OFFICAL INFO: Opel Meriva Concept - World premiere: FlexDoors

Opel Meriva Flexes its safety muscle / GM/ Opel

Opel’s Meriva has always been one to offer flexibility when it comes to all these family matters such as space. Now Opel has officially declared the Meriva Concept as the first car to load its FlexDoors system. The car will exhibit in Geneva next month.

Meriva is going all innovative on us as it does the exotic by debuting FlexDoors, essentially what we refer to as “suicide doors”, similar to those found in the Rolls Royce Phantom and MINI Cooper Clubman. Rear “Flexdoors” can be opened up to a 90 degree angle. The concept’s representatives say this system is very safe as the doors allow for easier accessibility into the cabin.

Apart from the novel doors, an important role played by the Meriva is that it is the new design benchmark for future Opels of similar segments. Not a bad looker at all in fact, the Meriva could prove the right dose of resurrection medicine for Opel who hasn’t had such a great run in the past four or five years.

Source: General Motors/ Opel

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Herr.Bugno

Mazda RX-8 was before Clubman - why not mention? Concept sideview looks like Citroen C4 Picasso - not very creative!

February 22, 2008 4:45 am

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benzboy

youalso didnot mention, the saturn,the lincoln continentl, 68-69 thunderbird,not so innovative

February 22, 2008 5:29 am

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flyerbry

So they applied an old concept and gave it a new name. Don't you just love those marketing folks! I'm still waiting for a mainstream company to build a car with doors that are more innovative than this rather common setup. Swing up doors have been used on concept vehicles for years but the only company that has put them to good use is Lamborghini. The common excuse for not using swing-up or gull-wing doors in production always seems to be liability. This has never made sense to me... Even the Bricklin that was built way back in the 70s had gull-wing doors and it was designed to be a "safety car" which to me was odd because you had to hold a button as a motor opened and closed the door.

February 24, 2008 5:34 pm

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MAXLD

"gull-wing" doors on a everyday car is just useless and expensive. First, you can't get out the car if you have no total space. Think about parking close to other cars: in a normal door you can get out even if you have no space to open the door at 50% or less. The same with a sucidide door. With a gull-wing door maybe you can get out, but you have to "crawl" or worse. "Swing up" doors it's maybe worse, because of the high and it adds weight and complexity to the opnening system, wich is not a good thing to affordable cars. That only works to Lamborghini and other supercars which price isn't an important issue, at least to the people who can afford it.

February 24, 2008 6:44 pm

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