Crazy car doors from gullwing to scissor designs
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Gullwing, falcon-wing, scissor doors, suicide doors, ever since the dawn of the motor car designers have been experimenting with different ways to get in and out of the things.
You would think that the conventional front-hinged door as can be found on just about every car on the road is the most convenient and useful layout, but there are pros and cons for each setup and there have been some very interesting interpretations on each theme over the years.
Cost and complexity tend to limit the mass adoption of many designs but less pragmatic things like looks and style make alternative door systems a popular fitment to rare and exotic machinery.
That said, there are plenty of cheap and cheerful cars that have offered their own unique take on what constitutes a car door. We take a look at some of the more interesting and famous cars throughout history that have strayed from the norm and offered something a little different.
Some have even made their way to becoming valuable collectors’ classics primarily through the way their doors are hinged.
Mercedes 300SL
The 300SL was a car of many firsts. It was the first production car to feature fuel-injection, was the fastest road car of its time and it was the first time that Gullwing doors had ever been attempted too.
The convertible that followed may have had less twitchy handling thanks to its updated suspension but it didn’t have those iconic doors and it is these first coupe versions that are the most sought-after today.
DeLorean DMC-12
The DeLorean DMC-12 was by no means a dynamically competent vehicle. Its Renault-derived 2.9-litre V6 was underpowered and contemporary sports cars could easily outrun it.
What it did have was a cool stainless-steel exterior finish and some of the best scissor-doors ever fitted to a car. It is quite likely that simply seeing the doors opening would have customers signing on the dotted line.
Isdera Commendatore 112i
The ultra-rare Isdera is not the sort of car you would know of unless you were a certifiable petrolhead or perhaps played The Need For Speed 2 computer game from the mid-‘90s.
Stylistically it borrowed a lot from contemporary Porsches but under the skin it featured a 403bhp 6.0-litre Mercedes-Benz sourced V12 and could reach 213mph.
It had not one but two sets of Gullwing doors, the rear pair were for accessing the engine bay.
Mercedes SLS AMG
The SLS AMG was in many ways a modern interpretation of the original 300SL, it too had a big naturally aspirated engine, although in this case a 6.2-litre V8, and performance to match top contemporary sports cars.
The most obvious similarity though were those Gullwing doors.
Tesla Model X
The Model X features a set of very complex Gullwing doors for the rear passengers but Tesla being Tesla decided that calling them ‘Falcon-wing doors’ would be more futuristic.
They do look pretty impressive though and can be operated remotely through the key fob.
Scissor doors
Whereas a Gullwing door is hinged from the roof, a scissor-door is hinged from the front and opens forwards in a vertical arc.
It looks just as dramatic as a Gullwing door and can be used on convertibles too. The fact that the doors swing up and not out mean that they can also make it easier to get in and out of tight parking spaces.
Alfa Romeo Carabo
Scissor-doors today may be synonymous with Lamborghini, they are often referred to as’Lambo-doors’, but the first car to feature them was a concept car called the Alfa Romeo Carabo.
It was fully functional and had a 230bhp mid-mounted V8 but it was the extreme wedge styling and those scissor-doors that influenced designers for decades to come.
Lamborghini Countach
The Countach was the first Lamborghini to feature scissor-doors and that combined with its space-age styling gave it serious street-cred.
The Diablo, Murcielago and Aventador that followed it have all used scissor-doors since.
Bugatti EB110
Before the Veyron and Chiron there was the EB110. It too had quad-turbos and face-flattening performance potential but it also had scissor-doors whereas the newer Bugatti’s make do with conventional front-hinged doors.
Butterfly doors
The Butterfly door also hinges from the front but the doors swing out as they rise up.
This makes it easier to get in and out but takes up more space and they can be tricky to reach from a seated position.
They do look imposing though and have been fitted to some iconic cars over the years.
McLaren F1
The F1 was the pinnacle of automotive design when it arrived in 1993 and some assert that it has yet to be superseded from a purity of purpose and engineering standpoint.
It offered the biggest numbers of any car in its day, the 241mph top speed is still the fastest a naturally aspirated production car has ever achieved.
The Butterfly doors added to the drama but reaching them was a stretch. As is its pricetag.
McLaren P1
The MP4-12C, 540, 570, 650 and 720S that have come since all feature Butterfly doors and their unique hinge mechanism allows them to be used on convertible versions too.
The P1 is currently the most extreme vehicle McLaren has built for the road and it too has the same outward-swinging Gullwing doors as the rest of the range.
Mercedes-McLaren SLR
The SLR was a somewhat uneasy amalgamation of two automotive firms with very different views of how a supercar should be built.
It still turned out to be an impressive machine and the unique Gullwing doors added to the visual drama on both the coupe and roadster versions.
Suicide doors
The somewhat unsavoury title of the suicide door stems from the fact that it was easier to fall out of a car equipped with these doors and if accidentally opened while in motion, the wind would push it even further open.
Nevertheless, this was a popular layout in the early part of the 20th century and makes getting in and out of a car a lot easier.
Rover P4
The luxurious Rover P4 was one fo the last British cars to feature suicide rear doors.
Its upmarket styling and top-level build quality was favoured by Hollywood stars and royalty alike.
Mazda RX-8
The RX-8 looked to all intents and purposes as if it were a two-door coupe.
The clever integration of small rear suicide doors made it far easier to get into the tiny back seats and the door design was such that you had to open the front ones before the rear doors would open. Safe and stylish.
BMW i3
Th i3 uses a similar setup to the RX-8 and its upright bodywork makes it easy to climb in the back despite the doors being rather short.
This definitely would not have worked with a conventional system.
Lincoln Continental
The Continental was an ultra-luxurious limo built in the ‘60s and its huge and distinctive rear suicide doors have featured in movies like Bad Boys and the Matrix.
Rolls-Royce Ghost
Rolls-Royce would never refer to their rear door design as a ‘suicide door’, no, their system is called a coach door.
Far more couth and actually rather more accurate too as the suicide door layout was used extensively in horse-drawn coaches back in the day.
Vehicle Canopy
A huge Gullwing or fancy Scissor-door is sure to have some heads turning in the carpark but neither will match up to the arrival of a car fitted with a Vehicle Canopy.
This system hinges most of the bodywork covering the occupants and lifts up retracting backwards or hinging forwards (most of the time) to allow entry.
Few production cars have used this system but thanks to its dramatic looks there have been a fair few concept cars that featured fully retracting canopies.
Messerschmitt
This tiny little three-wheeled bubble car was built in the mid-‘50s and despite its paltry 10bhp could reach a scary 56mph.
There was only space for two to sit behind each other, as in small plane, and therefore a side hinged canopy was deemed the most efficient way of gaining access to the tiny innards.
Bond Bug
This little wedge-shaped microcar was, as many such things are, meant to revolutionise cheap transport and mobilise the masses.
It did none of those things but its performance was nippy enough and despite only 2270 eventually being made, has quite a big following today.
The forward hinged canopy was cool though and a modified version was used as Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder too.
Volkswagen 1-Litre
The VW 1-litre was designed to showcase the possibilities of Volkswagen’s diesel technology and there have been three separate concept cars since the original was shown over a decade ago.
A handful of diesel-electric hybrid powered cars were put in to production in 2013 and while the latest XL1 concept has Butterfly doors, the previous versions featured side hinged canopies.
Saab Aero-X
Had things turned out differently, the 2006 Aero-X concept car may have become a production reality.
Nevertheless, the stunning electrically operated canopy of the Aero-X was a show-stopper at the Salon International de l’Auto where it debuted and it may yet be adopted in some car of the future.