Bentley Continentals and Audi A8s.
There’s never been a set of trunk hinges like the Phaeton’s Campy ones. The Benz S550 hinges, like Lexus LS hinges, are not optimal in my opinion; they’re cheap bent-metal goosenecks in plastic. They take up a ton of room and look lousy.
I have plenty of hinge photos if the jury needs a second set :)
I was about to nominate the Phaeton, then I saw the picture.
Great minds think alike, RF. And that VW has some classy trunk hinges.
Good truck hinges are on the ’08 / ’09 Chevy Malibu: gas struts and hinges which keep them out of the way of luggage.
I have no images, though.
A pity the Mailbu trunk opening is too small to get the really big stuff in.
I hate gas struts because in a cold climate, the trunk lid won’t stay open. Down at 30°F you have to help it to the up position, and at 15°F it simply comes down again over your head.
My C5 gen Audi A6 has excellent hinges. The struts can push the lid past the purely vertical mark, so you can lean in to get stuff out without the lid being in your way.
I’ll second improvement_needed’s nomination of the VW Jetta. The trunk hinges are an engineering marvel. They taake up very little space, and none on the trunk itself, folding neatly into a tiny pocket of space at the top-rear on the trunk edge. The lid yawns WAY open, making loading very easy. The trunk itself is HUGE… I regularly carry a dozen+ veggie oil “cubies” (roughly 5 gallons each) back there with room to spare.
–chuck
Robert:
I’m not nominating any car, I am just making sure nobody even mention the 1960’s 2008/09 Honda Accord’s trunk hinges that you fail to mention on
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/take-two-2009-honda-accord-lx-review/
Honda need to rethink the actual size of that trunk after they take off the space for the stupid hinges.
dror
The VW Phaeton has by far the nicest trunk hinges I have ever seen.
The best trunk hinge is a tailgate, as Robert’s Odyssey illustrates.
The exotic linkages shown in the photo above are wonderful to look at, but they remind me of that old myth about Nasa spending millions of dollars designing a pen that could write in space, while the Russians used a pencil.
With that thought in mind, the best hinge is based on this design: http://www.chinatraderonline.com/Files/Household/Hardware/Door-Hinge/stainless-steel-single-action-(America-type)-spring-hinge-21041792634.jpg
Well, I don’t know if it matters or not but how ya gonna beat a hatch. Two simple hinges at the top and a couple of struts packed out of the way. No matter how good a trunk hinges are they take a back seat (pun intended) to a hatch.
Davekaybsc –
I’ll second the Audi A6 nomination. You’re right about pushing the trunk lid past vertical. It’s really handy if you’re taller than average.
http://l.yimg.com/dv/izp/audi_a6_4.2_with_tiptronic_2008_other_trunk.jpg
Phaeton Campy – no question.
The day I bought my 1960 220S (in 1967) I was showing it off to my wife’s coworkers in front of the public library where she worked, and one of the trunk hinges jammed in the open position.
There were a lot of 1947-1952 Studebakers driving around with the front of the trunk lid sitting a couple of inches too high, because the fancy paralellogram trunk hinges failed. I had three of those cars at different times, but I was lucky there. Sorry, no jpeg. It’s too long since I’ve even seen one of those cars.
+1 on the Honda hinges. I learned to put my briefcase there when we travel because it’s already old and scuffed-up and I don’t care if it gets trunk-hinge marks on it.
How about bad ones… I had an ’84 RX-7 that I bought from the second owner when it was ten years old. RX-7s have that long back glass and this one also had a rear wiper and huge motor on the glass itself. The hinges were two thin rods that I of course had to replace immediately as they had given up a long time ago. I don’t think it was a cheap car as it was a lot of fun to drive and lasted a lot of hard miles, but just had the cheapest hinges!
What about BMW 3 series? Anybody got a pic of those?
My college kinematics professor took the class to the parking lot to look at his mid/late 90s 323 trunk linkage. He got unusually enthused about his car’s trunk hinge design. Standard 4-bar design as in the photo, worked about the same, but was made of cheaper looking painted stamped parts instead of castings.
I reckon this is something of a bellweather for a vehicle’s quality.
I had a 97 Grand Prix that had a decent non-invasive system, BUT (another post later):
…I remembered that my wife’s Grand Prix trunk lid shifts forward while opening, dumping snow and ice in the trunk in winter.
The car sucked and the trunk closing execution sucked when rain or snow was present, although I stopped using my trunk in 2002 when it started to leak worse than a Wrangler with a 20-year-old top.
I have no first-hand experience with them, but I recall reading a Car and Driver roadtest of the very FIRST Lexus. The article raved about the lack of sharp edges even on the hidden, never-seen, unreachable portions of the device. Their point was that such attention to detail on said parts indicated a desire for excellence that was unmatched anywhere else. They backed up their contention with a comparison to the then-current Mercedes Benz model’s trunk lid hinges. I will try to dig up that article sometime, but that is what I remember from it.
The hinges in the 1st generation Mazda6 were really nice. Simple & functional w/o intruding into the luggage space. Haven’t seen the ones on the current gen vehicle.
“scarey”: “I have no first-hand experience with them, but I recall reading a Car and Driver roadtest of the very FIRST Lexus. The article raved about the lack of sharp edges even on the hidden, never-seen, unreachable portions of the device.”IIRC, C&D compared five or six cars, something like the typical group of luxury marques (Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Cadillac, Lincoln) and the new Lexus. As would be expected, the domestics, particularly the GM product, were dragging up the rear with exposed hinges that would have quickly damaged anything in the trunk.
That’s not to say that a stripped Corolla or Yaris is going to have anything comparable, but I’d wager that their trunk hinges are still a damn sight better than what GM is using on the trunk lids of the Cobalt and G5.
Not to belabor the point, but another small, but noticable, area that Toyota excels in is the storage of retractable cargo area covers. Only Toyota (well, maybe Honda, too) has a place in the rear, underneath the floor cover, to store the retractable cargo area cover on those vehicles so equipped. Now that’s attention to detail.
GM is odd. Sometimes, perhaps on accident, they’ll break out nicer parts than is strictly necessary, while the rest of the car can be made out disappointing pieces.
The Cobalt/G5, for example, had non-intruding hinges and gas struts. That trunk could be packed to the brim. The replacement Cruze has crush-your-stuff gooseneck hinges. The Sonic, Cruze, and Malibu all have gooseneck hinges, but the old W-body Impala has struts. Maybe because it would leave more room for police gear since it’s almost exclusively an urban police car now. But the replacement Impala for consumers went back to goosenecks. Eh.
I switched to a hatchback since those have superior cargo room over any type of similarly-sized car with a trunk, though. Now let me see if I can stuff a futon in a Sonic…
I care about the feel of the steering wheel, the distance to the stick shift, and even the resistance of the clutch. Mostly, I care about the quality of the seats. Occasionally, I’ll notice the turn signal mechanism (being in the minority who actually uses this).
But trunk hinges? Never noticed them.
My choice is infinitely flexible; I’m surprised that the original VW Beetle didn’t use it, as it’s adapted for ‘frontal’ usage:
http://www.birdsasart.com/elephant%20trunk.jpg
Hate to be the luddite here — and late to the party too, to boot — but the original Mini’s external trunk hinges were good enough and pretty enough. Is there any downside to them, other that they looked cheap? Car design is so superficial.
The Mazda 3 Sedan trunk hinges are very interesting and effective.
There is OVERWHELMING evidence that customers prefer Deck lids equipped with Goosenecks hinges over Deck lids with 4-bar systems. Primarily because of two features: Trunk opening is typically larger and the free rise function where the customer hits their key FOB and the trunk automatically opens. The downfall with goosenecks in the past is luggage crush, where the hinges push down ontop of the luggage upon closing. GM has taken this design and made it a whole lot better. The all new 2009 Opel Insignia now mounts these gooseneck hinges over the wheel-well and now customers get the best of both worlds a wide opening, free rise functionality and more vertical space ….great job GM Engineering
Goosenecks suck. Every car body engineer and customer knows it. Popping up automatically is a BAD thing. However, they are cheap. Why do you think VW had Campy do the Phaeton and did shitty goosenecks for all the other vehicles?