Unless you have a keen interest in cars and vehicle design, you may not realize how many different styles of car doors there are. The majority of drivers don’t give their car doors a second thought.
As long as it opens, closes, and can be securely locked, what else is there to worry about? Having a functional car door is essential but some drivers want to stand out from the crowd, they want their car doors to make a statement.
In this article, we looked at 12 different types of car doors in use today. Yes, you could buy a car with a conventional door, but have you ever considered a vehicle with a butterfly or canopy door?
There are many different types of car doors in use today. The conventional car door may be the type we see most often, but there are a plethora of different options when it comes to car door styles.
For example, there are car models that use sliding doors, butterfly doors, swan doors, gullwing doors, suicide doors, and pocket doors – to name just a few!
You may not think it is the case, but a car door can transform the whole look of your vehicle. A conventional door may be the most common car door in use today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is the best! Let’s take a close look at the different types of car doors in use in 2022.
The conventional car door is the standard vehicle door that we are all so familiar with. A standard car door is hinged on the front-facing edge and when opened, the door swings open outwards (it moves away from the body of the car).
This style of car door can be found in use today on Sedan-style cars, SUVs, vans, large family cars, and sports cars. Chances are, you have owned a car with a conventional door as they continue to be the standard door of choice for many car manufacturers.
When it comes to safety, there isn’t much to worry about with a conventional car door. As the door opens outwards on its hinge, if it were to accidentally open while you were driving, the wind resistance created should stop the door from swinging open.
However, these doors can be tricky to open, especially if you are parked close to a wall or another vehicle. Unlike some of the other car doors on this list, conventional car doors can only open outwards and this can cause problems if you are tight on space.
Sliding car doors may not be as common as the conventional car door, but they are becoming more and more popular as the years go by.
Sliding car doors make getting in and out of a vehicle really easy, you are not confined by the space surrounding the car and you have plenty of room to get young children and large items in and out of the vehicle.
Sliding car doors are most often found on minivans, delivery vans, and other large vehicles. These doors do not have a hinge-like the conventional doors, instead, the door moves along a track and it ‘pops’ out to open and close by sliding along the side of the vehicle.
Older vehicles with sliding doors would need to be opened and closed by manually sliding them but in more recent years, vehicles have been fitted with automatic sliding doors.
Sliding doors can be prone to damage and functionality issues, more so than conventional car doors. Problems with opening and shutting these doors can occur if parts of the track are damaged, or there is an issue with the electronic systems that control the automatic sliding feature.
Sliding doors are great options for families, as it is much easier to get children in and out of the car when the door just slides along the side of the vehicle.
The mechanics of a suicide door aren’t that different from a conventional car door. The key difference is that the hinge is on the backside of the door instead of the front. This hinge position means suicide doors will open backward.
The name of these doors is quite shocking but it is used for a very important reason. Unlike conventional car doors, if a suicide door becomes unlatched while you are driving, the wind resistance isn’t there to keep you inside the vehicle, you will fall out and that is unlikely to end well.
In older vehicles, the design of these doors can lead to them becoming unlatched and popping open when you are traveling at high speeds.
Rolls-Royce used suicide doors on their Wraith and Phantom models and these cars showed off the suicide doors as a luxury feature. In more recent years, suicide doors have become a rare sight, despite their design making entering and exiting the car much easier for passengers.
They may not be as popular, but suicide doors are now much safer than they once were and are still in use on certain car models, such as the Mazda RX-8 and the Vauxhall Meriva. Suicide doors on modern vehicles must meet specific safety regulations.
For example, cars with rear-hinged doors must automatically lock while the vehicle is moving and only unlock again once the car has stopped.
Canopy car doors were inspired by the upward-opening doors on jet fighter planes and they are not seen very often in 2022.
Canopy car doors are positioned on top of the vehicle and they lift up allowing passengers to easily enter and exit the car. These doors are sometimes referred to as cockpit canopy doors, bubble canopy doors, or articulated canopy.
Cars with a canopy door feature a windshield, roof, and sides all made from one whole unit of glass. The hinges on a canopy door can be placed anywhere. This customizable feature means you can set the door to open in any direction: upwards, forwards, or sideways.
However, if you were to get into an accident and roll your vehicle onto its roof, you would not be able to get out without smashing the glass. Also, getting in and out of the car can feel a little awkward due to the position of the roof.
The advantages of a car canopy door include a full 180degree field of vision while you are driving and you don’t have to worry about there being enough space to get out of the car because the door opens upwards!
Scissor doors are similar to conventional car doors in that they are attached to the vehicle by a hinge on the front of the door. However, in this style of door, a scissor joint is used in the front top corner, this allows the door to open vertically upwards.
Scissor doors can open at an angle of up to 130 degrees. The scissor joint enables the door to open in this more impressive way, instead of just opening outwards away from the car.
Scissor doors have many names. Some car enthusiasts refer to them as wing doors, turtle doors, beetle-wing doors, swing-up doors, and Lambo doors.
Scissor doors were first designed in 1968 by Marcella Gandini and although they were first used on concept cars manufactured by Alfa Romeo, it was Lamborghini that brought scissor doors into the limelight.
One of the reasons behind the scissor doors invention was the need for better visibility when reversing. The scissor doors can be opened upwards while the car is still moving! This allows drivers to lean out and achieve better visibility while they are reversing.
With the correct conversion kit, any conventional car door can be changed into a scissor door.
Raptor stands for Recoil Actuated Pivoting Torsion Orbital Retractor and these doors are a more complex version of the scissor-style doors we just discussed. The Raptor doors open outwards before gliding down and stopping parallel to the vehicle’s body.
Raptor doors were first used in 2007 and have been made famous by the Ferrari GG50.
This style of door can be installed in three different positions. Raptor doors can be fitted so they can pivot above, below, or alongside the fender. When pivoted at 90 degrees, you can achieve a similar look to the Lamborghini.
Raptor car doors can be positioned in so many different ways due to the combination of rotational geared pivots and the door’s pivoting recoil actuated orbital retractor. You will unlikely see this style of door on any vehicle other than a high-end sports car.
Raptor doors look impressive but they can succumb to damage if you are parked near a high curb or in a garage with a low ceiling.
Swan doors look similar to conventional car doors. However, the hinge is higher up on the door and is at an angle. This placement of the hinge means more space is created when the door is opened. Swan doors give your car more of a luxury feel but still open in a fairly straightforward and familiar way.
Due to the position of the hinge of swan doors, drivers may have a little trouble closing their car doors when they are in a tight spot.
There aren’t many other disadvantages of swan doors and they can really transform the overall performance of a vehicle. Swan doors are popular on high-performance luxury cars, such as Jaguar and Aston Martin.
It is not very often you see a car with a front-hinged door! Cars with a front-hinged door have one door that opens outwards.
On this one door are the steering wheel and instrument panel. When the door swings open, the passenger and driver can step directly into their seats, before closing the door back again.
You are extremely unlikely to see a car with a front-hinged door in 2022 unless you are at a vintage car show perhaps. This door was seen on the BMW Isetta 600 from 1955 to 1962. Getting in and out of the car is easy and you don’t need to worry about available space to the side of the car.
However, parking can be tricky as you do need to ensure there is plenty of room at the front of the vehicle to open the front-hinged door.
Dihedral synchro-helix doors were revolutionary in the sports car industry when they were first designed by Christian von Koenigsegg. These car doors sweep upwards and outwards to open.
This means the doors will open high enough to avoid high curbs but will not open so high that they come into contact with the garage ceiling. There is also less need to worry about space surrounding the car if you have dihedral doors as they open up, not out.
The hinge in the Dihedral doors means they open upwards and outwards simultaneously at a 90-degree angle. Watching dihedral doors open up is quite the spectacle and with this new fully robotized version, these doors can really put on quite the show!
Just be careful with your magnificent dihedral doors, they are made from carbon fiber and if they get damaged your wallet won’t be very happy.
Gullwing doors were, unsurprisingly, inspired by the wings of a seagull. Jean Bugatti designed the first gullwing door in 1939 for his Bugatti 64. However, these doors did not become popular until 1952 when they were used on the Mercedes 300SL model.
You may also recognize these doors from the DeLorean, DMC 12, the infamous car used in the 1980’s Back To The Future movie franchise.
Gullwing doors are hinged at the top of the car’s doorframe border, right on the roof. Conventional car doors are hinged on the front side but it is a completely different design for gullwing doors.
These doors are sometimes also referred to as falcon-wing doors and it is not difficult to see why. When both doors are open and above the car, it really does look like the vehicle could just start flying at any moment.
They are impressive to look at and do provide greater visibility, but gullwing doors can be hazardous should the car roll. If the car is on its roof, the doors will not open, and exiting the vehicle will be almost impossible.
If you want more room to get in and out of the car but want car doors a little different from scissor doors, you could try butterfly car doors. Like the scissor style, butterfly doors are hinged at the top front corner, but, they do not operate in the same way.
The hinge of a butterfly door can be found along the vehicle’s A-pillar and the doors will open upwards and outwards, fanning out like the wings of a butterfly.
Butterfly doors have often been used on closed-top racer cars and sports cars. You are unlikely to see these doors on anything other than a high-performance car but, like the scissor door, with the correct conversion kit, conventional car doors can be changed into butterfly doors.
As you have probably already worked out from the other doors in this list, luxury car doors look impressive but have certain drawbacks. Butterfly doors may cause problems if you are parked in a garage or next to a high curb and you will have difficulty escaping the car in the event of an accident.
One of the great things about butterfly doors is that they are on automatic gliders and this makes them incredibly easy to open and close.
Pocket doors are a less popular version of sliding doors. You are most likely to see a pocket door on delivery vehicles.
Unlike the sliding doors that are often used on vehicles today, pocket doors slide back into a cavity in the side of the car, as opposed to sliding out and alongside the vehicle. Pocket doors essentially disappear from view when they are fully open.
Pocket doors are not just found on delivery vans, although they are rarely used on any other vehicle today. In 1954, 435 Kaiser Darrin cars were manufactured, featuring the rare pocket door design.
Butterfly doors and suicide doors are very different. Suicide doors are similar to conventional style car doors, in that they open outwards. However, suicide doors have a hinge on the backside instead of the front.
This means they swing open from the back, freeing up more space for passengers to get in and out of the car. Butterfly doors open in a completely different way. These doors open upwards and fan out, their hinge is on the top front corner.
Butterfly doors have more of a resemblance to scissors than they do to suicide doors.
There are many different car doors in use in 2022. The majority of cars you see out on the road will have conventional opening car doors, but in the high performance and sports car world, there are many different styles of car doors.
For example, Lamborghini cars are famous for their scissor-style doors and Aston Martin and Jaguar use swan doors on certain models.
There are gullwing doors, front-hinged doors, suicide doors, raptor doors, canopy doors, sliding doors, and more. There are far more styles of car doors than most people realize and each has its own perks and drawbacks.
There are many styles of doors that open upwards instead of outwards. For example, gullwing doors and scissor doors both open upwards, gullwing doors open up above the car and scissor doors can open up at 90 degrees alongside the car.
Scissor-style doors are popular on Lamborghini sports cars and Gullwing doors can be found on certain Aston Martin and Tesla cars, to name just two.
The DeLorean is famous for its upward-opening doors. The doors used on the DeLorean are gullwing doors and these can still be found in use today on certain high-performance cars.
For example, the Tesla Model X uses gullwing (falcon) doors, and these open in a very similar way to the DeLorean. If you want doors that open upwards, you need to be looking for a car that is fitted with gullwing doors.
It is not just vans and delivery vehicles that have sliding doors, there are many cars with this useful feature too. Sliding doors make getting in and out of a car much easier and there is also less need to worry about space surrounding the car when you are trying to park in a tight spot.
Cars with sliding doors include the Volkswagen Sharan, the SEAT Alhambra, and the Ford Tourneo Connect.
There are way more types of car doors in use today than many of us realize. There are of course the most common and conventional outward opening doors but there is a whole world of cleverly designed and exciting to use car doors out there too.
Butterfly and scissor-style doors are often found on sports cars and gullwing doors are well known too, thanks to their use on the DeLorean.
Conventional style doors may be the most common car doors we see today but they are not always the most practical. When squeezed into a tight parking spot, it can be difficult to open a standard car door.
This need for plenty of space at the side of the car is not necessary if your vehicle is fitted with upward-opening doors, like canopy doors, gullwing doors, or butterfly doors. Often, these vertical opening doors make getting in and out of the car much easier as they allow for more space to be created.
Upward opening and pivoting car doors may look impressive and make certain things easier, but they do have common pitfalls too. High curbs and low ceilings can mean upward-opening doors can be more easily damaged and drivers are at a higher risk during a crash if their vehicle were to roll over.
Despite these disadvantages, sports cars and high-performance cars often have these more complex doors fitted as they create a much more sleek and interesting overall appearance.
