This is a wagon with benches. The French name, Char à banc, means (wait for it) “wagon with benches.” Rather literal, oui, but accurate, and since the French invented it, they’ve a right to name it however they wish, so wagon with benches let it be. The first of them appeared in the early 19th century…it took some six horses to pull, sometimes fewer or greater, depending upon the size of the meal consumed by passengers. You can imagine it took more horses to get rid of a hosts’ guests than it took to fetch them, and take that as a metaphor if you like. Leave it to the English next to steal the idea from the French, and petite it a bit, so that it required but two horses, though one wonders whether that was due to the streamlining of the design, or the paucity of the English guests who, bless them, consumed as much of their hosts’ food as they could possibly keep down, but, well, you know the English cuisine…and can draw your own conclusion about why the weight of the English guests was not as great as that of the French. But then, of course, came the advent of the motor, and the British charabanc grew and grew to enormous proportions. Also a metaphor. Don’t get me started about the Americans’ megabus.
charabanc
