When you open the windows of your car, you may have noticed that the rear window does not roll down all the way like the front window. Without necessarily finding the right explanation… Here it is!

It’s hot, and as air conditioning in a car doesn’t only have good sides (increased consumption, risk of catching a cold, etc.), the best solution to cool down is sometimes to simply open the windows. With the speed, the air will be able to circulate widely and cool the sometimes hot interior, especially if your vehicle has been parked for a long time in direct sunlight.

You’ve probably already noticed that not all car windows open in the same way. If the front windows “disappear” completely in the slot provided for this purpose, the rear windows never lower completely. At the rear, five to ten centimeters of tempered glass – used to make the side windows and the rear windshield – still protrude beyond the door. But why ?

If you think about it for a moment, the answer seems obvious: security. As children most often occupy the rear seats in a car, leaving a piece of window protruding provides additional protection between the interior and exterior of the vehicle. For example, it is more difficult for a young boy or girl to let their arm extend out of the window, which can actually be dangerous. However, there is another explanation which simply responds to a technical problem.

To understand, just look at a car in profile. You will find that the rear doors are almost always narrower at the bottom than the front doors. For what ? Because at the rear of the vehicle the bodywork is most often cut to go around the wheels. In fact, the windows do not have enough space in the door to be able to go down completely without encroaching on the wheel arch. Some models were thus completely deprived of opening due to the design of the car. This was recently the case for the DS4 or the Citroën C4 Cactus, especially for a question of cost. If your child asks you about the next vacation trip, you will now have a good answer for them!