Re: [SilverStreak] suicide doors

["Jd Lyall" <news@xxxxxxxxxx>]

waymark1@juno.com wrote:
> If you were riding in a car that had suicide doors and the door 
> opened  while the car was moving at any significant speed, your reflex 
> to grab the handle to keep the door from flying back, especially if you 
> had mistakenly opened it yourself, thus having your hand on the door 
> handle, would allow the wind to yank you by your arm out of the car 
> onto the road.
> I have an old (1960!) Panhard sedan in my garage that has suicide 
> front doors. It had at least double-click main latches plus an outer 
> safety catch - 3 catches - to hopefully keep the door shut. It obviously 
> had worked as neither front door had ever been whammoed back against the 
> rear door!
> I had a 1960 MGA that had simple spring loaded catches, though 
> modern style rear opening doors. Sometimes when rounding a right hand 
> curve the left door would pop open. Of course, the wind tended to close 
> the door, not yank it open.
> Latches on cars used to be no more than a spring loaded latch bolt 
> like on a house door.

Panhard. Kul. I had a Lloyd Alexander TS with suicide doors. I was 17 
and driving around with a buncha no-goods in it. We DID open the door 
while moving. Not a good idea. It had a motorcycle style 'reserve' 
setting on the gas tank, which was located above the front engine. The 
air cooled front engine.

Once we put 40 cents worth of gas in the car and went cruising. After 
some while the engine quit running. Pulled into a gas station to try to 
figure it out. Eventually the guy working there figured out that it was 
out of gas! What? I just put 40 cents worth of gas in there! The reserve 
lever had to be turned. Old VW's had that too, but the front tank was 
not above a hot engine.

Now it costs me a hundred bucks to fill the tank with diesel.

The car most people would be familiar with (popular in movies) with 
suicide doors is the Citroen traction avant.