The Impact of Doors

The car door is a simple thing in the majority of cars. hinged at the front and swinging outwards it's a convenient enough way to access the comfy interiors of our daily drivers. We open and close our doors hundreds if not thousands of times a year. Getting excited about a door seems about as interesting as getting excited watching a power window go up and down. It's not complicated, new, or remarkable. But like almost all rules, there are exceptions. Some doors buck this trend, and for the sake of convenience we'll start with the oldest example.

Good Ol' Suicide Doors

Suicide doors were first to appear in production cars. They're actually a holdover from horse carriages, but due to safety reasons are not common on modern production cars. as a rear door, the suicide style of door (the industry cringes at "suicide") does have a real advantage though, and that's access to the interior. they're also commonly seen on hot rods as part of that style. The RX-8 featured suicide rear doors, as did the Saturn Ion. The Mini Cooper Countryman also has a single suicide door on the right hand side. The suicide door is essentially a conventional door hinged backwards, so it's not the most exciting. But it does qualify as a non-standard door hinge.

Things from here on out are going to get a little more complicated. There are a variety of other unique door styles, so let's do them in order of most to least well known (and also in vague order of my favorites)

Scissor or "Lambo" Doors

Oddly enough the hardest thing to find was a picture of lamborghini doors on an actual lamborghini. Searching just "lambo doors" brings up a whole lot of lambo door conversions. and that's the only real gripe with this one. The system is unique and when done correctly looks great. but someone decided that they could make a bunch of money making scissor door conversions and it became a kind of fad in the modding community. On a more serious note, hinging the door up does make it easier to get out when parked and definitely adds a level of visual flair. The scissor door starts to really change how getting into and out of a car works, and that is my point. Doors may seem a minor part of a car, but when it changes your everyday use of the car you can't ignore their impact. Lambo doors have been... well... a bit overdone. Unless it's on an actual lamborghini, just don't.

This is about how i feel about lambo doors.

Gullwing Doors

Now things are getting really interesting. Know what kind of car that is up there? Even if you can't tell me it's a DMC Delorean, I'm sure you got as far as "the car from Back to the Future". Now the real petrolheads are sitting in their chairs reading this going "but why not THE gullwing?!" No worries, we'll get there. A gullwing door is an interesting choice. It's not easy to design into a car, requires a strong roof to hold the weight of the doors, and tall people need to duck to get in or out without banging their head. But man does a gullwing make a statement. It makes getting in and out of a car an event. And not always a pleasant one for those with short arms. There's something about making something as simple as opening and closing a door into an event that is wonderful. Because that seems to make driving such a car that much more of an event, an experience. You're not just pulling up and opening your normal door, being careful of bumping into the car next to you. You're letting the gullwing swing open as we get ready to climb out. now, onto "THE" gullwing. so much so that it is simply referred to by some as "The Mercedes Gullwing". The SL was designed as a roadster and a coupe, and the convertible is a fine piece of machinery

As beautiful as it may be, this is not the SL that gets remembered. the one that does has the gullwing doors.

A nice 1956 300SL with the classic gullwing doors.

Amongst other factors, the gullwing doors have helped make the 300SL's the most collectible of classic Mercedes cars. Mercedes decided to do an homage to their winged classic and it, of course, sports gullwing doors as well.

They're just waving to say hi.

Gullwing doors might be the least practical on this list... but that might be part of why they're so beloved too. most racing cars don't use this style because of the difficulty of escaping in a rollover situation (the modern SLS, Mercedes's 300SL revival, has explosive bolts that will blow the doors off in case of a rollover). They do sure as hell look great though. And have been a part of some iconic cars.

Butterfly Doors

The butterfly door to me means Mclaren F1, so that's the car i grabbed a shot of. This style hinges at both the base of the windshield and the roof. So it is anchored to an already strong structure. The door swings up and forwards so you get nice access to the interior, but still get that "gullwing" feel when you have to reach up and close the door on your supercar. Due to these advantages it gets used on purpose built race cars often (Le Mans Prototypes using it almost exclusively) and has been used on a number of super and hyper cars as well (Ferrari Enzo, Ultima GTR, and Saleen S7 to name a few). If the race cars are using it and it's on your daily driver, you're bound to feel just a little cooler when you get in and out of your car. Doors are really the beginning of the experience of driving a car. I'll be investigating the importance of doors as a design element a little later on. but now i've got a two odd-ball types of doors left. I can almost hear the "if these are weird, what's odd-ball?" now.

Dihedral Synchro-Helix or Koenigsegg Doors

Okay, before i even TALK about the door, i need to mention the name. While Dihedral Synchro-Helix may be the correct term to describe these doors, no one says that mouthful. They're either Koenigsegg doors (since Koenigsegg is the only company who uses them and they use only this style) or Raptor doors after the company that is starting to replicate them. Hopefully this doesn't turn into the new lambo door, but only time will tell. So far it looks like the mechanism is so much harder to replicate that Koenigsegg doors will stay pretty exclusive to Koenigseggs. Now just upon looking at the lovely CCR i posted above, you can see these doors are certainly something special. How did they get the door rotated like that? How did they make it move out like that? The best I can do is provide a video to hopefully help explain.

Now i realize that that doesn't explain how it manages to move that way, but the hinge is patented and I've haven't found a good reference that explains it yet. With the raptor door, you get a whole lot of style with a little caveat. You can't park too close to tall curbs. You wouldn't want to scratch that pretty door on some cement. You want uniqueness, you've got it. There is no other hinge that operates even remotely similar. It's a little impractical, but access to the interior is wonderfully open. The advantage of the raptor door is that it can be fitted to a convertible (and some of the Koenigseggs have targa tops) and be exactly the same as on a hardtop car. Speaking of convertible friendliness...

BMW Z1 Doors

Once upon a time BMW was starting off it's Z line of cars, a line of cars that was supposed to look towards the future and be fun and sporty. The genesis of this is the BMW Z1. A car that never made it out of Europe. Picture it as a BMW version of a miata but with a straight six and you'll have a pretty good idea of what the car was supposed to be. But BMW did something very interesting on the Z1. It has sliding doors. So you'd roll the window down and once the window ran out of travel the door would slide down. If you're currently wondering what would happen if you accidentally roll the door down while driving the answer is nothing. The Z1 is actually legally allowed to drive with it's doors down. Of course, one might worry about opening and closing times and the like. But this is BMW, of course the door moved up and down with a precision and smoothness only the Germans could be expected to achieve.

Personally, I like the Z1 doors a whole lot. the high door sills will make getting in and out of the car a little bit harder, but the payoff is being able to build a more rigid chassis (which for a convertible is a challenge already) normally cutting a door means giving up a lot of chances to brace and stiffen the chassis, but the Z1 door allows there to be structural elements as high as the door when lowered. Also it's not used on any other car that I know of, and that's something to take into account.

So Why Doors?
If you've stuck with me so far, thank you. Surely this is a roundabout way to get to my ultimate point. But I think it sets me up to make it more apparent. For me, enjoying a car is about motoring. Motoring is a term that people like to use to refer to many things but I personally interpret it as enjoyable driving. What makes a drive enjoyable to me is an event. Whether that's a nice stretch of road to cruise along near some scenery or a mountain road that begs for a good spirited drive, it's still motoring. But I think that motoring can happen anytime. Even on your daily commute if the conditions are right. Now event could be used interchangeably with experience, in this case the words are equivalent.

A great car is all about creating an experience. It's why interiors are so intensely designed and why the exterior of the car matters so much even when we can't see it while driving. The first part of the experience of a car is upon seeing it. You take it in, appreciate it's design. The next part of the experience is opening the door. For most cars this is a relatively identical experience. As much as my Mercedes doors feel like a vault door, they still swing out the same way. But these designs, they offer something different. They offer an appeal beyond just convenience and function. They add a flair to the car. They make it exciting to look at the car with the doors open because it changes the aesthetics of the car in a unique way.

But I think the best part of these doors is the actual use. The experience of opening and closing them. In most cases it differs greatly from the normal swinging door. It's certainly creates a whole different attitude. It might feel like closing some kind of futuristic cockpit or a space ship door. It certainly creates an entrance. Now when you step out of the car you're not just there. You're arriving. You feel special as you climb over the high door sill of the gullwing. You feel excited as you reach out to pull the butterfly door closed so that you can drive off to enjoy a nice mountain road. It won't make the experience, no. But it's certainly a factor. It's part of the package, and the package is wonderful.



Curious about any of these door hinge types? want to see what cars were/are made with each? Wikipedia has you covered as usual: List of cars with non-standard door designs