I am wanting to make my Montage a daily driver. The goal is to be able to drive it anytime and in any weather. With that in mind the layout of the doors is not really great for constant use. The windows are fixed in place and either pop out or unbolt. The doors opening upwards is annoying and hurt when they fall down accidentally. They are also in the way when climbing in and out of the car. So I would like to get the window to roll down somehow into the door and I would love to make the door opening bigger by making part of the lower body open with the door. But both those ideas don't work with the way the door is made. I would also like to make the doors open out like a normal car.

My best idea for the door is to cut the top off around the window and mount it permanently to the car. from there I can recess the opening a bit and add rubber seals about like a convertible door has so the window has no frame on the door and just seals against the body when closed. With the bottom of the door the only part that needs to swing I can then make it open like a normal door and just swing out. That would also let me take a bit of the lower section and add to the door. I have no idea how that would actually work out since the window is such an odd shape. It would be hard to build tracks for it, and get it to reliably roll up and down, it would be a challenge. But if it worked it would make getting in and out of the car and driving with the windows down real nice.

Another idea was to just modify the window opening so the window fit in from the inside, and just has a channel to sit in on one side and a clip on the other to lock it in place. That would let me remove the windows from the inside but I would still need somewhere to put them without breaking or scratching them. It would be an easy way to do it but would still not really solve the problems, just make them easier to live with in some ways.

I thought about using zip in windows but I don't think that would work well at all and would probably just be annoying.

Anyone got any ideas or comments from what you have done with the doors on these cars?