French Car has Front Door (Aug, 1936)
French Car has Front Door
IN designing a car to give the minimum of resistance to the air—”to shed air as a duck sheds water”—M. Andre Dubonnet, a French automotive engineer, departed from usual practice and took advantage of the location of the engine at the rear to have a swing-up door in front, as shown by the illustrations at the left. The curve of the door followed the blunt nose shape, which is the true line of least resistance in streamlining.
It looks like a French attempt at an Isetta.
Looks more like the back end of a French duck.
Looks like a good way to kill yourself. There’s no protection in that whatsoever.
An automobile steered by a rudder – what could go wrong?
So it’s got two doors, one at each front corner. Same place where cars of today have bolt-on fenders, which may well be among the top five parts replaced after collisions.
This designer lived in a safe, happy dream world (and had visions of whales).
for more informations take a look on following french site:
mini.43.free.fr/dubonnet.html
even for a better translation, try it on systranet.com