Around the same time, the first post-war production passenger car with a one-door/two-door body shell (excluding people carriers with a third side-sliding door, such as Chrysler’s original Voyager and the Toyota Model-F Space Cruiser) was launched; the oddly-named Mitsubishi Lettuce. Introduced onto Mitsubishi’s domestic Japanese market in late 1989, the RHD-only Lettuce was based around the sixth-generation Minica kei-car model line, with one front door for the driver, and two doors on the opposite side for the front and rear passengers. The Lettuce was an instant hit, prompting other small copy-cat uneven-doored kei cars to be rushed onto the Japanese market by a handful of rivals, including Daihatsu and Suzuki.
General Motor’s short-lived ‘low cost’ Saturn brand was the next to adopt the odd-side-door body configuration for its SC2 coupe, with a rear suicide door for the back seat passengers being added for the 1999 model year to attempt to improve the SC2 model’s disappointing sales. The Saturn’s extra side door helped lift sales very briefly, before GM finally chose to kill-off the Saturn brand altogether for 2010 as it failed to ever make a significant dent in the USA sales of affordable imports from Toyota, Hyundai, Kia and the like.
A few years ahead of the launch of the Hyundai Veloster, BMW chose to revive of the long-dormant Mini Clubman name tag in 2007 with a new, lengthened estate derivative of the popular Mini hatchback. The new Clubman featured a small, single backwards-opening rear passenger ‘suicide’ door, marketed as the Clubdoor, located on the right hand side of the body, irrespective of market.