Wiktionary
n. An overcoat that extends to midthigh
Wikipedia
A car coat is an outer garment originally made to be worn by automobile drivers and passengers. First designed to provide maximum warmth and coverage, over time it became a much shorter garment. Today it describes a coat that typically ends at mid thigh. It is worn by both men and women.
While fur, leather and heavy wool were preferred in the early days, today the coat may be made in a wide variety of materials. In the period after World War II, it took on design elements of the jeep coat worn by servicemen and this is when the shorter length became common. As car ownership grew so did the popularity of the coat; by the 1960s it was described as "ubiquitous". The car coat remains popular today, both as a functional and a fashion garment.
Usage examples of "car coat".
He was also wearing his car coat, beige and dingy, with a muff of fur at the collar.
She was wearing a short beige car coat, the collar of which she held closed about her throat with one gloved hand.
Kling, gloveless and hatless, his blond hair blowing in the wind, put the flashlight under his arm, and immediately thrust both hands into the pockets of his car coat.
The plain-clothes detective who had been driving the car, the one who looked like a Hereford bull with his curly poll and his broad head, pushed his car coat up to scratch his backside, said something to his colleague, then started towards her front door, his eyes seeming to meet hers in the darkness.
Now that it was cold Dorcas wore a car coat heaped with blond fake fur, but her feet were still in spike-heeled sandals.
I blew them kisses that they didn't acknowledge and, wrapped into my sheepskin car coat, went down into the street to spend fifteen minutes getting the car to start.
It was easy to guess that he'd hoped to do the whole job from inside a car, hence the brightly coloured car coat, but now that I'd come poking about in the Tiergarten, he'd had to get out of the car and earn his money.
I helped her into her smart suede car coat and she gave me a decorous kiss.
He's wearing a black horsehide car coat, its seams scuffed gray, like a piece of vintage luggage, and he's actually carrying, she now sees, a piece of vintage luggage.
He walked past her, taking off his wool car coat and laying it carefully over a chair.