January 31, 2010

Disappearing car doors (SLYT) are a neat design concept.

Car doors are normally hinged at the front, but can be hinged at the back (a.k.a. suicide doors), hinged at the top (gull wings), rotate upwards (scissor doors), slide, or now can disappear completely! And I think this way is quite neat.

posted by ThinksTwice 14 years ago
  • Neat looking maybe, but I can't see it in wet weather, snow, mud.... What about safety if you're broadsided?
  • Uh, they're not suggesting driving with the doors open.
  • DIY
  • For what it's worth, those sliding sun roofs don't work too well. They jam. They leak. These doors look to me like vertical sun roof doors. Maybe a driving nor'easter would test it's mettle, I mean metal.
  • Doh! Yeah, flurker, I'm talking about getting in and out in inclement weather. And crumplabilty when shut.
  • One complaint about cabriolets is often that it reduces the rigidity of the car. I can see that these doors might have some of the same effect. Still, if that is the case, a compromise of leaving the central bar intact and having two smaller versions of these doors instead of regular doors might make this viable.
  • Actually, there's a precedent for this from nearly two decades ago: the BMW Z1.