Ferrari has been manufacturing cars since the late 1930s, but have any of their cars ever featured butterfly doors?
It’s rare that a Ferrari is released with non-standard butterfly doors, but it has happened before. The rather limited Enzo Ferrari (Type F140) which ran from 2002 to 2004 featured butterfly doors. It was joined years later by the LaFerrari, which also boasted butterfly doors on the coupé model.
Read on to learn more about Ferrari and the models they’ve produced over the years.
When One Door Opens
There have been countless innovations over the years where car doors are concerned. While it’s not the most high-performing part of the car, there are many variations that have been invented, for better or worse.
While some have become dramatically iconic and boosted the profile of a car, the majority have been lost to history. It seems that for every elegant gullwing style build, there’s a quirky and zany variant to accompany it.
One of the most iconic designs is the scissor door build, made famous by Lamborghini. They’ve been renamed numerous times over the years, but they’re primarily known by the scissor term.
They create a powerful image almost effortlessly, given that they’re used almost exclusively on high-end vehicles. Although, Lamborghini wasn’t the first to feature scissor doors on its cars.
In 1968, Italian manufacturer Alfa Romeo built the first set of scissor doors on its Carabo concept vehicle. The bizarre-looking, futuristic car never entered the market, but its doors had sparked interest in many other manufacturers.
Lamborghini took the idea and ran with it. They created the Countach, the first production vehicle in history to feature scissor doors.
From that moment on, Lamborghini began using the doors on almost all of its cars. Since then, many manufacturers have copied their style – including Ferrari.
Float Like a Butterfly
While scissor doors open more or less vertically, butterfly doors spread out wide, like the wings they’re named after. They’re much less common than scissor doors, but they’re magnificent when they’re used correctly.
In 2002, Ferrari announced their Enzo Ferrari model, a limited run of supercar that came equipped with butterfly doors. Only four hundred were made, and it became something of a collector’s item.
It was essentially a tribute to the founder of Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari, and was built around a V12 engine. It could go from zero to sixty in around three seconds and when it was brand new, it cost $670,000.
Another limited run was the LaFerrari, produced from 2013 to 2015, and again from 2016 to 2018. The two production windows featured two separate variants, first a coupé, then an Aperta.
The coupé variant of the LaFerrari featured broad and expressive butterfly doors. This car had a fantastic road presence, boasting a top speed of 220 miles-per-hour and a price tag of around one and a half million dollars.
Odd Openings
As we’ve mentioned, there have been some bizarre door systems revealed over the years. Some manufacturers obviously thought whether they could, without considering if they should.
There have been sliding doors, such as the ones on the BMW Z1 (1989), and the Peugeot 1007 Dolce (2006). They offered a huge opening to climb into the car through, but they weren’t the coolest door on the market.
An infamous door in of itself is the one found on the Ford GT. The ‘guillotine’ door was so named because it quite simply resembled the medieval execution device.
The tiny Renault Twizy, designed to accommodate just the driver, originally came without any doors at all. They were an optional extra that, when purchased, came in the form of tiny, scissor-style doors.
Arguably one of the most iconic types of door after the scissor is the gullwing style. First revealed in 1954 by Mercedes on its 300SL, gullwing doors literally resemble the wings of a bird.
They open high and wide, allowing an extravagant entrance from your vehicle. Many cars would adopt this style in the following decades, even as recently as 2020 with the Tesla Model X.
The brands that have taken this flamboyant styling option include Gumpert, DeLorean, Aston Martin, and Pagani. It’s extremely rare for anything other than an expensive car to feature these doors.
If you want to sample the car that started it all, you’ll need a fair bank balance. The Mercedes ‘Gullwing’ 300SL is worth around five million dollars today.