Which Cars Have Suicide Doors?

When a car has doors hinged from the rear instead of the front, the result is often colloquially called “suicide doors.” Understandably, automakers seldom market them as such due to the morbid nature of the terminology, instead preferring terms like “coach” doors. In vogue many decades ago, such freestyle doors are confined in the modern era to concept cars and, occasionally, expensive production models.

Related: Lincoln Continental Coach Door Edition: Some Folks Call ‘Em Suicide Doors

Technically, many pickup trucks also offer the feature by way of rear-hinged backseat doors on extended cabs. And, in recent decades, such rear-hinged entryways appeared from time to time as a design peculiarity on other cars: Think Honda Element, Mazda RX-8, various Saturn coupes and the Toyota FJ Cruiser. But those merely followed the letter, not the spirit, of the law. True suicide doors are full-size, wide-opening affairs — a way to show you’ve arrived, usually by chauffeur, in an ultraluxury car.

Which models have suicide doors? For the 2021 model year, just five:

• Rolls-Royce Cullinan
• Rolls-Royce Dawn
• Rolls-Royce Ghost
• Rolls-Royce Phantom
• Rolls-Royce Wraith

What about for previous years? Here are the cars that offered suicide doors for 2020:

• Lincoln Continental Coach Door Edition
• Rolls-Royce Cullinan
• Rolls-Royce Dawn
• Rolls-Royce Ghost
• Rolls-Royce Phantom
• Rolls-Royce Wraith

And here’s which cars offered them for 2019:

• Lincoln Continental 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition
• Rolls-Royce Cullinan
• Rolls-Royce Dawn
• Rolls-Royce Ghost
• Rolls-Royce Phantom
• Rolls-Royce Wraith

Naturally, any of those will cost a pretty penny. The cheapest example in recent years came from Lincoln, which created a limited-run variant of its Continental sedan with rear-hinged doors. The Continental 80th Anniversary Coach Door Edition arrived for the 2019 model year as  by far the cheapest car with rear-hinged doors. It ran at around $110,000 for 2019 — about a third of the starting price of the least expensive Rolls-Royce, the Ghost — and Lincoln reportedly took all of a month to sell out its production run of just 80 examples. The luxury brand returned the special edition in mid-2020 for one last go-around, called simply the Coach Door Edition. Soon after, the Continental nameplate was discontinued.

For now, the only way to get proper suicide doors on a new production car is to pony up $300,000-plus for one of five Rolls-Royce models: the Ghost or Phantom sedans, the Wraith coupe, the Dawn convertible or the Cullinan SUV. If that’s too steep — likely the case for all but the most moneyed shoppers — consider a used example or a short-term rental.

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Editor’s note: This story was updated on Dec. 17, 2020, with information on vehicles with suicide doors for the 2020 and 2021 model years.

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