Unless your name is Bo or Luke Duke and you grew up on the set of the famed Dukes of Hazzard television show, opening and closing your vehicle's door is a necessary part of your daily transportation routine. Those two rural cousins, as you recall, would enter their 1969 Dodge Charger "General Lee" through the window opening. Apparently, the boys felt there was no reason — or time on the clock with the law chasing them — to swing open the large front-hinged steel panels like the rest of us.
The world's first automobile, the 1886 Mercedes-Benz Patent Wagon was a convertible lacking doors completely. Occupants soon realized staying warm and dry was more comfortable on a brisk night, so automakers began making closed-cabin passenger vehicles with latching doors. Over the years, designers have attempted countless engineering solutions to make the common automotive doors easier to use, narrower to open and more convenient for children and older passengers to operate (truth is, the power-operated sliding door on a minivan is as good as it gets — but they carry a stigma that Ferrari owners simply won’t accept).
While nearly all of today's automakers have settled on traditional front-hinged doors, some manufacturers are still pushing the boundaries when it comes to innovation. On that note, we searched through our archives to come up with five of the craziest vehicle door designs in recent memory.
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6. BMW Z1 (the "Drop-down" door)
The BMW Z1 is a two-passenger convertible that was introduced in the late 1980's and produced between 1989 and 1991. Unlike other BMWs of that era, all of which were built on steel unibody frames with steel body panels, the Z1 featured a steel chassis with plastic body panels (colored with a special flexible paint). The plastic panels allowed owners to change the color of their Z1 in less than an hour — though few owners actually did. The unique doors lack hinges. Instead, they retract vertically into the car's body dropping nearly completely out of sight (the glass windows moved independently — although they automatically retract if the door is "opened"). Without question, the Z1 certainly looked sporty. Unfortunately it borrowed the 2.5-liter inline-6 from the 3 Series and BMW (view all BMW articles) rated the small engine at 170 horsepower, giving the little car only mediocre performance (0-60 in just under 9 seconds). Only about 8,000 were produced, and they were never legal in the U.S. market where safety concerns trump fashion.
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Watch Top Gear discuss the BMW Z1 Drop-Down Doors
