Car doors can be more than points of ingress and egress.
Those with unusual designs–rear-hinged rear doors and flip-up or scissors doors–represent the need for practicality or a taste for the exotic.
Rear-hinged doors have been around for decades. But one of their most recent applications has been on small passenger cars from makers such as Saturn and Mazda and on extended-cab pickup trucks.
“They offer utility, with more space for getting in and out of the vehicle,” Jeff Steiner, executive vice president and chief marketing officer with ASC Global in Southgate, Mich., said of the rear-hinged, or “suicide,” doors. ASC, for American Sunroof Corp., is a global specialty vehicle and systems company that also develops and distributes after-market vehicle accessories.
Both ASC’s Jeff Steiner and College for Creative Studies’ Imre Molnar indicated rear-hinged and other unusual doors are great for grand entrances and styling exercises but are not likely to see widespread use. Molnar thought sliding rear doors for sedans (like those on vans) may be a practical solution, useful for getting in and out “in confined spaces.”
Rear-hinged rear doors “have limited application,” according to Steiner.
“They are all about style,” said Steiner, of ASC Global, whose specialties include designing and fabricating concept vehicles. They are on show cars to provide a grand entrance, to incite viewers to respond, “look at that, it’s really cool.”
Passionate owners whose cars or trucks are a personal statement may want one with gull-wing or scissors doors, he said. “They provide a lot of ‘wow.’ “
Steiner said sliding mini-van doors with power windows, innovative rear hatches and panoramic roofs are current trends. They are practical and affordable, he said.
ASC Global helped create the Chrysler Helios idea car, a four-door convertible that made the auto-show rounds this year.
Steiner said its rear doors were front-hinged to maximize existing hardware, making the softtop more commercially feasible.
Gull-wing doors, like those on the Mercedes-Benz SL sports cars of the mid-1950s or the DeLoreans of the early 1980s, may look fantastic. But would you want to live with them? Probably not, Imre Molnar says.
If it has been raining and the door is raised, driver and or passenger are likely to get an unwanted shower, said the dean of the College for Creative Studies, Detroit.
“While our [automotive design] students love to use them, scissors and gull-wing doors have extremely limited applications,” Molnar said. “A scissors door opened inside your garage would crash into the roof.”
And it would require a sophisticated, well-engineered and robust hinge to work properly, a requirement Molnar deemed “very expensive.”
In Clinton Township, Mich., Motor City Hot Rods & Customs has installed scissors or lambo (from Lamborghini, which made them famous) doors on close to a half-dozen cars this year. In 2004, that number was closer to two.
WHAT THE GULL?
Gull-wing doors are hinged near the center of the roof, allowing the doors to be opened with the minimum amount of side clearance, usually a third to a quarter of the space standard doors require to swing open far enough to allow passengers to enter and exit the car. The doors require significantly less space to open on the side, but a fully open door requires approximately a 6-foot clearance on top.
SUICIDE DOORS
According to automotive historian and classic car restorer Ed Lucas of Troy, Mich., rear-hinged doors acquired the unfortunate though telling appellation of “suicide doors” because if one was opened while the vehicle was traveling the wind would likely rip the door off and take the passenger with it “The wind blast keeps front-hinged doors closed if they are opened while the car is moving,” Lucas said. For early cars that didn’t go much faster than “horse and buggy” speed, he said, rear-hinged doors didn’t create such a safety hazard. In fact, many early cars had no doors.
