page_title: Gull-wing door
hierarchical_section_title: Gull-wing door
caption_attribution_description: Bricklin SV-1 Car
context_page_description: A gull-wing door, also known as a falcon-wing door or an up-door, is an automotive industry term describing car doors that are hinged at the roof rather than the side, as pioneered by the 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300SL race car and its road-legal version introduced in 1954.
  Opening upwards, the doors evoke the image of a seagull's wings. In French they are portes papillon. The papillon door was designed by Jean Bugatti for the 1939 Type 64, 14 years before Mercedes-Benz produced its similar, famous 300SL gullwing door. The papillon door is a precursor to the gullwing door, and is slightly different in its architecture, but is often overlooked when discussing gull-wing design. Conventional car doors are typically hinged at the front-facing edge of the door, with the door swinging outward horizontally.
  Apart from the Mercedes-Benz 300SL of the mid-1950s and the experimental Mercedes-Benz C111 of the early 1970s, the best-known examples of road-cars with gull-wing doors are the Bricklin SV-1 from the 1970s, the DMC DeLorean from the 1980s, and the Tesla Model X of the 2010s.
context_section_description: A gull-wing door, also known as a falcon-wing door or an up-door, is an automotive industry term describing car doors that are hinged at the roof rather than the side, as pioneered by the 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300SL race car (W194) and its road-legal version (W198) introduced in 1954.
  Opening upwards, the doors evoke the image of a seagull's wings. In French they are portes papillon (butterfly doors). The papillon door was designed by Jean Bugatti for the 1939 Type 64, 14 years before Mercedes-Benz produced its similar, famous 300SL gullwing door. The papillon door is a precursor to the gullwing door, and is slightly different in its architecture, but is often overlooked when discussing gull-wing design. Conventional car doors are typically hinged at the front-facing edge of the door, with the door swinging outward horizontally.
  Apart from the Mercedes-Benz 300SL of the mid-1950s and the experimental Mercedes-Benz C111 of the early 1970s, the best-known examples of road-cars with gull-wing doors are the Bricklin SV-1 from the 1970s, the DMC DeLorean from the 1980s, and the Tesla Model X of the 2010s. Gull-wing doors have also been used in aircraft designs, such as the four-seat single-engine Socata TB series built in France.
caption: A Bricklin SV-1 with its doors open
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