Say what you will about the technological advancements automakers have made on lights, engines, and autonomous driving, there’s always room for other parts of a car to get in on the fun. Rezvani showed us that when it introduced the Beast Alpha and its “Sidewinder” doors at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

There are plenty of items about the Beast Alpha that are worth headlines, but none are as polarizing as those doors and the manner by which they pop out when their opened and slide forward to let the occupants in and out of the car. At the very least, those are going to be tricky to use in the presence of other cars, but hey, they’re definitely new and they grab people’s attention, for better or worse.

Now, about those “other” items. It’s hard to say if the Beast Alpha is a higher- or lower-end model compared to its cousin, the Beast two-roadster. For one, the Alpha is heavier by around 300 pounds, which is partly responsible for the car returning a slower 0-to-60-mph sprint time (3.2 seconds) than the open-top variant (2.7 seconds). That’s 0.5 seconds slower, which is an eternity in the world of performance cars. On the other hand, the Beast Alpha has a top speed of 175 mph, 10 mph quicker than the Beast. That’s likely due to the Alpha’s hardtop improving the car’s overall aerodynamics, hence making it run smoother than the standard Beast at high speeds.

There might be a little bit of an identity crisis between these two models, but even that shouldn’t take away from the impressive finished products. The Beast Alpha, in particular, looks like a certified sports car and it’s got an Acura-sourced 2.4-liter, K21 turbocharged, engine that nets an impressive 500 horsepower. It even has those Sidewinder doors, which, for lack of a better description, are going to get far more attention than any other part of the car.

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What's in a door?

The auto industry has seen some insane door configurations in the past few years, hasn’t it? The gullwing doors on the Mercedes SLS-AMG are probably the most iconic ones we’ve seen recently, but they’re far from the only pieces of hinged theater we’ve seen in recent memory.

Koenigsegg is notable for having some weird door configurations and that was painfully evident with the confusingly named “dihedral synchro-helix actuated” doors found on cars like the Koenigsegg Agera RS. I’m not going to spend too much time dissecting the clinical definition of these doors, so in a nutshell, they spiral up and out before winding sideways from a horizontal position to a vertical one. Ok, that’s still a little complicated but you get the point (I hope).

The Tesla Model X’s falcon doors, the McLaren P1’s butterfly doors, and the suicide doors on Rolls-Royce models are other notable set-ups we’ve seen from production cars in recent years. Even normal-looking doors are being given unconventional angles these days like the swan doors on the Aston Martin Rapide.

It is notable that automakers have become increasingly creative with these setups when they are traditionally reserved for concepts and prototypes. The Cadillac Ciel was conservative in this regard with the suicide doors, but other concepts like the Peugeot EX1 and the Maserati Birdcage 75th Concept took things to the absolute limits of sanity. The EX1, in particular, not only had suicide doors, but the actual bucket seats were attached to the doors so when you open the doors, the seats come with them. Absolute lunacy.

And, while we’re on the topic of funky door setups, I’d be remiss if I ended this without mentioning the 1989 BMW Z1 and, in my mind, the craziest door setup ever done. The Rezvani Beast Alpha’s Sidewinder doors will grab your attention, but nothing will ever prepare you for the Z1’s disappearing doors the first time you see them in person.


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