The coolest doors in the car world

Doors are an integral part of a vehicle’s design.

Not only can they completely change the way a car looks but their function plays a huge role in what a vehicle is like to live with, too. And after all, how would we drive cars if there were no doors to let us in?

Here are some of the coolest car doors we’ve seen over the years.

Kicking off with a classic, we bring you the gullwing door.

A timeless and elegant design that first appeared on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL in the 1950s, the doors hinged at the roof, opening upwards like a bird set to take flight.

Although less common in the modern era, the gullwing door has made its way to other vehicles over the years including various Benz models, the DeLorean, and supercars from the likes of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren.

This could be one of the coolest car doors ever invented but unfortunately, the prototype disappearing car door never made it into production.

That is unless you count the limited run of BMW’s Z1 roadster in the late 80s, which featured similarly ‘vertically sliding’ doors. But the Bimmer’s doors don’t perform a true disappearing act like those designed by Jatech, a California-based tech company that has since gone out of business.

Before it shut shop, Jatech designed doors that eliminated the need for a B-pillar, dropping the doors underneath the vehicle completely and allegedly without compromising the vehicle’s ground clearance.  

The suicide – or rear-hinged – door is achieved by hinging a door from the rear rather than the front, and while it’s a pretty old-school concept, there are still a few cars nowadays that offer the unique concept.

Ferrari’s first SUV, the Purosangue is one, as is the all-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre.

There’s also the electrified Mazda MX-30, which, although much more accessible, was axed late last year. The small SUV featured rear-hinged rear doors and no B-pillars, to make ingress and egress a breeze. Shame it hasn’t caught on.

Some call them scissor doors and some call them butterfly doors but the concept is more or less the same. Hinged at the A-pillar, the scissor door opens upwards and outwards at the same time.

Often seen on high-performance sports cars and supercars like the McLaren Artura and BMW i8, it’s a design tipped to not only give owners of low-slung vehicles easier access but to look bloody cool in the process.

Similar to the scissor door, dihedral synchro-helix actuation doors take a more technical approach.

They still open upwards and outwards, but they also open forward, rotating 90° at the hinge. Again, these are reserved for high-end supercars and you’ll find dihedral doors on the McLaren 570S and Koenigsegg models.

Related: Five unique cars with unconventional doors

Related: Six cars with hidden door handles

Related: New car features every parent needs to know about