July 28, 2025 • 34 mins
Ever wondered how your car door became an essential part of both safety and style? Join us as we embark on a journey through the captivating evolution of automotive doors. From the traditional to the exotic, we unlock the stories behind each design.
Everett J.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We may not know it, but we see them all the
time and it takes one of them for us to
enter or exit any vehicle.
Yes, they're doors.
We have them everywhere.
They're in office buildings, they're in
houses, they're on construction equipment
and, naturally, they're on our vehicles.
But they weren't always there.
But what's the reasoning behind it and what
types are out there?
(00:20):
You have to think about it.
There's been all kinds of different
experimentation with power units for the
automotive world, but what about doors?
And yeah, there is.
There's a ton of doors that you could see
out in the world of the automobile, and
we've all been exposed to a whole bunch of
different types of doors.
Now, most of us have only seen the standard
hinge, door front hinge, that's it.
But there's a multitude of many different
(00:41):
styles of doors, and we're not just talking
about going from a DeLorean or scissor cut
from a Lamborghini Countach.
No, there's actually a lot more than you
really think, and today AutoLooks is going to
take a look at all the different types of
automotive doors.
(01:03):
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I am your host, as always.
The doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
Everett Jay, coming to you from our host
website at AutoLooks.net, if you haven't been
there, stop by, check it out.
Read some of the reviews, check out some of
the ratings.
Go to the Corporate Links website page.
Big or small, we have them all car
companies from around the globe.
The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by
Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by
podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
(01:24):
us an email over at email@autolooks.net.
So, like I said in the intro, doors we use
them to enter and exit our house.
We never really think about it, but even
with your house, there are many different
forms of doors.
Now you got to remember.
You got pocket doors, you got closet doors,
you got overhead doors and then you got
your standard hinge door.
Now, being that my first full-time job
(01:45):
outside of college was actually for a door
company, I kind of got used to seeing you
know some different styles of doors and
it's really funny when you really think
about it, because, well, a guy that's
attached so much to the automotive industry
would actually have a background in just
standard doors for your house.
And, of course, with all of us we know
doors are the most important thing to hide
(02:07):
your car away from prying eyes, putting
your car in the garage by using an overhead
or a roll-up door is the best way to secure
it and easy for you to get into and out of.
They're great in the summertime, they're
great in the wintertime.
An overhead door on your garage and my
first job?
No, I didn't install them.
I was actually the warehouse guy and I
never knew there was so much into all the
(02:27):
different types of doors, and for that I
started looking at my car and wondering
what other doors are out there.
We all know about vertical doors, scissor
cut doors, suicide doors, standard hinge
and hell, the removable ones that Jeep has.
But what other types are out there?
Well, throughout history there's been all
kinds of different types of doors, and
today we're going to take a look at all the
(02:50):
different variations of them and give you
examples of them so you can actually
understand what they are.
First one we're going to get into is kind
of a newer one that just started coming out
the bi-parting door.
A bi-part door is exactly what you think.
It's two separate doors.
You can actually find this on dodge rams.
They have the tailgate, so they either fold
down or split open.
(03:10):
They're like a bi-fold door.
Now an actual bi-fold door would be
connected with a hinge in the center and
they fold up and out of place, kind of like
the security shutters you see in malls.
But a bi-part door are hinged on either
side like the front of your vehicle.
It's kind of like a suicide door for your
tailgate.
And Dodge is starting to release this
because they're starting to understand not
(03:31):
everybody wants to drop down their tailgate.
After seeing the success of the Honda
Ridgeline with its standard hinged tailgate,
dodge thought what happens if we split that
in two?
We can get in and out.
Now a bi-part door even on pickup trucks
and automobiles has been around since
pretty much the beginning of the automobile.
They had them back then the tailgate wasn't
(03:51):
always there.
Tailgates kind of came in with standard
steel boxes and wood boxes being added to
the back of the body-on-frame cars.
They created a single cab up front and
either a flat deck or a boxed-in unit for
the rear.
Now you go to Europe and find a lot of
these short back boxes.
Now in North America we're used to just
standard truck boxes that we see in our
(04:12):
full-size and mid-size pickup trucks.
But everywhere else in the world they had
the short steel boxes that usually only
ride up between 12 and 18 inches up Fully
steel.
You could damage them, you could replace
them.
They basically drop down as Holy steel.
You could damage them, you could replace
them.
They basically dropped down, as we talked
about, with the bi-part door.
Next to that would be the drop-down or the
tailgate.
Now we all know tailgates.
Oh, tailgates, pickup trucks, right?
(04:35):
No, they're not only in pickup trucks.
My first year in college, my roommate had a
96 Honda Civic hatchback.
And if you didn't know this about the Honda
Civic, yes, it's a hatchback but it also
had a tailgate.
It had this tiny little part about eight
inches that would flip right down at the
bottom and the rest of the hatch would come
up.
It's a tailgate.
They basically put in there for people
because they knew it's a two-seater,
(04:57):
two-door car.
People might go tailgating, they might go
to car shows.
The Japanese understand that people like
their cars and like to show them off and
with this being a hatchback, they're not
just going to make the whole thing open up,
they're going to put a drop down, they're
going to give you a tailgate on the rear
and for that it makes it easy to slide
things in and out of.
Vehicles like pickup trucks are the prime
example of tailgate, because we all think a
(05:18):
drop down tailgate, pickup truck, we could
slide our plywood or two by fours,
motorcycle, bicycle, bicycle, you know,
anything just slides in super easy.
Just drop it down, bam and it goes right in.
Now tailgates are usually built to higher
construction than standard doors because
they're made to hold extra weight.
Because you have to remember anything that
goes roughly 12 inches past the end of your
tailgate has to have a red flag on it
(05:40):
because it's going too far out.
And tailgates, when you put plywood in
something like a Honda Ridgeline, a
standard 4x8 sheet is gonna stick out.
You can't just lean it on top of the
tailgate, you got to put it in and slide it
over the top of that.
But tailgates were also used extensively
back in the day in station wagons.
If you go back to see station wagons they
had a hatch top and a tailgate bottom very
(06:05):
similar to that 96 civic my roommate had in
college.
But the other cool thing with the tailgates
from station wagons back in the day because
you remember, wagons were huge from the 50s
all the way up into the 80s when the
minivan came out we've talked about this
the rise and fall of the station wagon,
first season of the auto looks podcast.
But the cool thing with station wagons is
they have something that didn't exist in
sedans until Tesla came out rearward facing
(06:27):
seats.
Old school station wagons actually had
rearward facing seats.
Hell, some of them had full benches in the
back because they knew you needed to bring
a lot of kids and a lot of stuff with you
when you're going to the drive-in theater.
You don't need to shove all that baggage
back there.
No, go to the movies, your kids could sit
back there.
You want a better spot to go fishing?
Sit back there and fish off your tailgate.
(06:49):
But if you're sitting in the back of the
vehicle, like a station wagon, it's
basically something to put your feet up on.
You can relax as you're waiting for the tow
truck.
It's kind of a cool thing.
From there we go to what we call the
standard hinge doors.
Now, everybody all knows about standard
hinge doors, but we have concealed hinge
doors on our vehicles and that's what you
(07:09):
see a lot of.
But there's also exposed hinges what you
see a lot of.
But there's also exposed hinges.
Something like a Mercedes G-class or even
the old school Toyota FJ cruisers had
outward facing hinge doors.
Hell, most commercial vans have hinge doors
and they're fully exposed on the outside of
them.
I've seen so many pro master vans with this
style of hinge on them and they do this, so
(07:29):
they're easily to be replaced.
Why did they put them on these?
SUVs, like the G-Class, wasn't originally
built for consumer consumption in high-end
clientele.
No, they were built for the military, just
like the FJ Cruiser.
So they put the hinge on the outside
because if you damage the door out in the
field, you have to be able to change it
really quick.
Now with their standard automobile they're
interior-mounted or frame-mounted hinges.
(07:51):
They're inside, so they're hideaway hinges
so you don't see them, which makes it more
difficult when you've got to pull that door
off.
Now if you want to go right into it, then
you get something like the exposed hinge on
the removable doors.
Now, Peugeot had this way back in the day
on their old SUV, the P4.
(08:14):
But the biggest one you'll understand with
exterior hinge doors that are removable is
yes, the first thing that comes to your
mind Jeep, the Jeep Wrangler, has fully
exposed exterior hinges and they're made
that way so you can remove the door.
Now you can't exactly just go around any
shopping mall and just pick up the door and
just take off with it.
No, they do have locking mechanisms on the
inside of the vehicle to make it so that
nobody could just walk by and steal your
door or use that as an easy way to break
(08:36):
into your Jeep.
Trust me, they've been thinking about this
for a very long time, but Jeep had them
like that from all the way back in their
military days, and they needed those
because it made it easier to get into and
out of.
So when you're out in the field you'll take
those doors off, but in and around the
barracks you need to stay confined,
especially if you leave the base, you can't
be seen out in your uniform.
(08:58):
So they had removable doors that you could
put on and take off.
This is a great feature.
You know, Jeeps were always amazing for
that because you could take them off.
Like how many other vehicles in history
allow you to?
Just, you know, in the middle of the mall
parking lot being like I don't want the
doors, doors on my truck, I'm just going to
take them off and drive home.
Which begs the question is if I take the
door off my car, can I still drive around?
Because technically it's similar to a Jeep,
(09:20):
but Jeeps are built for that in mind.
They're built to be drivable without the
doors on them.
So essentially, a Jeep is a no-door vehicle.
The Wranglers and now the Gladiators are
built for you to take the doors off, which
means they're built for a placement of no
doors on them a full frame, which means
they don't utilize the door for any
(09:41):
structural integrity.
It'll be used for crash resistance, but
even still, they try and keep the lower
sill plates sitting out from the door to
ensure that they get hit before the door,
to ensure that if you don't have those
doors on, you still have some sort of
safety between you and a vehicle in a side
impact collision.
So yeah, there's a lot of thought that goes
into a fully exposed door space.
(10:03):
Now, with those, we've also seen one of the
things that the Ford Bronco brought out,
which was the window doors.
Now, they never really brought them out to
market, but those are just kind of neat.
You saw them again in the McLaren Senna.
They essentially have a window in the side
of the door and you got to think about to
yourself why would you want a window in the
door?
It's weird, like really, why do you want a
(10:25):
window?
Why do you need to be able to see out?
Why do you need to look at everything
that's out there?
Well, for the Ford Bronco, they essentially
didn't have it as a view window, they just
had an open space.
Jeep has that with the bar doors that you
can add onto the vehicles.
They're essentially just a two-frame door
that fits right into the same placement of
the standard Jeep doors.
Now they look cool and a little bit more
(10:47):
easy access.
You still get some sort of safety, but with
a fully exposed frame you get more, more
airflow through it.
So when you're out in the bush you could
see a lot better because, trust me, taking
the doors off a Jeep when you're out in the
bush is a lot easier, because you can
literally stick your whole body out of your
vehicle and look down to see where the
placement of your tires are, to ensure you
(11:07):
don't fall off that cliffside.
So there is a reason for it.
The window ones that you find in in, like
McLaren and Sennas, those are just weird.
They basically just make it so you have a
small placement where you could see the
curb.
Now, with a Senna being a high-end car, you
really want to see the curb, because you
don't want to hit the curb in your car, do
you.
No, nobody wants to hit the curb in their
(11:28):
car.
A lot of supercars have this problem
because of how low they are and how short
their windows are.
You can't see out and be able to see
everything with it.
Like, how many people have you actually
seen back a Lamborghini Countach into a
garage?
Most of them put the scissor, cut doors up
and stick their head out because the back
window is too small.
Now, by the sense of having those windows
in the doors, it allows you to see the curb
(11:48):
so you can make better judgment about
turning a corner.
You won't damage your vehicle.
You won't take out those you know $5,000
rims on your vehicle.
You'll be able to see what's there.
Now let's take a little step back.
Let's go back to the beginning A standard,
conventional doors.
Now there were originally exposed hinge
doors, like in the Jeep, but now they're
more of a hideaway hinge built inside the
(12:10):
vehicle.
But what's the reasoning behind why we have
doors?
Well, today we kind of think about it as
it's got to be there, right.
It's got to be there for safety.
It's got to be there to ensure the safety
of every single occupant in that vehicle.
Plus, we got air conditioning running.
We want to keep the air conditioning in the
vehicle.
We want to keep the heat in the vehicle
because essentially we're driving around on
a climatized bubble set to our personal
(12:31):
standards, and we have to do that.
But in the original days of the automobile,
like when they first started coming out and
were horse-less buggies you have to
remember buggies Unless it was a high-end
buggy and somebody was sitting right inside
of it there were no doors on them.
You basically just hopped on and took off.
Well, automobiles had that inception at the
very beginning.
Once we started building better frames, we
(12:52):
wanted to create safety.
So we created doors on our vehicles.
We wanted to protect ourselves from the
elements.
We realized being more enclosed meant we
were able to control the climate inside of
our vehicles.
So as that, we added doors and eventually
we added windows to those doors to try and
close the exterior environment away from
(13:13):
the interior acclimatized section of our
automobile.
Doors help with that.
Now, an exposed hinge on a Jeep Wrangler
doesn't really help with that.
But if you're taking them off, there's a
reason for it.
You're not taking them off in the dead of
winter when it's minus 40.
No, if you're taking them off in that time,
there's a serious problem.
So conventional doors had their original
appeal, but we also had what they called
suicide doors.
(13:34):
Now suicide doors aren't a big difference
in door construction or anything else from
a standard hideaway hinged door, no,
they're essentially a conventional door,
just hinged on the opposite side.
Now this was a big thing all the way up
until the 1970s and then they disappeared.
You can find them today on Rolls-Royce
products and Bentleys, but not on many
(13:54):
other vehicles because people have shied
away from the suicide doors pack and the
reason for that safety.
And if you ever driven a club cab truck
like my Tacoma, those half doors they're
kind of annoying because you have to open
both doors for both passengers to get out,
but then somebody has to move into the way
of the front door so you can close the back
door so you can both exit and get out.
(14:14):
You can literally be trapped.
So that's essentially the reason why
suicide doors don't stick around.
They're cool, but they're built for big
luxury vehicles and huge doors that you
don't have to worry about getting trapped
inside of their doors that are not going to
open at the same time.
Your chauffeur gets out of the vehicle,
closes the door, then gets you out of the
vehicle.
It's not the other way around you don't get
out with the chauffeur, gets out of the
vehicle, closes the door, then gets you out
of the vehicle.
It's not the other way around you don't get
out with the chauffeur.
(14:35):
From there we move on to a cool favorite of
mine, the butterfly.
And yes, there are doors that are called
the butterfly.
Butterfly is not what you think they are.
A lot of people will call these gullwing.
A lot of people will call these scissor cut
or vertical doors, but no, they are a
(14:56):
butterfly door.
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was one of
the greatest inceptions of the butterfly
door because it came out from your vehicle
and floated upwards away.
It created a massive space, kind of like
butterfly wings coming out.
You know the Aptera 2E, the SSC Aero 8,
hell.
The McLaren 650S and the ArcFox GT hell.
Even the Spyker C8 Aileron, hell.
The McLaren 650S and the ArcFox GT Hell.
Even the CyberCab that you see has
(15:16):
butterfly doors on it.
They swing up and out of your way.
Now, they're not top mounted, so it's not a
standard full gullwing door, but it does
crave for more ease of access getting
inside your vehicle.
See, a lot of people have understood the
scissor cut door that came out in
Lamborghini Countachs Scissor cut or
vertical as everybody calls them is hinged
to the end of the hood line and your door
(15:39):
sits flat and just moves up.
Now the problem with that is they really
have to move out of the way and these are
big, heavy doors that you got to move up.
You never get full access to entry and exit
of your vehicle.
There's very few that can actually do that.
Like the HTT, Plethore has vertical doors on
it.
The scissor cut one style.
It goes to the front, but they put their
(16:01):
hinge further up the hood line so that the
door would completely leave the exit space
Something like the Bugatti EB110 and the
Countach, if you've ever been inside of one.
Trying to get into or out of the vehicles
is not easy.
The scissor cut doors make it a little bit
harder to get into and out.
Of.
That's why Lamborghini today has slowly
(16:24):
shied away from using full scissor cut
doors, moved into more of a scissor cut
style butterfly.
The next one we're going to talk about is
canopy doors.
Now, canopy doors you don't really find in
a lot of big name vehicles.
These are special doors made for usually
concepts or high-end vehicles.
You want a perfect example of this thing.
Look at the old Maserati birdcage the whole
(16:45):
front moved up.
Hell.
Saab's last concept, the Saab Aero X.
It came front.
It literally moved out.
It's a canopy.
So the entire center area of your vehicle
the canopy that sits above you is hinged.
The front of the vehicle comes up and out,
sits above you, is hinged the front of the
vehicle and comes up and out away from you.
In the exact same context that you think.
Now in 2017, one company finally built a
(17:07):
full scale working vehicle with a canopy
top on it.
The 2017 tech rules ran from.
China uses a full canopy system.
Now their canopy actually goes flips, all
the way to the back behind you before you
can get out of the vehicle, so you have
full access to everything around you,
unlike the 2023 Delage D12.
(17:27):
That canopy just moves forward slightly.
It's similar to a clamshell, but it's not.
Clamshells are more hoods.
Canopy is for entry and exit.
Now canopy is what you would think of for
getting into a fighter jet, if you really
want to break it down.
That's a canopy style because it just goes
right over top of you.
Now, from that, we're going to move into
the one that everyone knows.
In 1955, the Mercedes 300 SL showed us that
(17:50):
if we wanted to get in and out of a vehicle,
we didn't have to do it with standard
conventional doors.
We could do it with top-end doors.
They wanted to make a very low-profile
racing car, but they needed it to be easy
to get into and out of.
Well, how do you do that?
You put your hinges on top and you crack
part of the roof fixture.
By doing that, you can make it that people
(18:11):
have easy access into and out of the
vehicle, and the 300SL was a perfect
example of the original gullwing style.
Next to that, there were a lot of other
vehicles that you saw as concepts or
production vehicles.
The only other one in history you can
really think of gullwing doors and
understand them is, yes, back to the future
the DeLorean DMC-12 with its top fixed
(18:33):
gullwing doors.
Now Mercedes did have the C111.
There's also the Bricklin yeah, Canadian
car, the Bricklin SV1, the Brandley GT hell,
even in japan they got into it with the
Autozam.
Remember that little Mazda with the special
division, the Autozam AZ, going doors on a
tiny little key sports car.
(18:53):
This is the coolest thing ever.
This thing, you know, has less power than a
standard four-cylinder vehicle and yet it's
got going doors amazing.
Well, Mercedes couldn't let all these
companies take all Coolest thing ever.
This thing, you know, has less power than a
standard four-cylinder vehicle and yet it's
got gullwing doors Amazing.
Well, Mercedes couldn't let all these
companies take all the credit for the
gullwing doors and live on with them.
So in 2010, they brought back the Mercedes
SLS AMG and gave us our top-hinged gullwing
doors yet again.
Building the SLS off of the original
(19:15):
second-generation Dodge Viper platform, we
got a top-end Gullwing door again.
Now today you can find Gullwing doors in a
bunch of different vehicles.
Mercedes has got them.
Pagani loves to use them.
Hell, the brand new DeLorean and brand new
John Z DeLorean, or DeLorean Next Generation
are all utilizing these style of doors.
They all want them again and they're all
thinking to themselves why, why, why would
(19:37):
we need them?
Well, gullwing doors are amazing and cool,
but from gullwing doors you can get
something that's kind of between a
butterfly and a gullwing door.
1994, Toyota Cera.
If you've never seen one, go to the website.
Take a check at the picture we have of this
thing.
(20:04):
These doors are called Dehydral doors.
They're essentially hinged at the front
like a conventional one, but also hinged on
the top.
They have a breakaway spot on the top to
make it easy access for you inside of the
vehicle.
They're essentially just a double hinged
butterfly door.
The Saleen S7, the Hyperion X, the McLaren
750S, hell, the Mercedes AMG One uses dihedral
doors and Zenvo is going to be utilizing
them for the new Aurora Tur.
Now why would you get into the Dihedral?
Why wouldn't you just go with a straight up
butterfly door?
Size, very low profile, like you?
(20:24):
Go back and listen to some of these
vehicles the Mercedes-Benz AMG One.
How low is the profile of that vehicle?
Building a full gullwing door on top adds
so much extra weight to it.
Adding a butterfly door.
We have to find a way to make the door
lighter, scissor cut.
We're not going to have enough space to get
out.
No, but if we put a dihedral, we can hinge
it on the top and hinge it on the front.
We can make it fold away like a butterfly
(20:46):
and pull away like a gullwing, which means
we give better access to the interior of
the vehicle.
The door is far enough away and it's
connected to the vehicle in a way that it
will not add weight to the overall vehicle.
So the Hydra has its point.
We need to remember that.
You know it's got to be there.
There's specific ways, and that's where a
lot of these doors come into play.
(21:06):
People think of these interesting ways they
want to put their door and they want them
to essentially move and be able to give you
better access to your vehicle.
The next one we're going to be talking
about is the disappearing door.
Now, the disappearing door is kind of neat.
They came in hatchback.
We also saw them in pickup trucks, but one
of the most successful vehicles to ever
have them was the Kaiser Darin and the BMW
(21:28):
Z1.
Now the Z1, a lot of people don't really
know about it.
See, the Z1 sliding door slid down into the
bottom of the body frame, which gave you a
really shallow area to try and get into
Kind of annoying.
The Kaiser Darren sliding door slid into
the front fender of the vehicle, which
means they had to make the car wider.
Now, this is kind of cool, but to create a
(21:48):
sliding door even at that point in time,
that's a lot of work you have to put into
it and, being a two-door sports car, you
need lots of space to get into and out of
it.
I've seen one of these Kaiser Darrins in
real life.
I met a guy at the Cobble Beach Classic Car
Show down in Owen Sound, Ontario, and this
guy was, you know, he was driving it for
his boss and he brought it up to the show.
The Kaiser Darren slid the door in the
(22:09):
front and I watched him get in the vehicle
when he had to drive it up to the showcase
after the show and he was a little bit
bigger than me and he had a lot of trouble
trying to get in because the seats are set
further back from the door.
You know you open most vehicles in the back
of your door.
Usually you can see either what's into the
back if it's a coupe or even if it's a
sports car opens up to the back of your
seat.
Kaiser Darrins didn't do that, so the Z1
(22:30):
slid down, which didn't give you enough
room.
You basically had to hop over this giant
hump, the Kaiser Darrin, you had to squeeze
through the skinny space.
Sliding doors really aren't the best thing
for the automobile industry and not really
great for a lot of vehicles.
They're cool, trust me.
It freaks people out.
When you see a Kaiser Darrin, they slide
their door away from you.
But other sliding doors that we all know of
(22:51):
when you hinge them in a track that's fully
exposed in the exterior portion of your
vehicle, it can be easier.
That's when you get into larger sliding
doors like the ones you see on minivans.
Hell, even Citroën put one on a two-seater
vehicle Sliding doors.
But when you make the minivan style they
slide further out of your way, which means
you need a longer vehicle.
(23:12):
That's the problem with sports cars is,
sometimes you don't want an exposed track
because it creates an extra area for air to
get caught in and drag your fuel mileage
down and bring your speed down.
So you don't want that.
Well, that's the reason why Kaiser Darrin
and BMW hid their doors.
But a Caravan you really don't care about
how fast you're going in it.
You don't care that that track isn't
exposed on the outside of the vehicle, you
(23:33):
just want to slide it out of the way, get a
whole bunch of kids in the vehicle as quick
as possible, slide it back and get moving,
because really, when hockey or football
practice is done, just throw the bags in,
let's go, because I don't want to be there
all day.
I don't want to be there trying to squeeze
myself through this tiny little spot on a
Kaiser Darrin slide door.
The next one we're going to be talking
about is a hinge door again.
Now, we've heard of the standard side hinge,
(23:53):
exposed or hidden.
Well, there's also two other ones.
There's a top hinge door, which we're going
to get into.
Isn't the exact same thing as a gullwing
door and a front hinge door?
Now, a top hinge door is essentially every
single thing you find in any hatchback
you've ever seen Wagons, SUVs they all have
a top hinge.
So it's a standard top hinge fly-out door.
(24:14):
It opens up and away.
Well, there's also front hinge doors.
This was made famous by one of the most
famous microcars in history and if you've
watched the TV show Family Matters back in
the day, you understand what car I'm going
to be talking about the original BMW Isetta
with its front hinge door.
It literally had the steering wheel mounted
on the door and the whole steering column
(24:35):
would swing with the door out of the way
for you to get in and out.
Now it's really cool.
But the problem with the front hinge doors
unless you have a tiny little hatch window
in the back you could climb through, if you
get an accident in the front, you're stuck
inside your vehicle.
So front hinge doors weren't very good.
Now, if you want to see Microlino and
Artega have taken the design of the Iso and
BMW Isettas and transferred them into today.
(24:57):
You can can now buy them.
Now Microlino you all think about, for
those little scooter thing, Microlino
builds a little city runabout vehicle
called the Microlino Car.
They all have the 1.0 and now the 2.0.
This little car is essentially a rebirth of
the Isetta with a front hinge, but it has a
fully operational sunroof you can get
through and a back window you can hop out
of.
You know, if you get stuck in the vehicle,
(25:17):
front end collision.
Now top hinge ones you really don't worry
about, and top hinge vehicles are usually
on only backs of vehicles.
You don't find a top hinge on the front of
the vehicle ever.
If you want to talk about a top hinge door
on the front of a vehicle, that's a hood of
your car.
But we do have them as top hinge doors on
the rear of all of our vehicles.
Like I said, all the CUVs, all have them.
Next I'm going to be talking about one of
(25:37):
my favorite ones and this one kind of falls
in line with standard conventional doors is
the half door.
Now, half doors are all essentially just
new age suicide door.
If you remember the Saturn Ion back in the
day they had quad doors on them.
Two half doors on the back made it easy to
get into and out of Club cab pickup trucks.
Have them now.
The last edition of the FJ Cruiser had one.
(25:58):
Hell Sander's been going with these half
doors ever since their SC coupes back in
the day.
They wanted to make it easy for you to get
into the back of your coupe.
That's the only point of the half doors.
It's essentially just easier access into an
area that wasn't easily accessible before.
From there we move on to one of the coolest
doors.
Now, if you didn't know this, Koenigsegg has
their own special door and it has its own
(26:20):
name.
You've probably seen it right.
You have to push out and then it goes
forward.
So you're pushing it out from the vehicle.
Okay, nobody really does that.
So is that like a pop-out door but then it
flips forward?
Is it a scissor cut door?
No, they actually have a very specific name.
Koenigsegg's doors that pop out and fly
forward are actually called Raptor Doors.
Don't ask me how they got the name, but
(26:41):
it's really cool.
And you can only find them on Koenigsegg
models.
It's literally owned by them.
That trademark is Koenigsegg, so it's not
like the Lamborghini Countach with the
scissor cut doors that fly forward.
You know anybody could do that.
The Raptor Doors are specific to only
Koenigsegggs, and the original Agera were
the perfect example of the coolness of the
(27:01):
raptor door.
Now, from there we get into odd doors that
you wouldn't even think are on vehicles,
like roll-up doors.
So essentially, a counter shutter door,
roll-up door I deal with these all the time
at work, but they do exist in the
automotive world.
The tesla cyber truck is a perfect example
of it.
It is a truck but the box of the truck is
Cybertruck is a perfect example of it.
It is a truck but the box of the truck is
always hidden.
(27:22):
It has a drop-down tailgate and it has a
roll-up door on top to keep its
aerodynamics down and make sure that it
gets decent mileage for its battery
capacity.
They decided to cover the box, knowing that
airflow would come up and over and get
stuck, whirl around and drag down the
economy, fuel economy or I should say
distance economy for an electric vehicle.
(27:42):
They decided to cover it with a roll-up
door.
Now you find roll-up doors all the time
when you see commercial vans.
You know the guy drops off your UPS or
FedEx package.
He's rolling up the door, rolling down the
door.
Right, he's using a slide-away door.
Now, those things are pretty cool.
Cool because some of them slide into the
actual vehicle, some slide out, some slide
on the outside, but they also have the
roll-up doors on the back.
Like I said, the cyber truck is one of the
(28:03):
few vehicles in history to actually have a
full-scale working roll-up door on it.
Now, like we said with the, the BMW Z1 and
the Kaiser Darrin, those were more of
hideaway doors.
They disappeared into your body.
So disappearing hideaway doors.
Then we also had the standard sliding doors
that we talked about.
That we got into after we realized that
disappearing doors are really cool but
(28:24):
they're not very conventional.
The last big ones is one we kind of touched
on the beginning but really didn't.
Those would be a small variation of what
you originally saw on your pickup truck.
The bi-part door that Dodge now has also
comes from another type of door called the
wagon door.
Now, wagon doors were essentially just
hinged on one side.
(28:45):
They could be big doors, they could be
small doors.
You still had to get power in that into it.
Honda Ridgelines have them, station wagons
had them.
You're starting to get into a lot of
different pickup trucks actually having the
wagon style doors that slide out.
Now third generation Toyota RAV4 actually
had one of those.
Instead of having a top hinge door, they
had a wagon style door that came right out.
(29:05):
Now the reason why it's called a wagon
style door and that one wasn't conventional
is because of its size.
Wagon ones are usually big, bulky and heavy.
To open an entire space where a
conventional door is just made for you to
get into and out of a vehicle.
Our last amazing door that we're going to
talk about.
You know you may think canopies, dihedrals
are really cool, but there's actually one
that gives the coolness factor 100% and
(29:27):
that's one created by Aston Martin.
Aston Martin doesn't have butterfly doors.
Door doors don't go out as far, they don't
go up.
In a way they just like standard
conventional doors, but they come out and
up like a standard door.
So what do you call a standard door?
That kind of angles itself up as it bends.
That's a swan door, because it gives the
(29:48):
appearance of a swan opening its wings.
It's not perfect, right?
Swan wings aren't perfectly straight,
they're somewhat angled when they open
their wings up.
Aston Martin is one of the biggest ones
with swan doors.
You can find them on other vehicles like
the Panganis Utopia and, back in the day,
the my Russia B2s.
So they went up and out.
You want to get a conventional door but you
(30:08):
want to get a little bit more extra space.
So they did that and they gave us the swan
doors up and out.
They're really cool but essentially when
you're in a parking lot and you've got
people really close to you, it's kind of
like a lot of other styles of doors that
you need lots of space.
Like gullwings are horrible.
They found that out.
The reason why they put an extra hinge on
the gullwing doors for a Model X to make it
(30:30):
slightly different.
It's a hinged gullwing door, not just a
standard gullwing door.
It's a hinged gullwing door.
They put that extra and that purpose was so
that when you are in a parking garage you
can still open your door.
Yeah, you have to think about that.
It's like oh, how am I going to open my
door when I'm that close to somebody and I
have a gullwing door?
(30:51):
Back in the day when you had a DeLorean,
you were stuck inside your vehicle.
Either that or you got to take a chance and
ding their door along with yours.
Now it's stainless steel construction Not
going to leave much of a dent.
A dent You're going to leave a pretty good
scratch and a pretty good dent on somebody
else's vehicle, but not on yours.
So Tesla decided to make a hinged Gullwing
door.
Add something else you know there's all
kinds of different variations that we can
make to these doors.
(31:11):
Like the hideaway doors are essentially
just your standard pocket doors that you
find in your house.
Sliding doors would be like your barn doors,
conventional doors well, we all get those
ones, you know.
Exposed hinge, that's like a gate.
You know there's all kinds of different
variations that we see everywhere.
Doors are everywhere we open the world.
And I'm going to get back into this because
you know, essentially passed away just last
(31:32):
week, as Ozzy said, when you open a door
and you look on through, you can just tell
somebody that you'll see them on the other
side, because really that's all a door is.
It's an opening for you to go from one
space to another.
So, in the words of Ozzy Osbourne, I'll see
you on the other side.
So if you like our podcast, we'd like to
share a comment about it on any of the
major social feeds or streaming sites that
you found the AutoLooks podcast on.
(31:53):
Click the like button, share us and follow
us for more information about more of our
podcasts coming out in the future.
We're just starting season seven, so we got
a lot more stuff to come.
I'm literally looking at the list of things
that we can make and get together for this
year and we got tons.
Trust me, we got enough episodes to keep us
going for a few more years before we really
got to sit down, hunker down, create some
(32:15):
more ones.
But we get millions of ideas all the time
and when we get one, we get more than one
in one shot.
So don't worry, if you click the like
button and follow us, you'll find out more.
Button and follow us.
You'll find out more from the AutoLooks
podcast.
You'll find out more from the AutoLooks.net
website.
You'll find out more from Ecomm
Entertainment Group and Podbean.com all from
just liking, following and sharing this
with all your friends and family.
I love hearing from all the people that
(32:36):
have listened to our episodes or seen the
pictures that we use for our episodes.
It's amazing to find some people's stories
out and I love it when people share their
vehicles that fall in line with that
podcast.
Like, I'm not going to take your picture
and share it with everyone in the world,
but it's amazing to see it.
It's like wow and finding out some of these
people are within my own backyard.
(32:58):
Hell, you want to meet up, I would love to
see your vehicle and I would love to go for
a ride.
So, like I said, just send us a comment,
send us a share, like us, follow us.
And after you've done that, send this
podcast out to your friends, your families,
your well-wishers, your boss, your
coworkers, the smelly person at the end of
the hall that nobody wants to talk to Send
it all to those people, okay, because you
want everybody to know what type of door is
(33:18):
on your vehicle.
Do you have a specific door?
Does your boss have a specific door on
their specific fancy car they come to work
in, or do they just use a standard
conventional door like everyone else?
Find that out.
It's kind of cool when you really break it
down, like I never knew how many different
types of doors that work until I worked for
an even door company and it opened my eyes
to all the different styles of doors that
we have out in the world for the automotive
industry.
(33:48):
And after you've done that, stop by the
website.
Like I said, read some of the reviews.
Check out the corporate links website page.
Big or small, we have them all.
Car companies from around the globe all
available on one direct site, the
AutoLooks.net website.
The autolooks podcast is brought to you by
Ecomm entertainment group and distributed by
podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
us an email over at email@autolooks.net.
So for myself, Everett Jay, the Ecomm
entertainment group and podbean.com, strap
yourself in for this one fun wild ride
we're gonna take in a jeep wrangler without
a door on it.
We may not know it, but we see them all the
time and it takes one of them for us to
enter or exit any vehicle.
Yes, they're doors.
We have them everywhere.
They're in office buildings, they're in
houses, they're on construction equipment
and, naturally, they're on our vehicles.
But they weren't always there.
But what's the reasoning behind it and what
types are out there?
(00:20):
You have to think about it.
There's been all kinds of different
experimentation with power units for the
automotive world, but what about doors?
And yeah, there is.
There's a ton of doors that you could see
out in the world of the automobile, and
we've all been exposed to a whole bunch of
different types of doors.
Now, most of us have only seen the standard
hinge, door front hinge, that's it.
But there's a multitude of many different
(00:41):
styles of doors, and we're not just talking
about going from a DeLorean or scissor cut
from a Lamborghini Countach.
No, there's actually a lot more than you
really think, and today AutoLooks is going to
take a look at all the different types of
automotive doors.
(01:03):
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I am your host, as always.
The doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
Everett Jay, coming to you from our host
website at AutoLooks.net, if you haven't been
there, stop by, check it out.
Read some of the reviews, check out some of
the ratings.
Go to the Corporate Links website page.
Big or small, we have them all car
companies from around the globe.
The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by
Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by
podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
(01:24):
us an email over at email@autolooks.net.
So, like I said in the intro, doors we use
them to enter and exit our house.
We never really think about it, but even
with your house, there are many different
forms of doors.
Now you got to remember.
You got pocket doors, you got closet doors,
you got overhead doors and then you got
your standard hinge door.
Now, being that my first full-time job
(01:45):
outside of college was actually for a door
company, I kind of got used to seeing you
know some different styles of doors and
it's really funny when you really think
about it, because, well, a guy that's
attached so much to the automotive industry
would actually have a background in just
standard doors for your house.
And, of course, with all of us we know
doors are the most important thing to hide
(02:07):
your car away from prying eyes, putting
your car in the garage by using an overhead
or a roll-up door is the best way to secure
it and easy for you to get into and out of.
They're great in the summertime, they're
great in the wintertime.
An overhead door on your garage and my
first job?
No, I didn't install them.
I was actually the warehouse guy and I
never knew there was so much into all the
(02:27):
different types of doors, and for that I
started looking at my car and wondering
what other doors are out there.
We all know about vertical doors, scissor
cut doors, suicide doors, standard hinge
and hell, the removable ones that Jeep has.
But what other types are out there?
Well, throughout history there's been all
kinds of different types of doors, and
today we're going to take a look at all the
(02:50):
different variations of them and give you
examples of them so you can actually
understand what they are.
First one we're going to get into is kind
of a newer one that just started coming out
the bi-parting door.
A bi-part door is exactly what you think.
It's two separate doors.
You can actually find this on dodge rams.
They have the tailgate, so they either fold
down or split open.
(03:10):
They're like a bi-fold door.
Now an actual bi-fold door would be
connected with a hinge in the center and
they fold up and out of place, kind of like
the security shutters you see in malls.
But a bi-part door are hinged on either
side like the front of your vehicle.
It's kind of like a suicide door for your
tailgate.
And Dodge is starting to release this
because they're starting to understand not
(03:31):
everybody wants to drop down their tailgate.
After seeing the success of the Honda
Ridgeline with its standard hinged tailgate,
dodge thought what happens if we split that
in two?
We can get in and out.
Now a bi-part door even on pickup trucks
and automobiles has been around since
pretty much the beginning of the automobile.
They had them back then the tailgate wasn't
(03:51):
always there.
Tailgates kind of came in with standard
steel boxes and wood boxes being added to
the back of the body-on-frame cars.
They created a single cab up front and
either a flat deck or a boxed-in unit for
the rear.
Now you go to Europe and find a lot of
these short back boxes.
Now in North America we're used to just
standard truck boxes that we see in our
(04:12):
full-size and mid-size pickup trucks.
But everywhere else in the world they had
the short steel boxes that usually only
ride up between 12 and 18 inches up Fully
steel.
You could damage them, you could replace
them.
They basically drop down as Holy steel.
You could damage them, you could replace
them.
They basically dropped down, as we talked
about, with the bi-part door.
Next to that would be the drop-down or the
tailgate.
Now we all know tailgates.
Oh, tailgates, pickup trucks, right?
(04:35):
No, they're not only in pickup trucks.
My first year in college, my roommate had a
96 Honda Civic hatchback.
And if you didn't know this about the Honda
Civic, yes, it's a hatchback but it also
had a tailgate.
It had this tiny little part about eight
inches that would flip right down at the
bottom and the rest of the hatch would come
up.
It's a tailgate.
They basically put in there for people
because they knew it's a two-seater,
(04:57):
two-door car.
People might go tailgating, they might go
to car shows.
The Japanese understand that people like
their cars and like to show them off and
with this being a hatchback, they're not
just going to make the whole thing open up,
they're going to put a drop down, they're
going to give you a tailgate on the rear
and for that it makes it easy to slide
things in and out of.
Vehicles like pickup trucks are the prime
example of tailgate, because we all think a
(05:18):
drop down tailgate, pickup truck, we could
slide our plywood or two by fours,
motorcycle, bicycle, bicycle, you know,
anything just slides in super easy.
Just drop it down, bam and it goes right in.
Now tailgates are usually built to higher
construction than standard doors because
they're made to hold extra weight.
Because you have to remember anything that
goes roughly 12 inches past the end of your
tailgate has to have a red flag on it
(05:40):
because it's going too far out.
And tailgates, when you put plywood in
something like a Honda Ridgeline, a
standard 4x8 sheet is gonna stick out.
You can't just lean it on top of the
tailgate, you got to put it in and slide it
over the top of that.
But tailgates were also used extensively
back in the day in station wagons.
If you go back to see station wagons they
had a hatch top and a tailgate bottom very
(06:05):
similar to that 96 civic my roommate had in
college.
But the other cool thing with the tailgates
from station wagons back in the day because
you remember, wagons were huge from the 50s
all the way up into the 80s when the
minivan came out we've talked about this
the rise and fall of the station wagon,
first season of the auto looks podcast.
But the cool thing with station wagons is
they have something that didn't exist in
sedans until Tesla came out rearward facing
(06:27):
seats.
Old school station wagons actually had
rearward facing seats.
Hell, some of them had full benches in the
back because they knew you needed to bring
a lot of kids and a lot of stuff with you
when you're going to the drive-in theater.
You don't need to shove all that baggage
back there.
No, go to the movies, your kids could sit
back there.
You want a better spot to go fishing?
Sit back there and fish off your tailgate.
(06:49):
But if you're sitting in the back of the
vehicle, like a station wagon, it's
basically something to put your feet up on.
You can relax as you're waiting for the tow
truck.
It's kind of a cool thing.
From there we go to what we call the
standard hinge doors.
Now, everybody all knows about standard
hinge doors, but we have concealed hinge
doors on our vehicles and that's what you
(07:09):
see a lot of.
But there's also exposed hinges what you
see a lot of.
But there's also exposed hinges.
Something like a Mercedes G-class or even
the old school Toyota FJ cruisers had
outward facing hinge doors.
Hell, most commercial vans have hinge doors
and they're fully exposed on the outside of
them.
I've seen so many pro master vans with this
style of hinge on them and they do this, so
(07:29):
they're easily to be replaced.
Why did they put them on these?
SUVs, like the G-Class, wasn't originally
built for consumer consumption in high-end
clientele.
No, they were built for the military, just
like the FJ Cruiser.
So they put the hinge on the outside
because if you damage the door out in the
field, you have to be able to change it
really quick.
Now with their standard automobile they're
interior-mounted or frame-mounted hinges.
(07:51):
They're inside, so they're hideaway hinges
so you don't see them, which makes it more
difficult when you've got to pull that door
off.
Now if you want to go right into it, then
you get something like the exposed hinge on
the removable doors.
Now, Peugeot had this way back in the day
on their old SUV, the P4.
(08:14):
But the biggest one you'll understand with
exterior hinge doors that are removable is
yes, the first thing that comes to your
mind Jeep, the Jeep Wrangler, has fully
exposed exterior hinges and they're made
that way so you can remove the door.
Now you can't exactly just go around any
shopping mall and just pick up the door and
just take off with it.
No, they do have locking mechanisms on the
inside of the vehicle to make it so that
nobody could just walk by and steal your
door or use that as an easy way to break
(08:36):
into your Jeep.
Trust me, they've been thinking about this
for a very long time, but Jeep had them
like that from all the way back in their
military days, and they needed those
because it made it easier to get into and
out of.
So when you're out in the field you'll take
those doors off, but in and around the
barracks you need to stay confined,
especially if you leave the base, you can't
be seen out in your uniform.
(08:58):
So they had removable doors that you could
put on and take off.
This is a great feature.
You know, Jeeps were always amazing for
that because you could take them off.
Like how many other vehicles in history
allow you to?
Just, you know, in the middle of the mall
parking lot being like I don't want the
doors, doors on my truck, I'm just going to
take them off and drive home.
Which begs the question is if I take the
door off my car, can I still drive around?
Because technically it's similar to a Jeep,
(09:20):
but Jeeps are built for that in mind.
They're built to be drivable without the
doors on them.
So essentially, a Jeep is a no-door vehicle.
The Wranglers and now the Gladiators are
built for you to take the doors off, which
means they're built for a placement of no
doors on them a full frame, which means
they don't utilize the door for any
(09:41):
structural integrity.
It'll be used for crash resistance, but
even still, they try and keep the lower
sill plates sitting out from the door to
ensure that they get hit before the door,
to ensure that if you don't have those
doors on, you still have some sort of
safety between you and a vehicle in a side
impact collision.
So yeah, there's a lot of thought that goes
into a fully exposed door space.
(10:03):
Now, with those, we've also seen one of the
things that the Ford Bronco brought out,
which was the window doors.
Now, they never really brought them out to
market, but those are just kind of neat.
You saw them again in the McLaren Senna.
They essentially have a window in the side
of the door and you got to think about to
yourself why would you want a window in the
door?
It's weird, like really, why do you want a
(10:25):
window?
Why do you need to be able to see out?
Why do you need to look at everything
that's out there?
Well, for the Ford Bronco, they essentially
didn't have it as a view window, they just
had an open space.
Jeep has that with the bar doors that you
can add onto the vehicles.
They're essentially just a two-frame door
that fits right into the same placement of
the standard Jeep doors.
Now they look cool and a little bit more
(10:47):
easy access.
You still get some sort of safety, but with
a fully exposed frame you get more, more
airflow through it.
So when you're out in the bush you could
see a lot better because, trust me, taking
the doors off a Jeep when you're out in the
bush is a lot easier, because you can
literally stick your whole body out of your
vehicle and look down to see where the
placement of your tires are, to ensure you
(11:07):
don't fall off that cliffside.
So there is a reason for it.
The window ones that you find in in, like
McLaren and Sennas, those are just weird.
They basically just make it so you have a
small placement where you could see the
curb.
Now, with a Senna being a high-end car, you
really want to see the curb, because you
don't want to hit the curb in your car, do
you.
No, nobody wants to hit the curb in their
(11:28):
car.
A lot of supercars have this problem
because of how low they are and how short
their windows are.
You can't see out and be able to see
everything with it.
Like, how many people have you actually
seen back a Lamborghini Countach into a
garage?
Most of them put the scissor, cut doors up
and stick their head out because the back
window is too small.
Now, by the sense of having those windows
in the doors, it allows you to see the curb
(11:48):
so you can make better judgment about
turning a corner.
You won't damage your vehicle.
You won't take out those you know $5,000
rims on your vehicle.
You'll be able to see what's there.
Now let's take a little step back.
Let's go back to the beginning A standard,
conventional doors.
Now there were originally exposed hinge
doors, like in the Jeep, but now they're
more of a hideaway hinge built inside the
(12:10):
vehicle.
But what's the reasoning behind why we have
doors?
Well, today we kind of think about it as
it's got to be there, right.
It's got to be there for safety.
It's got to be there to ensure the safety
of every single occupant in that vehicle.
Plus, we got air conditioning running.
We want to keep the air conditioning in the
vehicle.
We want to keep the heat in the vehicle
because essentially we're driving around on
a climatized bubble set to our personal
(12:31):
standards, and we have to do that.
But in the original days of the automobile,
like when they first started coming out and
were horse-less buggies you have to
remember buggies Unless it was a high-end
buggy and somebody was sitting right inside
of it there were no doors on them.
You basically just hopped on and took off.
Well, automobiles had that inception at the
very beginning.
Once we started building better frames, we
(12:52):
wanted to create safety.
So we created doors on our vehicles.
We wanted to protect ourselves from the
elements.
We realized being more enclosed meant we
were able to control the climate inside of
our vehicles.
So as that, we added doors and eventually
we added windows to those doors to try and
close the exterior environment away from
(13:13):
the interior acclimatized section of our
automobile.
Doors help with that.
Now, an exposed hinge on a Jeep Wrangler
doesn't really help with that.
But if you're taking them off, there's a
reason for it.
You're not taking them off in the dead of
winter when it's minus 40.
No, if you're taking them off in that time,
there's a serious problem.
So conventional doors had their original
appeal, but we also had what they called
suicide doors.
(13:34):
Now suicide doors aren't a big difference
in door construction or anything else from
a standard hideaway hinged door, no,
they're essentially a conventional door,
just hinged on the opposite side.
Now this was a big thing all the way up
until the 1970s and then they disappeared.
You can find them today on Rolls-Royce
products and Bentleys, but not on many
(13:54):
other vehicles because people have shied
away from the suicide doors pack and the
reason for that safety.
And if you ever driven a club cab truck
like my Tacoma, those half doors they're
kind of annoying because you have to open
both doors for both passengers to get out,
but then somebody has to move into the way
of the front door so you can close the back
door so you can both exit and get out.
(14:14):
You can literally be trapped.
So that's essentially the reason why
suicide doors don't stick around.
They're cool, but they're built for big
luxury vehicles and huge doors that you
don't have to worry about getting trapped
inside of their doors that are not going to
open at the same time.
Your chauffeur gets out of the vehicle,
closes the door, then gets you out of the
vehicle.
It's not the other way around you don't get
out with the chauffeur, gets out of the
vehicle, closes the door, then gets you out
of the vehicle.
It's not the other way around you don't get
out with the chauffeur.
(14:35):
From there we move on to a cool favorite of
mine, the butterfly.
And yes, there are doors that are called
the butterfly.
Butterfly is not what you think they are.
A lot of people will call these gullwing.
A lot of people will call these scissor cut
or vertical doors, but no, they are a
(14:56):
butterfly door.
The Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren was one of
the greatest inceptions of the butterfly
door because it came out from your vehicle
and floated upwards away.
It created a massive space, kind of like
butterfly wings coming out.
You know the Aptera 2E, the SSC Aero 8,
hell.
The McLaren 650S and the ArcFox GT hell.
Even the Spyker C8 Aileron, hell.
The McLaren 650S and the ArcFox GT Hell.
Even the CyberCab that you see has
(15:16):
butterfly doors on it.
They swing up and out of your way.
Now, they're not top mounted, so it's not a
standard full gullwing door, but it does
crave for more ease of access getting
inside your vehicle.
See, a lot of people have understood the
scissor cut door that came out in
Lamborghini Countachs Scissor cut or
vertical as everybody calls them is hinged
to the end of the hood line and your door
(15:39):
sits flat and just moves up.
Now the problem with that is they really
have to move out of the way and these are
big, heavy doors that you got to move up.
You never get full access to entry and exit
of your vehicle.
There's very few that can actually do that.
Like the HTT, Plethore has vertical doors on
it.
The scissor cut one style.
It goes to the front, but they put their
(16:01):
hinge further up the hood line so that the
door would completely leave the exit space
Something like the Bugatti EB110 and the
Countach, if you've ever been inside of one.
Trying to get into or out of the vehicles
is not easy.
The scissor cut doors make it a little bit
harder to get into and out.
Of.
That's why Lamborghini today has slowly
(16:24):
shied away from using full scissor cut
doors, moved into more of a scissor cut
style butterfly.
The next one we're going to talk about is
canopy doors.
Now, canopy doors you don't really find in
a lot of big name vehicles.
These are special doors made for usually
concepts or high-end vehicles.
You want a perfect example of this thing.
Look at the old Maserati birdcage the whole
(16:45):
front moved up.
Hell.
Saab's last concept, the Saab Aero X.
It came front.
It literally moved out.
It's a canopy.
So the entire center area of your vehicle
the canopy that sits above you is hinged.
The front of the vehicle comes up and out,
sits above you, is hinged the front of the
vehicle and comes up and out away from you.
In the exact same context that you think.
Now in 2017, one company finally built a
(17:07):
full scale working vehicle with a canopy
top on it.
The 2017 tech rules ran from.
China uses a full canopy system.
Now their canopy actually goes flips, all
the way to the back behind you before you
can get out of the vehicle, so you have
full access to everything around you,
unlike the 2023 Delage D12.
(17:27):
That canopy just moves forward slightly.
It's similar to a clamshell, but it's not.
Clamshells are more hoods.
Canopy is for entry and exit.
Now canopy is what you would think of for
getting into a fighter jet, if you really
want to break it down.
That's a canopy style because it just goes
right over top of you.
Now, from that, we're going to move into
the one that everyone knows.
In 1955, the Mercedes 300 SL showed us that
(17:50):
if we wanted to get in and out of a vehicle,
we didn't have to do it with standard
conventional doors.
We could do it with top-end doors.
They wanted to make a very low-profile
racing car, but they needed it to be easy
to get into and out of.
Well, how do you do that?
You put your hinges on top and you crack
part of the roof fixture.
By doing that, you can make it that people
(18:11):
have easy access into and out of the
vehicle, and the 300SL was a perfect
example of the original gullwing style.
Next to that, there were a lot of other
vehicles that you saw as concepts or
production vehicles.
The only other one in history you can
really think of gullwing doors and
understand them is, yes, back to the future
the DeLorean DMC-12 with its top fixed
(18:33):
gullwing doors.
Now Mercedes did have the C111.
There's also the Bricklin yeah, Canadian
car, the Bricklin SV1, the Brandley GT hell,
even in japan they got into it with the
Autozam.
Remember that little Mazda with the special
division, the Autozam AZ, going doors on a
tiny little key sports car.
(18:53):
This is the coolest thing ever.
This thing, you know, has less power than a
standard four-cylinder vehicle and yet it's
got going doors amazing.
Well, Mercedes couldn't let all these
companies take all Coolest thing ever.
This thing, you know, has less power than a
standard four-cylinder vehicle and yet it's
got gullwing doors Amazing.
Well, Mercedes couldn't let all these
companies take all the credit for the
gullwing doors and live on with them.
So in 2010, they brought back the Mercedes
SLS AMG and gave us our top-hinged gullwing
doors yet again.
Building the SLS off of the original
(19:15):
second-generation Dodge Viper platform, we
got a top-end Gullwing door again.
Now today you can find Gullwing doors in a
bunch of different vehicles.
Mercedes has got them.
Pagani loves to use them.
Hell, the brand new DeLorean and brand new
John Z DeLorean, or DeLorean Next Generation
are all utilizing these style of doors.
They all want them again and they're all
thinking to themselves why, why, why would
(19:37):
we need them?
Well, gullwing doors are amazing and cool,
but from gullwing doors you can get
something that's kind of between a
butterfly and a gullwing door.
1994, Toyota Cera.
If you've never seen one, go to the website.
Take a check at the picture we have of this
thing.
(20:04):
These doors are called Dehydral doors.
They're essentially hinged at the front
like a conventional one, but also hinged on
the top.
They have a breakaway spot on the top to
make it easy access for you inside of the
vehicle.
They're essentially just a double hinged
butterfly door.
The Saleen S7, the Hyperion X, the McLaren
750S, hell, the Mercedes AMG One uses dihedral
doors and Zenvo is going to be utilizing
them for the new Aurora Tur.
Now why would you get into the Dihedral?
Why wouldn't you just go with a straight up
butterfly door?
Size, very low profile, like you?
(20:24):
Go back and listen to some of these
vehicles the Mercedes-Benz AMG One.
How low is the profile of that vehicle?
Building a full gullwing door on top adds
so much extra weight to it.
Adding a butterfly door.
We have to find a way to make the door
lighter, scissor cut.
We're not going to have enough space to get
out.
No, but if we put a dihedral, we can hinge
it on the top and hinge it on the front.
We can make it fold away like a butterfly
(20:46):
and pull away like a gullwing, which means
we give better access to the interior of
the vehicle.
The door is far enough away and it's
connected to the vehicle in a way that it
will not add weight to the overall vehicle.
So the Hydra has its point.
We need to remember that.
You know it's got to be there.
There's specific ways, and that's where a
lot of these doors come into play.
(21:06):
People think of these interesting ways they
want to put their door and they want them
to essentially move and be able to give you
better access to your vehicle.
The next one we're going to be talking
about is the disappearing door.
Now, the disappearing door is kind of neat.
They came in hatchback.
We also saw them in pickup trucks, but one
of the most successful vehicles to ever
have them was the Kaiser Darin and the BMW
(21:28):
Z1.
Now the Z1, a lot of people don't really
know about it.
See, the Z1 sliding door slid down into the
bottom of the body frame, which gave you a
really shallow area to try and get into
Kind of annoying.
The Kaiser Darren sliding door slid into
the front fender of the vehicle, which
means they had to make the car wider.
Now, this is kind of cool, but to create a
(21:48):
sliding door even at that point in time,
that's a lot of work you have to put into
it and, being a two-door sports car, you
need lots of space to get into and out of
it.
I've seen one of these Kaiser Darrins in
real life.
I met a guy at the Cobble Beach Classic Car
Show down in Owen Sound, Ontario, and this
guy was, you know, he was driving it for
his boss and he brought it up to the show.
The Kaiser Darren slid the door in the
(22:09):
front and I watched him get in the vehicle
when he had to drive it up to the showcase
after the show and he was a little bit
bigger than me and he had a lot of trouble
trying to get in because the seats are set
further back from the door.
You know you open most vehicles in the back
of your door.
Usually you can see either what's into the
back if it's a coupe or even if it's a
sports car opens up to the back of your
seat.
Kaiser Darrins didn't do that, so the Z1
(22:30):
slid down, which didn't give you enough
room.
You basically had to hop over this giant
hump, the Kaiser Darrin, you had to squeeze
through the skinny space.
Sliding doors really aren't the best thing
for the automobile industry and not really
great for a lot of vehicles.
They're cool, trust me.
It freaks people out.
When you see a Kaiser Darrin, they slide
their door away from you.
But other sliding doors that we all know of
(22:51):
when you hinge them in a track that's fully
exposed in the exterior portion of your
vehicle, it can be easier.
That's when you get into larger sliding
doors like the ones you see on minivans.
Hell, even Citroën put one on a two-seater
vehicle Sliding doors.
But when you make the minivan style they
slide further out of your way, which means
you need a longer vehicle.
(23:12):
That's the problem with sports cars is,
sometimes you don't want an exposed track
because it creates an extra area for air to
get caught in and drag your fuel mileage
down and bring your speed down.
So you don't want that.
Well, that's the reason why Kaiser Darrin
and BMW hid their doors.
But a Caravan you really don't care about
how fast you're going in it.
You don't care that that track isn't
exposed on the outside of the vehicle, you
(23:33):
just want to slide it out of the way, get a
whole bunch of kids in the vehicle as quick
as possible, slide it back and get moving,
because really, when hockey or football
practice is done, just throw the bags in,
let's go, because I don't want to be there
all day.
I don't want to be there trying to squeeze
myself through this tiny little spot on a
Kaiser Darrin slide door.
The next one we're going to be talking
about is a hinge door again.
Now, we've heard of the standard side hinge,
(23:53):
exposed or hidden.
Well, there's also two other ones.
There's a top hinge door, which we're going
to get into.
Isn't the exact same thing as a gullwing
door and a front hinge door?
Now, a top hinge door is essentially every
single thing you find in any hatchback
you've ever seen Wagons, SUVs they all have
a top hinge.
So it's a standard top hinge fly-out door.
(24:14):
It opens up and away.
Well, there's also front hinge doors.
This was made famous by one of the most
famous microcars in history and if you've
watched the TV show Family Matters back in
the day, you understand what car I'm going
to be talking about the original BMW Isetta
with its front hinge door.
It literally had the steering wheel mounted
on the door and the whole steering column
(24:35):
would swing with the door out of the way
for you to get in and out.
Now it's really cool.
But the problem with the front hinge doors
unless you have a tiny little hatch window
in the back you could climb through, if you
get an accident in the front, you're stuck
inside your vehicle.
So front hinge doors weren't very good.
Now, if you want to see Microlino and
Artega have taken the design of the Iso and
BMW Isettas and transferred them into today.
(24:57):
You can can now buy them.
Now Microlino you all think about, for
those little scooter thing, Microlino
builds a little city runabout vehicle
called the Microlino Car.
They all have the 1.0 and now the 2.0.
This little car is essentially a rebirth of
the Isetta with a front hinge, but it has a
fully operational sunroof you can get
through and a back window you can hop out
of.
You know, if you get stuck in the vehicle,
(25:17):
front end collision.
Now top hinge ones you really don't worry
about, and top hinge vehicles are usually
on only backs of vehicles.
You don't find a top hinge on the front of
the vehicle ever.
If you want to talk about a top hinge door
on the front of a vehicle, that's a hood of
your car.
But we do have them as top hinge doors on
the rear of all of our vehicles.
Like I said, all the CUVs, all have them.
Next I'm going to be talking about one of
(25:37):
my favorite ones and this one kind of falls
in line with standard conventional doors is
the half door.
Now, half doors are all essentially just
new age suicide door.
If you remember the Saturn Ion back in the
day they had quad doors on them.
Two half doors on the back made it easy to
get into and out of Club cab pickup trucks.
Have them now.
The last edition of the FJ Cruiser had one.
(25:58):
Hell Sander's been going with these half
doors ever since their SC coupes back in
the day.
They wanted to make it easy for you to get
into the back of your coupe.
That's the only point of the half doors.
It's essentially just easier access into an
area that wasn't easily accessible before.
From there we move on to one of the coolest
doors.
Now, if you didn't know this, Koenigsegg has
their own special door and it has its own
(26:20):
name.
You've probably seen it right.
You have to push out and then it goes
forward.
So you're pushing it out from the vehicle.
Okay, nobody really does that.
So is that like a pop-out door but then it
flips forward?
Is it a scissor cut door?
No, they actually have a very specific name.
Koenigsegg's doors that pop out and fly
forward are actually called Raptor Doors.
Don't ask me how they got the name, but
(26:41):
it's really cool.
And you can only find them on Koenigsegg
models.
It's literally owned by them.
That trademark is Koenigsegg, so it's not
like the Lamborghini Countach with the
scissor cut doors that fly forward.
You know anybody could do that.
The Raptor Doors are specific to only
Koenigsegggs, and the original Agera were
the perfect example of the coolness of the
(27:01):
raptor door.
Now, from there we get into odd doors that
you wouldn't even think are on vehicles,
like roll-up doors.
So essentially, a counter shutter door,
roll-up door I deal with these all the time
at work, but they do exist in the
automotive world.
The tesla cyber truck is a perfect example
of it.
It is a truck but the box of the truck is
Cybertruck is a perfect example of it.
It is a truck but the box of the truck is
always hidden.
(27:22):
It has a drop-down tailgate and it has a
roll-up door on top to keep its
aerodynamics down and make sure that it
gets decent mileage for its battery
capacity.
They decided to cover the box, knowing that
airflow would come up and over and get
stuck, whirl around and drag down the
economy, fuel economy or I should say
distance economy for an electric vehicle.
(27:42):
They decided to cover it with a roll-up
door.
Now you find roll-up doors all the time
when you see commercial vans.
You know the guy drops off your UPS or
FedEx package.
He's rolling up the door, rolling down the
door.
Right, he's using a slide-away door.
Now, those things are pretty cool.
Cool because some of them slide into the
actual vehicle, some slide out, some slide
on the outside, but they also have the
roll-up doors on the back.
Like I said, the cyber truck is one of the
(28:03):
few vehicles in history to actually have a
full-scale working roll-up door on it.
Now, like we said with the, the BMW Z1 and
the Kaiser Darrin, those were more of
hideaway doors.
They disappeared into your body.
So disappearing hideaway doors.
Then we also had the standard sliding doors
that we talked about.
That we got into after we realized that
disappearing doors are really cool but
(28:24):
they're not very conventional.
The last big ones is one we kind of touched
on the beginning but really didn't.
Those would be a small variation of what
you originally saw on your pickup truck.
The bi-part door that Dodge now has also
comes from another type of door called the
wagon door.
Now, wagon doors were essentially just
hinged on one side.
(28:45):
They could be big doors, they could be
small doors.
You still had to get power in that into it.
Honda Ridgelines have them, station wagons
had them.
You're starting to get into a lot of
different pickup trucks actually having the
wagon style doors that slide out.
Now third generation Toyota RAV4 actually
had one of those.
Instead of having a top hinge door, they
had a wagon style door that came right out.
(29:05):
Now the reason why it's called a wagon
style door and that one wasn't conventional
is because of its size.
Wagon ones are usually big, bulky and heavy.
To open an entire space where a
conventional door is just made for you to
get into and out of a vehicle.
Our last amazing door that we're going to
talk about.
You know you may think canopies, dihedrals
are really cool, but there's actually one
that gives the coolness factor 100% and
(29:27):
that's one created by Aston Martin.
Aston Martin doesn't have butterfly doors.
Door doors don't go out as far, they don't
go up.
In a way they just like standard
conventional doors, but they come out and
up like a standard door.
So what do you call a standard door?
That kind of angles itself up as it bends.
That's a swan door, because it gives the
(29:48):
appearance of a swan opening its wings.
It's not perfect, right?
Swan wings aren't perfectly straight,
they're somewhat angled when they open
their wings up.
Aston Martin is one of the biggest ones
with swan doors.
You can find them on other vehicles like
the Panganis Utopia and, back in the day,
the my Russia B2s.
So they went up and out.
You want to get a conventional door but you
(30:08):
want to get a little bit more extra space.
So they did that and they gave us the swan
doors up and out.
They're really cool but essentially when
you're in a parking lot and you've got
people really close to you, it's kind of
like a lot of other styles of doors that
you need lots of space.
Like gullwings are horrible.
They found that out.
The reason why they put an extra hinge on
the gullwing doors for a Model X to make it
(30:30):
slightly different.
It's a hinged gullwing door, not just a
standard gullwing door.
It's a hinged gullwing door.
They put that extra and that purpose was so
that when you are in a parking garage you
can still open your door.
Yeah, you have to think about that.
It's like oh, how am I going to open my
door when I'm that close to somebody and I
have a gullwing door?
(30:51):
Back in the day when you had a DeLorean,
you were stuck inside your vehicle.
Either that or you got to take a chance and
ding their door along with yours.
Now it's stainless steel construction Not
going to leave much of a dent.
A dent You're going to leave a pretty good
scratch and a pretty good dent on somebody
else's vehicle, but not on yours.
So Tesla decided to make a hinged Gullwing
door.
Add something else you know there's all
kinds of different variations that we can
make to these doors.
(31:11):
Like the hideaway doors are essentially
just your standard pocket doors that you
find in your house.
Sliding doors would be like your barn doors,
conventional doors well, we all get those
ones, you know.
Exposed hinge, that's like a gate.
You know there's all kinds of different
variations that we see everywhere.
Doors are everywhere we open the world.
And I'm going to get back into this because
you know, essentially passed away just last
(31:32):
week, as Ozzy said, when you open a door
and you look on through, you can just tell
somebody that you'll see them on the other
side, because really that's all a door is.
It's an opening for you to go from one
space to another.
So, in the words of Ozzy Osbourne, I'll see
you on the other side.
So if you like our podcast, we'd like to
share a comment about it on any of the
major social feeds or streaming sites that
you found the AutoLooks podcast on.
(31:53):
Click the like button, share us and follow
us for more information about more of our
podcasts coming out in the future.
We're just starting season seven, so we got
a lot more stuff to come.
I'm literally looking at the list of things
that we can make and get together for this
year and we got tons.
Trust me, we got enough episodes to keep us
going for a few more years before we really
got to sit down, hunker down, create some
(32:15):
more ones.
But we get millions of ideas all the time
and when we get one, we get more than one
in one shot.
So don't worry, if you click the like
button and follow us, you'll find out more.
Button and follow us.
You'll find out more from the AutoLooks
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Entertainment Group and Podbean.com all from
just liking, following and sharing this
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I love hearing from all the people that
(32:36):
have listened to our episodes or seen the
pictures that we use for our episodes.
It's amazing to find some people's stories
out and I love it when people share their
vehicles that fall in line with that
podcast.
Like, I'm not going to take your picture
and share it with everyone in the world,
but it's amazing to see it.
It's like wow and finding out some of these
people are within my own backyard.
(32:58):
Hell, you want to meet up, I would love to
see your vehicle and I would love to go for
a ride.
So, like I said, just send us a comment,
send us a share, like us, follow us.
And after you've done that, send this
podcast out to your friends, your families,
your well-wishers, your boss, your
coworkers, the smelly person at the end of
the hall that nobody wants to talk to Send
it all to those people, okay, because you
want everybody to know what type of door is
(33:18):
on your vehicle.
Do you have a specific door?
Does your boss have a specific door on
their specific fancy car they come to work
in, or do they just use a standard
conventional door like everyone else?
Find that out.
It's kind of cool when you really break it
down, like I never knew how many different
types of doors that work until I worked for
an even door company and it opened my eyes
to all the different styles of doors that
we have out in the world for the automotive
industry.
(33:48):
And after you've done that, stop by the
website.
Like I said, read some of the reviews.
Check out the corporate links website page.
Big or small, we have them all.
Car companies from around the globe all
available on one direct site, the
AutoLooks.net website.
The autolooks podcast is brought to you by
Ecomm entertainment group and distributed by
podbean.com.
If you'd like to get in touch with us, send
us an email over at email@autolooks.net.
So for myself, Everett Jay, the Ecomm
entertainment group and podbean.com, strap
yourself in for this one fun wild ride
we're gonna take in a jeep wrangler without
a door on it.
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