DFM Opens Doors At The Edmonton Motorshow

Every year for the last four years MandDFM and I have gone to the Edmonton Motorshow to see the new cars.  While MandDFM prefers to consider the car as a whole when passing judgement, I concentrate on only one aspect of a car when deciding whether or not it is good:  

how well the doors feel to open and close.

The door handle is the first thing I touch to get into my car and the last thing I touch when I leave.  If I'm going to spend XX Thousands of dollars on a new car, I don't want to be annoyed every time I open the door.  To be certain, I'm also concerned with the experience of driving the car or being a passenger, but since it's hard to test the handling or braking dynamics of a parked car whose battery has been disconnected I'm left with the doors.

Without a doubt, the best doors at the Motorshow for at least the last three years have been found on those cars made by Hyundai (I did not extensively test the doors at the first Motorshow I attended).  But it's not just the door handles that Hyundai does well, the entire door is treated as a piece of art by Hyundai's designers, and it is that sort of attention to detail that makes Hyundai one of the leading automobile manufacturers in the World today.

Until today, the Hyundai Elantra has had the World's best door ergonomics.  While I still maintain that the Elantra is King, a contender to the crown has recently emerged - the Nissan Cube.  While opening and closing the doors on the Cube may not have the Crystal Pepsi-like perfection of the Elantra (yes, I was a fan of Crystal Pepsi), Nissan has finally answered my prayers and taken the engineering of car door handles into the 21st Century.

Rather than having an awkward-to-pull tab, as most vehicles do, the Nissan Cube employs a simple yet ingenious loop.  To open the door on a Cube simply slip two fingers into the perfectly positioned loop, curl and tug.  That's it.  No having your fingers slip off the negatively sloped handles of depressingly too many cars I tested, or having your knuckles smashed into the hard plastic ridge above the miniscule door handle (I'm looking at you Volvo).  Instead, the Cube passenger is treated to the door opening equivalent of a day at the spa.

Yes, the verdict is in, with it's gargantuan cabin/headspace and World-leading door handle design, the Nissan Cube was DFM's pick for Car of the Show this year at the 2009 Edmonton Motorshow.  Make sure you check out its door handles at a dealer near you.  Tell them DFM sent you.

(The remarkable door handles of the Nissan Cube.)