The Jalopnik Guide To Automotive Design Terms: Exterior

We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Recently, much to our annoyance, some publications have misused some key automotive design terms. So, we worked with two automotive designers to create a handy guide to help you confidently point out the difference between your tumblehome and CHMSL.

Automotive designers and writers use a strange mixture of acronyms and jargon to describe the modern vehicle, often without explaining them. We're aiming to fix that with our new two-part cheat sheet on automotive design terminology. First up — the exterior!

Click on the image above for a larger copy and share any terms you think we missed in the comments below.