Space can be a problem in Taipei, and sometimes there is precious little room to even open the door of your car. Getting in and out is easier with sliding doors, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by many car manufacturers. We are now seeing the sliding door design on a lot more compact cars and MPVs (multi-purpose vehicles).
The idea of sliding doors is not actually that new: they Sliding doors have been used on vans and SUVs (sports-utility vehicles) for some years now. This is primarily because traditional doors on larger vehicles are simply too big to be opened wide in certain situations, and sometimes passengers might even find it difficult to get out for lack of space to the side of their vehicle. The sliding door was seen as the answer to this problem.
In that case, you might be wondering why car manufacturers are not adopting this new door design on all their cars. The problem is that even though they require less lateral clearance, the vehicle still has to have enough height on the side and space to the rear for the sliding rails to be fitted, which narrows the choice down to larger vehicles and vans.
And there is another thing. Compared to traditional doors, it takes more physical strength to pull the sliding door open and back. To overcome this problem, higher range cars have been fitted with electrically powered slide doors, making them easier to use.
These restrictions had prevented the use of sliding doors on hatchbacks and compact cars in the past and this was especially true for cars like SUVs with their shorter rear sections.
Car designers never forgot the advantages offered by the Car designers never forgot the advantages offered by the sliding doors concept and as MPVs and cars with higher storage areas became more popular, we started seeing a lot more sliding doors.
In the 2002 Paris Motor Show Peugeot unveiled a car with the "Sesame" design concept, incorporating the more ample rear storage space with the convenience of sliding doors.
At this year's Geneva Motor Show people were introduced to the new Opel Trixx and its small car concept, with sliding doors opening to the rear and front. This design not only made it much more convenient to get in and out, but offered a highly versatile interior concept.
A few months later, the "Sesame" design was reincarnated in the Peugeot 1007, bringing together the practicality of a spacious compact and the convenience of sliding doors. At the same time, this had the effect of getting other car manufacturers wanting to get in on the act.
The Mazda 5, previously kept under wraps save for the release of a few photos of the exterior, finally made an appearance at this year's Paris Motor Show.
The Western motor media, in general, had originally thought the new car was to be next in line in the MPV and SUV range, but at this show they found out that it was in fact successor to the Premacy. Apparently, Mazda had also come to the conclusion that sliding doors were the best way to assure ease of access to the back seats of their new car.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Many people noticed the flood of pro-China propaganda across a number of venues in recent weeks that looks like a coordinated assault on US Taiwan policy. It does look like an effort intended to influence the US before the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) over the weekend. Jennifer Kavanagh’s piece in the New York Times in September appears to be the opening strike of the current campaign. She followed up last week in the Lowy Interpreter, blaming the US for causing the PRC to escalate in the Philippines and Taiwan, saying that as
US President Donald Trump may have hoped for an impromptu talk with his old friend Kim Jong-un during a recent trip to Asia, but analysts say the increasingly emboldened North Korean despot had few good reasons to join the photo-op. Trump sent repeated overtures to Kim during his barnstorming tour of Asia, saying he was “100 percent” open to a meeting and even bucking decades of US policy by conceding that North Korea was “sort of a nuclear power.” But Pyongyang kept mum on the invitation, instead firing off missiles and sending its foreign minister to Russia and Belarus, with whom it
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has a dystopian, radical and dangerous conception of itself. Few are aware of this very fundamental difference between how they view power and how the rest of the world does. Even those of us who have lived in China sometimes fall back into the trap of viewing it through the lens of the power relationships common throughout the rest of the world, instead of understanding the CCP as it conceives of itself. Broadly speaking, the concepts of the people, race, culture, civilization, nation, government and religion are separate, though often overlapping and intertwined. A government
Nov. 3 to Nov. 9 In 1925, 18-year-old Huang Chin-chuan (黃金川) penned the following words: “When will the day of women’s equal rights arrive, so that my talents won’t drift away in the eastern stream?” These were the closing lines to her poem “Female Student” (女學生), which expressed her unwillingness to be confined to traditional female roles and her desire to study and explore the world. Born to a wealthy family on Nov. 5, 1907, Huang was able to study in Japan — a rare privilege for women in her time — and even made a name for herself in the
RSS