This will be a relatable truth to anyone who’s ever made the mistake of looking at their own years-old social media posts, but life is all about improvement. Things we once did, opinions we once held, and yes, words we once used may no longer hold water or be looked upon favorably today. But as long as we recognize the error in our ways and correct ourselves going forward, it’s fine. That’s life.
With all that in mind, I come before you today to formally point out one car-related colloquialism that should probably be retired for reasons that are obvious once you’ve actually thought about it for more than two seconds: “suicide doors.” Even if you’re not a car expert, you probably know the term. It refers to the doors on a car that open the opposite way they usually do—insides facing forward, not back—but their common name needlessly invokes a very morbid and very real mental health issue.
According to J.D. Power, the term was popularized by Ralph Nader in his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Dangers of the American Automobile. That style of door was a lot more popular back then, but cars were also getting faster, making them actual safety hazards—hence the alarmist but mostly well-meaning moniker.
Modern car doors rarely swing this way, but when they do, we have technology like latches and locks that keep them in place, so the danger Nader was trying to convey is no longer relevant. And as Jason eloquently points out in Slack, the name was never even factually that accurate. “They were never really suicide, logically, because they got the name because the wind would catch them and they’d fly open; so it was more of a manslaughter door.”
Instead, I think we should borrow from the world of interior design (and refrigerators), where there is indeed a very simple name for a pair of doors that open like the ones on the car above: French doors. After all, if Whirlpool can figure out how to make its opposing-hinged products sound classy, Ferrari probably deserves the same dignity.
Topshot: Lincoln
Ralph Nader’s opinions should be disregarded wherever possible. Aside from vilifying the Corvair, he has recently demonstrated such poor judgement that it should cast doubt on his works retroactively.
He wrote a book in 2009 titled Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!…
Before sharing that, I decided to read the cited blog post in case I had made incorrect assumptions about the message based on the Wikipedia summary. I didn’t, but it provided more details.
The fictional group of super-rich people in the book has real super-rich people as members.
Some of those names aged about as well as the title.
They’re arguably safer for nearby cyclists.
As a kid who got to go to a number of car shows, I actually learned the term “suicide doors” as doors that opened backwards well before I had any idea what the term suicide meant. Had no idea it was originally a Naderism.
Just rebrand them slightly to “Sooie-side” doors and come up with a story about how farmers back in the day used to yell “Sooie sooie sooie” to call their hogs and how it was easier to see said animals coming towards the vehicle if the side-doors opened from the rear.
I think they should be called “Banana Peels” for obvious reasons.
My FIAT 500 has these doors and people often refer to it as “controvento”. I always called them rear-hinge or coach doors.
Had the car for dozens of years, and had the door unintentionally swing upon once. There is a small cloth strap that prevents the door from swinging into the rear quarter panel which worked but I replaced as the force stretched it out. I was not going fast at all but the force and speed was frightening…the car also has no seat belts, thankfully I didn’t have a passenger.
Roods
Huh. Didn’t know Nader coined the term. I grew up thinking the name was accurate because of my father’s stories about his sketchy Lloyd he drove in rural Indiana in the 1960s.
He got it cheap because the starter was out, and some other stuff. It came with a complete parts manual in German. He found pictures of the missing parts, copied the parts numbers, and mailed an inquiry to the factory in Germany. Amazingly, they eventually mailed him the parts COD. Ah, simpler times.
In the meantime, he either had to park on hills, or push start the car. Push starting a car with rear-opening doors gives teeth to the moniker “suicide doors.”
(I just looked up Lloyd, and it may be relevant that a common German phrase at the time was, “Wer den Tod nicht scheut, fährt Lloyd” (“He who is not afraid of death, drives a Lloyd”).
Apparently, my father was dating the woman who would become my mother at the time. He would pick her up at the telephone exchange (she was an operator) in the Lloyd. She’d steer while he pushed. I’m probably lucky to have been conceived.
Another story: when Dad first got the Lloyd running, he took it for a quick test run. He was spotted by the sheriff with no plates in the car. Dad tried to outrun the sheriff… uphill, in a 2-cylinder, 2-stroke car, and turning down a side road. He was busted, but the sheriff was quite familiar with my father’s mechanical mayhem and just issued a warning.
I had never heard of Lloyd as an auto brand, so I looked it up. None of the 2-stroke cars listed on Wikipedia had a top speed of over 47mph, which was presumably determined on a nice, level road. What a chase it must’ve been.
One of those cars appears to have been constructed like a couch. I also struggled to find examples of models with four doors until I realized the two doors were rear-hinged.
I can see why I had never heard of Lloyd as an auto brand! Though, I respect them for sending the parts.
Dad had a reputation as a mad scientist with a welder and scrap iron.
He built the first go kart ever seen in Warren County, Indiana – sometime in the late 1950s. I think he used a gas washing machine motor. He entered it as a 4H project at the fair. They didn’t know what to do with it, so it was in the arts & crafts display. There were a lot of jealous kids that year. (Later, he was crew chief when his fraternity won the Purdue Gran Prix in the early ‘60s).
Another high school project was a hot rod he and his buddy Mike made out of a junk International truck my grandfather gave them. They took off the bed and shortened the frame and driveshaft so the rear wheels were right behind the cab. The floors were rusted out so they made seats like lawn chairs out of tubing and feed sack hammocks. The brakes leaked badly, and they were too cheap to buy brake fluid, so they used water. Soon they had no brakes. Dad recalls running up and down the blacktop road in front of the farm. If they got up enough speed, the valves in the old IH straight six would float and it would shoot fire out the exhaust. The IH hot rod craze ended when a loose end of the burlap seats dangled down into the driveshaft, which instantly ripped the seats out from under the boys and whipped them with the loose ends until they could bring the truck to a halt while clinging to the frames.
In high school shop class Dad machined a cannon out of an old tractor axle. We still have it. Given a charge of black powder and a wad of paper towel, it will blow a hole through a five gallon bucket of water. We fired a ball bearing out of it once and hard it “thwocking” off trees out in the woods for several seconds.
Later he got interested in Corvairs and started collecting junk ones for a project. The cars sat around until my grandmother got sick of them. When there was a construction project on the farm, she had the bulldozer operator shove them in a hole and bury them. There’s still an engine and transmission in one of the barns.
When I was a kid, he continued to build go karts (no brakes), water-jet propelled battle platforms for the farm pond, combo rope swing / zip lines, and other dangerous recreational devices. I had a good childhood.
Everything is being hijacked. As mentioned the newly ordained owners suite although I kind of like that one. The OK sign with your hand along with the thumbs up. Rainbows and now what do I call the suicide knob on my lawn tractor? Mr. easy steer?
That’s easy – the steering wheel knob has another old nickname: the necker knob. It allowed you to steer with one hand while you draped the other arm around your sweetheart, who was of course snuggled up to you on the bench seat. Don’t try this on your lawnmower.
The minister’s suite? That’s what ordained means. Owner’s suite is becoming the popular term.
I’m no native speaker, but won’t “reverse doors” work?
In any case, I’m hlad this site isn’t dependent on social media in any way, otherwise we would be dancing around the topic calling them “s*****e doors” or “[unalive] doors”/”[self-harm] doors”
An astute observation Rafael! 🙂 Unalive doors indeed! 😀
I’m fine w/’reverse’ doors, though the persnickety among us (sometimes including me) might insist that they’d also have to open inwards to truly earn that moniker.
Thanks! And thanks for the new word, I was sure it was a typo, but it is real nad (maybe) related to a similar word in Portuguese, “pernóstico”, with similar meaning and unknown etymology!