Nothing says opulence quite like coach doors. From the Rolls-Royce Phantom to the Toyota Century SUV, some of the finest luxury cars on the planet have rear doors hinged at the C-pillars for both sheer presence and ease of entry and egress. But what if you can’t afford a Rolls-Royce, or one of those limited-run coach door Lincoln Continentals? Well, how about a Ford Fiesta with an unusual modification?
Yep, I was browsing Facebook Marketplace when I found this, a 2014 Ford Fiesta. Now, that’s not particularly unusual, even with alloy wheels and whatnot, but there is something strange going on here. On the right side, it’s a normal 11-year-old economy car. On the left, the front door works as normal, while the rear door is one of those fancy coach doors like on a Rolls-Royce.
Not only is it deeply strange, I simply can’t hate on it. Okay, so the infamous Powershift transmission is entirely detestable, but the coach door? That’s inspired. Just look at the execution, from the fairly clean latch relocation to the rear door handle appearing to line up nicely with the front one. Someone took their time and spent genuine effort on this project, to the point where it almost looks factory.
Indeed, aside from the unusual door, this Fiesta looks exactly how you’d expect a normal one that’s spent more than a decade in the rust belt to look like. I can’t quite tell if that’s a little bit of corrosion in the lower door skin seam or just a heavy buildup of anti-rust oil coating, but even if it’s the latter, a spot of corrosion on the right rear wheel arch seems about right given the age and vehicle. Likewise, the aftermarket rubber floor mat in the driver’s footwell serves up some serious normalcy. It feels like you could almost forget about the craftsmanship of this creation until you open that left rear door. Also, it’s only the left rear door. How strange.
At $4,500 Canadian, the sheer work that went into getting one of the doors to swing backwards must make up at least 40 percent of the asking price, given current body shop rates. This Fiesta is a manual swap and a set of European-spec springs and dampers away from perfection. Who says you can’t ball on a budget?
Top graphic image: Facebook Marketplace
B-Max did it better with sliders. Too bad we’ve gotta wait until 2037 to get one in the US…
ok but why
WHY
is it only 1 door?
and why isn’t it a FiST?
This reminds of the OSI Daf city car concept. That had a rear hinged and door and no B pillar on the passenger side and a sliding door on the driver’s side. Plus a CVT and the Corgi model had working doors
The suicide door looks fine to me but we need a different transmission. How hard is a manual swap in one of these?
Why would someone put a suicide door on a stock car? Weird.
Having owned an RX8 for 20 years while also having about 10 other project cars in the mean time, I have a huge appreciation for rear swinging rear doors. They’re simply so much more convenient when loading up cargo. Having a B pillar ruins a huge part of the practicality though. I delivered a TV to my parents once after they found out the box won’t fit their Forester or Highlander hatch. Granted, I was barely able to shift gears and very little space was left over for me, but it made it there.
I can only imagine that might have been done to help someone who might be handicapped, into the back seat. This would give the helper so much room, so maybe a relative in the care of someone who owns a body shop?
That’s a great thought – I figured it was likely for the driver to self stow a walker or wheelchair but making it easier for assistance getting into the rear seat makes sense as well.
The only think that makes me think that not as likely would be the limited leg room sitting behind the driver would be and putting it on the passenger side would allow the front seat to move further forward and also be on the curb side for safer loading in many instances.
Unless the rear seat was removed by the previous user and reinstalled for sale.
This was exactly what I was thinking. My brother is paralyzed and while we were looking for cars for him, we were pretty limited to Honda elements or extended cab pickups for him to be able to get himself into then put his wheel chair in. This probably wasn’t for that specific use but knowing how he gets into cars, scooting into the back seat with a coach door would work well
Yeah, I had one of those as well, I had to coax the door to open on my old beater.
Ah, you mean COACH doors, like the ones that try to sell TED talks to other doors, as long as they adjust their mindsets? Never had those, no.
Someone saw the Opel Meriva B in Europe and said ‘hold my beer’
On an American hot hatch?
I thought that style of door was geared mostly towards youth in Asia.
There is nothing hot about this hatch. It’s a very cold hatch.
Tauntaun Fiesta?
Luke warm.
I like that so much more than I wish I did. Well done sir!
Golf clap.
I doff my hat to you.
I’m trying to figure out how to start using “tauntaun fiesta” in my daily life.
I’m here for the tauntaun fiesta.
What you did there… I see it.
I was scrolling my local Facebook Marketplace and the lead image of this stopped me dead in my tracks. A new(er) Tahoe with a singular gullwing door! Really interesting conversion for a disabled driver.
Maybe that’s what happened here? Suicide rear door so the driver could somehow self-store their wheelchair? I cant seem to post pictures here so here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1070676401515468/?ref=search&referral_code=null&referral_story_type=post
Edit: Found the Tahoe conversion company – ATC Mobility. https://www.atcmobility.com/
I was thinking something similar as I can’t think of any other reason to just do one door and that being the driver’s side, the side opposite the curb.
Those gullwing trucks are awesome! So much better than those horrible hacked up minivans that cost way too much and I imagine they’d be a lot longer lived. I can’t see how they secure the wheelchair platform models, but I’m sure there’s some kind of locking system.
The website mentions at the bottom of the conversion page that the locking system is not included in the conversion. My uneducated guess is that those systems are not universal and must be configured to the individual.
That makes sense as there are all kinds of wheelchairs and manufacturers. I was wondering why they didn’t appear to be shown on the website photos, but—dur—because they were staged.
You may be right, easily stow a walker on similar. I’d suspect the rear seat would have been removed if a wheelchair.
Seat bottom likely removes in seconds without tools, back from my experience is a couple of bolts away. So you can daily it without a rear seat, and put it back for a sale in seconds.
I could see a lift of some sort attaching to the floor or where the bottom seat cushion was (seat reinstalled when decommissioned). I bet some inspection of the rear floor area might provide clues.
I have older (late ’70s) parents. They drive an Escape now because the high H-point is easier to live with than the older Town Car and Montego. Approaching 50 myself I understand.
Yep. Gonna be 58 in two weeks. Getting into my wife’s Camry is starting to be a chore. Much easier getting in and out of my Ram with running boards. Probably going to replace the Camry with a RAV. I get why us olds do this.
Yep, I daily a Camry but at times the Highlander is just easier to slide into. I want a C4 Corvette but probably could not live with a C4 Corvette anymore.
Dad in part bought the Montego as it was easier than dropping into a Grand Marquis. I get it.
The converted trucks still require some cutting and re-working of the floor (at least where the chair goes), similar to the lowered-floor vans. I’ve seen them and they’re pretty well-made — but so are the vans when they’re done by a company that does quality work. The gullwing door has its own potential maintenance issues, as does the pivot-lift for the wheelchair.
The trick is often making the vehicle driveable for someone who needs a wheelchair but also still has the use of their feet. Wheelchair seats are often high compared to car or truck seats, so the ergonomics of a vehicle are all off if the person wishes to drive “normally” from a wheelchair (the pedal box is all wrong). For those using hand controls, it’s not such a big deal. That’s part of where the vans have a hidden advantage for a person who can still use their feet — they can roll the chair into the van and then slide over to the regular driver seat on a “transfer seat” base which gives it increased fore-aft movement plus pivot and elevation.
Of the vans, the ones with the raised ride height are at the greatest risk of being compromised. But they’re necessary to accommodate taller individuals. The ones with a lowered floor but normal ride height are generally no different from a stock van in terms of driving dynamics.
The way the chair locks into the trucks or vans in the driving position is often via a miniature kingpin hitch. A bolt is installed in the base of the wheelchair (or on a plate mounted to the chair), and it latches into what looks sort of like a tiny 5th-wheel plate. The drawback is that the bolt hanging down from the chair can present a ground-clearance snag. But, it can be operated by the person in the wheelchair without needing an extra assistance.
I learned way too much about wheelchair adaptations in vehicles when my wife developed a neurological/cardiac condition that necessitates her using a wheelchair when she’s out and about. I built her first van by purchasing a van full-size van and an elevator-style wheelchair lift on Craigslist and putting the two together. After that, we’ve had two successive ramp-equipped minivans. The first was a boring regular modified Grand Caravan that was only ever intended to be a stopgap, and then she switched to a much nicer Grand Caravan R/T, with the same type of lowered floor and ramp, but much spicier in the performance department. Actually, the up-rated brakes and suspension of the R/T package are beneficial in a wheelchair conversion, which adds weight to the vehicle.
Thanks. I only know from a guy at work whose now ex-wife is paralyzed and he was not a fan of the vans they had (or the price). Most of the ones I see look pretty janky from the outside and I figured the BOF of a truck would take the conversion better, especially where the purpose-built MV-1 went that route.
Braun has probably been in business the longest and does some of the best van conversions. Of the lifted vans, they might be the best. Better, though, if you can stick with the standard ride height version.
Unfortunately, all of the conversions are a bit pricey. I get it, it’s not easy to do that kind of work and still meet whatever safety regs they’re still supposed to meet (at least on paper…) But the math has never quite worked out to me. Of course, they have a captive market. (Yay! Capitalism!) It seems as if, once one becomes disabled, everybody who makes assistive devices and tech seems to think you’ve also magically become flush with cash — which generally couldn’t be further from reality. This is why my wife’s first wheelchair van was one I built myself. I can wrench and understand the technical and installation manuals, so it was just a weekend’s work of drilling, wiring, and bolting everything up. But not everyone is so fortunate to have someone on hand who can work on cars and other machinery. The accessibility industry (and believe me, it’s an industry all right…) could stand to have some scrutiny put on it.
Our converted Grand Caravan R/T cost around 50,000 when we got it very lightly used. I’d hate to think what one would go for now, and what the interest rates would be. At least when we got ours, the formula seemed to be, take the cost of the original unmodified van and just double it. At today’s car prices, that could get eye-watering fast.
Yeah, it’s the jacked up ones that really stand out in a bad way. I was rooting for the MV-1 to succeed, but I guess they had a bunch of issues.
I have always wondered how people manage with the cost of these and everything else. The guy at work’s ex-wife had a good job, but for many people, having a disability limits work options and it costs more money in general. While I have a half-decent understanding of manufacturing, some of the prices he would mention for things seemed like price gouging. I can’t recall the van they had, I think it was a converted Sienna or what they had was wearing out and they were looking at a converted Sierra and $80k is coming to mind for what he said the replacement was going to cost and that was probably a dozen years ago. IIRC, what they had was standard height with no driver’s seat or mid seats so she could roll into the driver’s area, though now that I think of it, it might have had nothing but a passenger seat and she entered by the tailgate. I guess it doesn’t really matter.
You are spot on. Being disabled is truly expensive. I have it easy, being deaf, because a good pair of hearing aids would be something like 5k every 4-5 years, and batteries are not excessively expensive.
Other fellas have it real hard.
She was paralyzed from the waist down, so she had a bunch of related medical expenses/expensive insurance, a trained assist dog (expensive), some kind of crane that lifted her in and out of bed and used in the bathroom (or maybe that was two separate ones, I don’t know) that couldn’t be cheap and I’m not sure if it was her or if they were unreliable, but the guy I worked with had to leave a few times to go home and help her up after she fell from it. I’m sure there were plenty of other expenses, as well. She managed to find the opportunity to cheat on him, though, apparently with several guys.
Dude, that’s some… committment right there. Both ways, in completely different senses.
Yeah, I had the misfortune of running into him after not seeing him for a while right after he found out and I got way too much detail and proof as if I was a judge he needed to convince. On one hand, I was kind of impressed by her, but on the other, that’s a shitty thing to do, not only the cheating, of course, but to use him basically as a caretaker. Over the years, though, I pieced together that she was always a user. I’m pretty sure they went to high school together and he had a thing for her, but she wasn’t interested, then she was in the car crash that put her in the chair sometime in or shortly after college and they ran into each other again. She knew he had been into her and he’s a good guy—too good, as he’s kind of a door mat—who would feel a sense of purpose in taking care of someone else, and he’s also not the type of guy that has had women pay much attention to him, so she used him from the beginning (they were together probably near 20 years or so). She had done a lot of other terrible stuff to him, but that’s already way too much about her.
Man, I feel bad for your former coworker. One tends to think that people who endured harship tend to be sympathetic and responsible for fellow. But sometimes they are just resentful and self-serving.
I hope that guy built self-love and finds someone who deserved him in a better version.
Last I knew, he was repainting the house of a woman he was dating, so I have my doubts, but I hope he’s OK.
Oh, man…