Supercars must have cool doors; that’s the rule most of us grew up with, witnessing companies like Lamborghini, McLaren and even Ford putting out the most impressive door designs in the industry.
Whether you prefer scissor, butterfly or gullwing doors, or even that strange door-with-part-of-the-roof thing Ford used in the GT40 and the previous GT, you must admit that having an impressive way of enter/exit is essential, especially when you’re eight years old at heart. The only companies that could escape this rule were Ferrari, because everything Ferrari is supposed to be cool, and Pagani, because the Zonda is still the most supercar of them all.
But some of these impressive door designs just don’t work in real life, no matter how cool the story behind them is. That’s the case with the Ford GT, which paid so much tribute to the original GT40 that used the same, motorsport-derived design.
You see, the reason for the doors to actually feature part of the roof stems from the necessity of having enough clearance for the head of the driver with the helmet on, and with the original GT40 being just 40 inches tall, every little bit counted as a win.
That is of course a great story and will definitely give you valuable bragging points at the pub. However, in the real world of crowded parking lots and tight garage spaces, the doors of the Ford GT will lose their “cool factor” really fast and make you hate them instead because of how impractical their design is.
Doug DeMuro points that out in his latest video, demonstrating how he should be always on the look out for the doors of his Ford GT trying to decapitate him on a sunny day.