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A suicide door is an Car door hinged at its rear rather than the front. Such doors were originally used on horse-drawn but are rarely found on modern vehicles, primarily because they are less safe than front-hinged doors.
If the vehicle were moving and the rear-hinged door opened, aerodynamic drag would force the door open, and the person would have to lean out of the vehicle to reach the handle to close it. As seat belts were not commonly used in the early days of cars having suicide doors, the person could easily fall out of the car and into traffic, hence the name "suicide door". Another risk was from a car speeding past the parked car in the same direction. A front-hinged door would tend to be ripped off the parked car, but someone partly outside it might escape injury if they were not directly in the path of the speeding car. In contrast, a rear-hinged door would be forced shut, possibly striking the person.
Initially standard on many models, they later also became popularized as a modification on custom car. Automobile manufacturers call the doors coach doors (Rolls-Royce), flexdoors (Vauxhall Meriva), freestyle doors (Mazda), rear access doors (Saturn), clamshell doors (BMW), or simply back-hinged doors.
Rear-hinged doors were especially popular with mobsters in the gangster era of the 1930s, supposedly owing to the ease of pushing passengers out of moving vehicles with the air around the moving car holding the door open, according to Dave Brownell, the former editor of Hemmings Motor News.
After World War II, rear-hinged doors were mostly limited to rear doors of four-door sedans. The best-known use of rear-hinged doors on post-World War II American automobiles was the Lincoln Continental four-door convertibles and sedans (1961–1969), Cadillac Eldorado Brougham (1956–1959) four-door sedans, and Ford Thunderbird (1967–1971) four-door sedans. The British Rover P4 used rear-hinged doors at the rear. German Goggomobil saloons and coupes had two-door bodies with rear-hinged doors until 1964.Goggomobil The French, hand-made Facel Vega Excellence offered a four-door hardtop with a Chrysler-sourced Hemi V8 beginning in 1954.
In the early 2000s, rear-hinged rear doors that are held closed by the front doors, and cannot be opened until released by opening the front door on the same side (hinged at the front), have appeared on a number of vehicles. Such doors may be referred to as clamshell doors. Examples include extended-cab pickup trucks, the Saturn SC, Saturn Ion, Honda Element, Toyota FJ Cruiser, BMW i3, Mini Cooper Clubman, Mazda RX-8, Mazda MX-30 and Fiat 500 3+1.
Rear passenger rear-hinged doors had long been used on Austin FX4 ; they were discontinued on their successors the TX1, TXII and TX4 but reintroduced in the 2018 LEVC TX.
Several have featured rear-hinged doors, such as the Lincoln C, a hatchback with no B-pillar and rear-hinged doors at the rear, or the Carbon Motors Corporation E7, a police car with rear rear-hinged doors designed to aid Police officer getting Handcuffs passengers in and out of the back seat. The Kia Motors Naimo, an Electric vehicle concept car, also has rear suicide doors.
Other car manufacturers which have produced models with suicide doors include Citroën, Lancia, Opel, Panhard, Rover, Saab Automobile, Saturn, Škoda, Studebaker, Ferrari, HiPhi, Lincoln, Mazda and Volkswagen.
In combination with traditional front doors, rear-hinged doors allow chauffeurs easier access to the rear door. In Austin FX4 taxis, drivers were able to reach the rear exterior door handle through the driver's window without getting out of the vehicle.
Rear-hinged doors also allow a better position for a person installing a child seat into the back seat of a vehicle than conventional doors, while being simpler and cheaper to build than the sliding doors commonly used on . The Opel Meriva B compact MPV introduced in 2010 had such doors.
The combination of front-hinged front doors and rear-hinged rear doors allows for a design without the B-pillar, creating a large opening for entering and exiting the vehicle.
There are also a number of safety hazards:
Car manufacturers mitigate these hazards with such safety features as seat belts, and locks requiring front-hinged doors be open before permitting rear-hinged doors to open.
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