A couple of years ago Peugeot released the 1007, which is a funky subcompact city car with a unique feature: double sliding doors. So instead of conventional doors, you get van-like sliding doors which whizz back and forth electrically. Cool idea, the concept behind the 1007 being to allow easier ingress to the car in typically tight Euro cities.
Great idea….but just so you know, JDM did it first…
In 1989 Suzuki’s kei car was the highly successful Alto. And while the version you or I would be interested in would be the Alto Works RS/R with its turbo charged 4v engine, 9500rpm redline and AWD, amongst the bizarrely huge model range was an interesting derivative called the SlideSlim.
Equipped with sliding doors, the SlideSlim also came with pivoting seats to allow those in the front seats to step in and out more easily. As far as we know, the SlideSlim wasn’t available with the Works RS/R engine (but it was available with the AWD drivetrain) and yes like the Pug 1007 I believe they didn’t exactly fly off the showroom floor either.
As if the Peugeot stealing the sliding door/compact car combo from Suzuki wasn’t enough, Toyota then went on to steal the idea from Peugeot after seeing it on the 1007! The result? The Toyota Porte:
LINK
And ‘Porte’ is French for ‘door’… one could argue Toyota could have at least been a little less blatant about the French Peugeot connection.
Ben