On a Gullwing and a door

But is the front-hinger really the best type? Except for its ability to sweep pesky cyclists out of your way, of course — for which job, no other car door style can match it in terms of target range and potential velocity.

However, while other doors might not come close for bicycle clearing, they do have their advantages – the main one being that they also don’t come as close to garage walls or adjacent cars.

Take the gull-wing style seen on the Back To The Future time machine (simply a tweaked De Lorean) and even more famously known on the stunning 1950s Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

This is the car that became the luxury pin-up of a generation, and the classic pin-up of two generations after that – long after all those glossy images of a knickerless tennis player had faded into the tacky wallpaper.

The news that Stuttgart is set to revive this model (the car, not the lingerie-challenged lady) in a 21st century version was a reminder of how stunning the original was.

Granted, a lot of that was down to the 300SL’s long lean body, the near-perfect accentuating character lines, the utterly sexy gills … sigh. But with the roof-hinged doors closed, it’s just another gorgeous, expensive car.

But open them, and suddenly the whole car looks even more beautiful. Did the designers set out to pay so much attention to the curve of door and sweep of sill, or did those perfect proportions come about by accident?

Little wonder that in nine out of 10 photos, the 300SL is posed with its wings spread…

Okay, so it’s a pretty thing. And the picture above is worth far more than our 100 words on its looks. But it’s also practical.

The gull-wing door needs far less space to open than a conventional one. The radius of the Merc’s is said to be about 30cm, while the De Lorean is about 28cm. Compare that with the metre of metal a normal car needs – and the several kilometres of something like a wide-doored coupe.

Interestingly, the 300SL’s designers were forced to go gull-wing because the tubular frame of the car’s race-bred chassis had an extremely high door sill. Add a low-line roof profile, and you’re left with an opening that only a Barbie could access. (Forget the Bratz and their unfeasibly large heads, which are once again setting up unrealistic body expectations for young women, and … oh …where were we?)

So Mercedes opened part of the roof to make the door access larger, and in the process created one of the most lusted-after cars ever made. But the gull-wing style also makes for an easy way to load things into the car, like groceries and children. Not that either of those two is going to get within cooee of any 300SL we’re ever lucky enough to own.

In fact, they’re so practical that a concept car designed entirely by women working for Volvo had gull-wing doors judged to be the optimum for loading kiddie and retail freight.

But there are some disadvantages to the roof-hinged style, the main one being that if the car rolls over – and stays there – you’ve got no chance of getting out through doors. We don’t really consider that a major problem, because any time we get into a Merc gull-wing, even a few burly rescue officers armed with the `jaws of life’ have a hard time dragging us – kicking and clawing – out of there.