The thing with the hinged doors
10/18/2017
They came and went, the gullwing doors. The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL certainly brought the gullwing doors to great fame, although it was not a design gimmick, but rather a necessity to design the doors in this way at the time. The frame had to have high longitudinal tubes for the sake of rigidity and the doors could therefore only start at a certain height.
There were also good reasons for the hinged doors on the Bricklin SV-1 shown here . Here, not only a high torsional strength was required, but also very robust side impact protection. The large longitudinal profiles could hardly have been accommodated in a door at the time, so the upward-opening variant was chosen, not least for design reasons.
Hinged doors also have tangible advantages in everyday use. When open, they only protrude slightly beyond the sides of the car, making it easier to get in and out of a tight parking space or garage. And in principle you can drive with the doors open, which leads to a completely new ventilation option, although this type of use is probably not very popular with the law enforcement agencies.
In general, the hinged doors had and still have a difficult life. Because they also had disadvantages, serious disadvantages. The space required at the top increases enormously, as can also be seen in the pictures. Because of the higher sides, boarding often requires more maneuverability than in a coach equipped with conventional doors. The necessary mechanics and hydraulics also become more complex with heavier doors and shift the center of gravity upwards.
And legislators kept coming up with new requirements that were difficult to meet with hinged doors. This raised the question of what would happen in the event of a rollover with landing on the roof. How would the crew get out of the wreck? Of course, solutions were also developed here, including blowing up the door mechanisms. However, only very few of these cars ever found themselves on the roof ...
However, the disadvantages outweighed the advantages for most car manufacturers and so only very few gullwing cars were built outside the world of racing cars. The De Lorean DMC-12 is one of them, as is the Melkus RS 1000 or the Mercedes-Benz SLS. But the list is not long, if you exclude exotic cars that were only built in very small numbers. It's a shame, because gullwing doors look really cool!
