Difference Between Scissor Doors & Butterfly Doors

Scissor Doors

• Thanks to the folks at Lamborghini, the scissor doors are perhaps the best known of all of the exotic door types. This door style is known by a variety of other names, including vertical doors, switchblade doors, jackknife doors and the inevitable Lamborghini doors, sometimes simply shortened to Lambo doors. It earned the nickname scissor doors because the doors come straight down, much like the blade on a pair of hand scissors.

Butterfly Doors

• Butterfly doors earned their nickname because they look like butterfly wings when opened. Butterfly doors are actually very similar to scissor doors except for the fact that they rotate out slightly before raising. This style came into existence to allow a race car driver to enter and exit the car more rapidly than is possible with traditional door styles.

Hinges

• The difference between scissor doors and butterfly doors is due to the different types of hinges used. Scissor doors utilize a fixed hinge placed near the end of the windshield, typically at the top corner of the door close to the A-pillar. This type of hinge allows the doors to rotate vertically. Butterfly doors use a vertical hinge located on the A-pillar that allows the car door to turn slightly toward the front before moving upward and outward. This allows you to get a peek at the front side of the door before it raises up.

Advantages

• The manufacturers of high-end sports cars like to use scissor doors on vehicles with wide bodies, as the upward opening door requires less space. When scissor doors open up fully, they still have as much open area as other car door styles, however. Butterfly doors are often used on low-slung sports car models because they allow you to get in and out of the car easily without a door getting in your way.

Models

• Scissor doors are commonly used on Lamborghinis, as well as several high-end Vector and Spyker models. You can also find scissor doors installed on the less expensive Land Rover Range Stormer and the Honda HSC. Butterfly doors are installed on some of the models made by Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Bentley and Peugeot. More affordable car models that have butterfly doors include the Toyota Sera, the Nissan R390 GT1 and the Toyota GT-One. You can also have scissor doors or butterfly doors installed on other car models, but this process tends to be very expensive, particularly for the butterfly door styles.