wow !! crazy car... love the look of those seats. and the doors would be a dream in a tight parking lot.
Problem is other people don't have them so you still get door-dings on your precious Prius :mrgreen: I really have to say, the standard opening doors are just horrible because of the door-ding thing. Everyone needs those upward opening doors...but then again, with SUVs, that'd be a little tricky in garages and parking lots. :mrgreen:
I know from recent experience (having had, and passed on, an opportunity to buy a Prius #3 from a used car dealer here in town) that lower-package Priuses are going for 25,000 on the block and being resold by dealers who snatch them up for up to 3k more than that...
Gullwings look great, but in the 1970's I owned a Bricklin, a gullwing car. The problem is gullwing doors leak - water that is. Fundamentally it doesn't work - gullwing door seal in two axis (the side and top), that are at right angles to each other - makes it nearly impossible to get a good seal.
when i was in college i worked for this used car salesman and he went out and got 14 Deloreans. they had gull wing doors and they never leaked (I think... this was in Riverside, CA and we didnt have a lot of opportunity to test the theory). i guess that if you can seal a sun roof then a door would be easy. also i think back in the 70's most of the sun roofs leaked too. nowadays we simply know how to do it. ya know space age plastic. rubber that is firm but never dries or cracks. etc etc etc.
http://www.torquecars.co.uk/styling/gullwing-doors.php Go ahead.. someone try it.. tell me how it works out. So wait.. if these are Gullwings.. what does the mini prius thingy have? eagle wings? hehe.. for now.. i'll just call them Delorian wings ( however you spell it ) i'm tired.. lol :mrgreen:
Those arn't gullwings, they open different. The mini Prius is the one with the gullwings. Not sure what those ones at the website are, though I know they're on Lambourghinis
Not so sure about that, you still need to have quite a bit of space next to the car. The doors swing open, but probably you won't need much more, or as much space as with a normal doors. By the way, beautiful car that little Prius!
Better look closely though, those extra 2 people better be EXTRA short. I doubt Starbug would fit back there.
I doubt it, I think the arc as the door lifts would put the edge further from the body than a regular door. And if you got squeezed in by someone parking poorly, you're going to be crawling on the ground and up into the car!. Now, if they could hinge so it lifts almost vertically, that would be great.
Nope, look again, the center car is an Audi TT, the bottom car is a BMW - even says so in the text. If the doors can pivot far enough forward as they lift, revealing the full opening, that would be very useful in parking lots. Just don't plan to put it in a garage ;-)
I agree. If Toyota didn't have HSD, Honda Hybrids would get my money - if they manage folding rear seats in a 4 cyl Accord or 4 cyl Odyssey (still prefer my smaller Odyssey). I guess I could go for the 6 cyl Accord but it kind of misses the point of Hybrids. But Toyota DOES have HSD, my prior experience owning a Toyota was very good. Going HCH seems too much of a compromise.
The gullwing doors take far less "width" than a regular door. About 4" on my old Bricklin. As far as Delorean doors go, they were very lightweight doors - they didn't have any side-protection bars in them. A typical Bricklin door weighed in at 300 pounds!. Delorean used gas struts to lift the doors up, the Bricklin used hydraulics and them later compressed air to move 'em. When the door was up, it was real easy to bend the door out of shape by pulling on it.
actually the Delorean cars if you remember were manufactured in Canada and exported here illegally basically. there was never a new car sold in the US because they did not pass safety regs. i think the door was part of the reason among others. in fact the cars we got were trucked to a park and ride from Canada and we picked them up there. for some reason, the dealer we got them from would not allow them on his lot which was strange because at the time, the Deloreans were very hot. despite the "used" status of the vehicles, they were still selling for nearly $2-4,000 over sticker.
I think all those unconventional doors look silly. And if anyone ever does park so close to me that I can't open the door, I can always clamber in through the liftback. Awkward, but acceptable for as infrequently as it's likely to happen. I think that once in my 30 years of driving I had to get in on the passenger side.
But the skirts over the rear wheels are cool. Anyone know of an after-market supplier of these for our Prii?
DIFFERENT PRIUS? hEY GANG I SEE ALL THE NOTES ABOUT THE NEW LITTLE PRIUS. I DON'T NOT SEE HOWEVER A LINK SO I CAN SEE IT ALSO. ANYONE CARE TO POST ONE. AWWW PRETTY PLEASE!
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Re: The "mini-Prius" (gads, does that name fit): is this on sale in Japan right now? I understand from the MIT Technical Review article that Toyota has released a number of other hybrid cars in Japan that haven't made it to the States (or anywhere else, I think). If anyone ever finds an article (in English ) that provides details of the various Japan-only hybrids being sold by Toyota, I'd love a link.
