Car doors

So, whilst at the NAIAS, I decided to go close car doors.
 
Not slam them. They shouldn’t need to be slammed shut.
 
Close them.
 
As it turns out, there are clear winners and clear losers, but in between it’s closer than you might expect.
 
The Winner: One Lexus. Only one. Nothing else with the brand measures up. But then, nothing else made measures up.
 
The winner is the Lexus 600hL. 
 
Words are utterly inadequate to describe how the door on this car closes. You give it the most mild push, barely above thinking about closing it. The door swings to its position and it is closed. There is a very slight sound, merely enough to confirm that your thought has been executed by the car. The door is shut. Perfectly in line with the bodywork. Solidly in place.
 
On every other car, you must push the door past it’s point of rest, and it then springs back into it’s closed position.
 
On the 600hL, it just closes.
 
Over three days, I kept coming back to that car, just to open and close a door. It didn’t matter which of the four doors it was, or whether any other door was open. The experience was always the same.
 
I don’t know how they do that and – judging by the rest of the cars on their own exhibit – it must not be cheap to do. But those doors never failed, which is itself a tribute because they got opened and closed a lot during the three day press preview.
 
That’s what you get for $104,000 sticker.
 
If you buy a Lexus.
 
If you buy a Mercedes-Benz in that price range, you get a door that pulls itself shut. You get it close to closed and it does the rest.
 
This is the cheap way. Cadillac used a similar technique to close their trunks a decade ago. Fun to watch, but it substitutes electronics for engineering.
 
Want to know why Daimler sucked Chrysler dry? Close the door on an S Class. It’s because they needed the money.
 
You will not believe who came in second.
 
The UAW in Bowling Green may now take a bow.
 
The C6 Convertible, top down, was number two. I’m a former C5 owner and I was astonished. With the window down in just about every other car, you hear the window make some movement as the door closes. Not on the Vette. Silver goes to Chevrolet.
 
After that, it was pretty much impossible to distinguish. They’re all pretty good, solid sounding doors. 
 
Except for two.
 
The “Walter P. Chrysler” Signature Edition Aspen was tinny sounding.
 
We all understand that Chrysler’s got problems. But, they could at least have the decency not to name something this inadequate after a man who had pretty high standards in engineering. It’s close to being as bad as those Harley Earl commercials that Buick used two years ago. 
 
But the Aspen was merely a C minus.
 
For the absolute bottom, the F, you didn’t have to guess.
 
The Smart ForTwo.
 
Closing the door in that thing is akin to the sound made by an old galvanized garbage can.