FutureBoy
Well-known member
- First Name
- Reginald
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2020
- Threads
- 207
- Messages
- 3,522
- Reaction score
- 6,012
- Location
- Kirkland WA USA
- Vehicles
- Toyota Sienna
- Occupation
- Financial Advisor
Back in the day (like horse and buggy days) carriage doors tended to have the hinges at the rear because it is much easier to get in and out of the vehicles if the door is completely out of the way. When the first automobiles came along, they tended to have rear-hinged doors also for the same reason. And of course, this is back before any significant safety equipment existed. In time though these doors came to be seen as dangerous because as cars got faster, the wind blowing past the door could supposedly rip the door off if it were to become unlatched. And this is before seatbelts so the person riding in that seat could potentially be thrown out of the car in this scenario. So it seems that the industry "fix" to this issue was to make doors that hinged at the front. Safety issue averted.I really F'n hope not. This is one of my pet peeves about my F150. It's horrible. Look at were the driver's seat belt is. It's on the back door. Stop to let a passenger out and you, as the driver, have to unbuckle your seatbelt and open your own door before the rear door will open. Want to put groceries in the back seat, you just have to push the cart to the front of the truck, open your door, open the back door, close the front door, pull the cart back...it's stupid. This is of course if someone is parked next to you. If nobody is next to you it's not as much of an issue. The concept works a little better if the rear door opens 180 degree flat against the back panel, or something close to that, but the Ford rear doors do not do this. HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT. I will not buy another truck built like this.
But front-hinged doors are more difficult to exit and enter. So companies started to get a bit creative with rear-hinged doors. They designed all sorts of ways to prevent the door from being opened while the car is in motion. I've seen a number of methods used. You mention the front seatbelt being sourced in the front pillar of the rear door. Some vehicles have rear-hinged doors only for the back seats and the rear door cannot be opened till the front door is opened first. The problem with all these schemes is that they are purposefully being engineered to address a perceived problem (doors getting blown open unintentionally) by making the use of the door more difficult in day-to-day life. In effect, the "fix" for getting rear-hinged doors is actually more of a pain than just having front-hinged doors. So if given the chance to have front-hinged doors that work intuitively or rear-hinged doors with crazy safety schemes, many people just choose front-hinged doors. A lot of people want rear-hinged doors but when they see the hoops they have to jump through to use them the choice is to get front-hinged doors.
So here is my preference. Ideally, we would find an intuitive fix for rear-hinged doors and then all 4 side doors of the CT would be rear-hinged. It would be cool. It would be easier to use. And it would definitely make a statement. It would also take some serious getting used to by the public who at this point just doesn't see the need. If the fix is going to involve anything annoying about how the doors get used, then I just want all 4 doors to be front-hinged. Any other solution or partial solution is probably just worthless.
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