The 5 Coolest Car Features Ever: Swiveling Lights, Gullwings and Disappearing Doors

We spend a lot of time here celebrating glorious mistakes. This time, let's give credit where it's due. These five features weren't just weird. They were genuinely clever, often decades ahead of their time, and they still make car people grin. Every fact is checked against the sources at the bottom.

1. Headlights that look around corners: Citroën DS (1967 Series 3)

What it does: The 1967 facelift of the DS put four headlights under a smooth glass cover, and the inner pair swiveled with the steering wheel, lighting the road where you were about to go instead of where you'd been.

Why it's awesome: It brought directional headlights to mass production. And that was on top of the DS's other party trick, Paul Magès's hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension, which kept the car level whatever the load. We wrote about it in The Citroën DS and its hydropneumatic suspension.

Fun fact: When the DS 19 debuted at the Paris Motor Show on October 6, 1955, Citroën took 743 orders in the first 15 minutes and 12,000 by the end of the day. "DS" sounds like déesse, French for "goddess." See the Citroën DS Quirk Database entry.

2. Doors that open to the sky: Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (1954–1957)

What it does: The 300 SL coupe's doors are hinged in the roof and swing upward like wings.

Why it's awesome: It wasn't just for show. The car was built on a lightweight tubular frame, which left very high sills, so regular doors weren't really an option. Mercedes turned an engineering problem into the most famous doors in car history. The 300 SL was also one of the first cars with mechanical direct gasoline fuel injection.

Fun fact: Getting in and out over that high sill is, in Wikipedia's polite words, "problematic." When Mercedes made the roadster in 1957, it had to redesign the frame to lower the sills and add mounting points for normal doors. See the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Quirk Database entry.

3. The roof that folds into the trunk: Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner (1957–1959)

What it does: At the push of a button, the Skyliner's steel roof lifts, folds its front section and disappears into the trunk. Ford sold it as the Hide-Away Hardtop.

Why it's awesome: It was the world's first retractable hardtop truly mass-produced at the factory, with close to 50,000 sold. It was also the first time a hard roof had a folding front section so it could fit in the trunk.

Fun fact: Instead of hydraulics, Ford used seven reversible electric motors (six on 1959 models), four lift jacks, ten limit switches, ten solenoids, six locks and about 610 ft of wiring. It worked reliably. The catch was that the roof filled almost the whole trunk. See the Ford Skyliner Quirk Database entry.

4. Doors that drop into the floor: BMW Z1 (1989–1991)

What it does: The Z1's doors don't swing out or up. They slide down into the tall sills. The windows retract automatically when the door goes down.

Why it's awesome: The high sills gave crash protection independent of the doors, so you could even drive with the doors lowered, though that may not be legal everywhere. The only production car with retractable doors before it was the 1954 Kaiser Darrin, and its doors slid forward into the fenders, not down.

Fun fact: BMW built exactly 8,000 Z1s in Munich between March 1989 and June 1991. The body panels are plastic, too. See the BMW Z1 Quirk Database entry.

5. A hypercar with no gearbox: Koenigsegg Regera Direct Drive (2015 on)

What it does: Instead of a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, the Regera uses a single fixed gear. The twin-turbo V8 is geared for very high speed, and three electric motors fill in the low-speed gap.

Why it's awesome: Ditching the gearbox helped offset the weight of the three electric motors and the battery. The result is 1,500 hp (1,119 kW) and 2,000 Nm (1,475 lb-ft) combined, with no shifting at all. It was Koenigsegg's first hybrid and the first car to use its Direct-Drive system.

Fun fact: It was unveiled at the March 2015 Geneva Motor Show, and Koenigsegg made 85, most of them sold as soon as it was revealed. See the Koenigsegg Regera Quirk Database entry.

Honorable mentions

• Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicle-to-load: It can supply up to 3.6 kW from an outlet under the rear seat and an outside port. It's a car that's also an extension cord. See the Ioniq 5 Quirk Database entry.
• Lamborghini Countach scissor doors (1974–1990): Gorgeous, and handy for the famous Countach reverse.
• Porsche 959 wheels (1986–1993): Hollow magnesium wheels that formed a sealed chamber with the tire, with tire-pressure monitoring built in. In the 1980s.

What we left out

We wanted to include several other famous features but couldn't verify the details to our standard this time: the Rolls-Royce umbrellas hidden in the doors, the Bugatti Veyron's top-speed key, Mercedes Magic Body Control and E-Active Body Control curve tilting, the Rivian gear tunnel and camp kitchen, and the GMC Hummer EV's CrabWalk. We also skipped Rivian's "Tank Turn," because we couldn't confirm it ever shipped. We'll come back to them once the facts check out.

Want the other side of the coin? See The Weirdest, Worst and Most Confusing Car Names, or browse Weird Engineering.