Two boxes rather than three. Cabin and load bay share one volume, the tailgate takes the rear window up with it, and folding the back seats leaves a floor that runs to the front seatbacks. Everything the body style is known for follows from that one arrangement, the compromise included: with no parcel shelf sealing off the boot, more road noise reaches the cabin.
The word covers a wide span of car. The BYD Seagull is 3,780 mm long, the Volkswagen Golf 4,284 mm, and both are hatchbacks by the same test. It gets blurry at the edges. Against a wagon the difference is how far the roof runs before it stops; against a liftback it is proportion, since a liftback keeps a sedan’s long tail and borrows only the opening. Europe made this the default small-car shape and it remains so there, while North America has largely traded it for crossovers of similar footprint.
