Originally Posted by Mach V Dan

One thing nobody has mentioned is that lambo-style doors are a MAJOR structural modification to the car, and they're going to be VERY hard to reverse. That means selling the car is going to be very difficult -- 99% of the car buyers in the world are not going to want to live with that kind of door setup.

--Dan
Mach V
FastMINI.net

Originally Posted by SmokeM

I've been thinking about putting a parachute on the back of my mini. You know, the ones they have on the 1/4 track. That would be sweet.

Originally Posted by AvidMINI

Planning on turning your MINI into a top-fuel dragster, eh?

Originally Posted by Eurothrasher

With labor you are looking at appx. 3.5 to 4 grand.

I can think of some other mods you could do for that amount of cash, and get more bang for the buck.

Originally Posted by SmokeM

MINI-Fuel Dragster. I would have one of those little flags, "remove before flight" hanging off the chute.

But, it would also have an alternative use. If I wanted to picnic, I would just deploy the chute.

Originally Posted by AvidMINI

There you go! But it would be cool to add those "NO STEP" and "RESCUE" decals to various parts of your car to complete the picture.

Originally Posted by ScottRiqui

That would take some serious engineering, since the MINI uses frameless windows.

Originally Posted by darmog

Here's a link to a company that installed the lambo doors to a MINI . Might be the same Mini in fact.

http://www.lsddoors.com/us/index.html

Originally Posted by rrcaniglia

I have always thought lambo doors were a neat trick. Don't know why the MINI crowd above is so set against them.

Originally Posted by ScottRiqui

I don't know too much about scissor-doors like the Lamborghini, but I've always been fascinated with "gull-wing" doors and the engineering challenges they pose. In a gull-wing car, if you make the doors a structural part of the car, then they're heavy and may be hard to open and close. But if you make them lightweight cosmetic pieces, then you have to add a lot more metal to the car's body to get the strength and rigidity where you need it to be.

If you look at a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR, they went the "lightweight" route so that they could use regular folding metal props to support the doors. But if you look at the super-wide door sills, you can see how much extra material they had to put into the frame to compensate for the fact that the doors aren't structural at all.

Originally Posted by rrcaniglia

Where do you guys learn all this? There must be a trick to it.

By the way, doesn't anyone find it ironic that folks who own a car that tauts its culture of customizing have in their company so many that are against customization?