Where are the door handles? This customized GM truck has shaved doors to go with its lowered stance.
Have you ever looked at an extreme custom or street rod and wondered, “How do they get into that car with no external door handles?”
Welcome to the wonderful world of the shaved door handle. The innovation, which started in the late 1940s, provides that cool, streamlined look. And modern technology easily takes care of opening the door.
Shop now for shaved door devices and kits
The Choice of Cool Customizers
Removing the handle is straightforward. Back in the day, a patch was welded to fill the hole, and lead was used as the filler. (That’s a no-no now for health reasons.)
Early cars with shaved doors were mostly convertibles that retained their inner handles. The slave-to-appearances owner merely left enough of an opening so he or she could reach in and open the door from the inside. That led to the dash-mounted door-open button, which made cool cats even hipper.
Read about how to add a keyless remote entry system to your ride. It’s relatively easy these day, whether your car has shaved door handles or not.
Protocol Hot Rod Products made this well-equipped kit.
But then car customizers got into electric door openers, operated by discreet and often hidden buttons. A customizer named Harry Westergard, from Sacramento, Calif. was reportedly the first person to use a starter solenoid to “pop” open handle-free doors. (A solenoid is a simple electromagnet device.)
The famous custom innovator George Barris was inspired, and the concept quickly spread. A 1949 catalog offering a solenoid kit included a chrome button that drivers could place anywhere to open the doors. It read:
Throw away your door handles! Fill in the holes.
A famous hotrod of the period, Snooky Janich’s ’41 Ford, put the pushbutton in an odd place: the bottom of the rear quarter panel. Others hid it on the bottom of the actual door. Really cool customizers used the pushbuttons that were original to 1946 to 1948 Lincoln Continental door handles.
Shaved Door Handles Go Mainstream
A kit rated for up to 100 pounds.
By the mid-1950s, publications like Custom Car and Hot Rod promoted the shaved door handle. George Barris did a how-to in his book “How to Customize Cars and Rods” from 1963. (Copies show up on eBay from time to time.)
Shaved doors have had periodic popularity, including in the custom car revival in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hidden door handles are not legal in every country, but no one makes a fuss in the US.
Modern production cars could probably get by without external door handles if today’s fancy remote entry systems popped open the door instead of simply unlocking it. Until automakers buy into that idea, you can make your car handle-free with kits available on eBay. They’re not very expensive, usually less than $80, and include a remote. No more pushbuttons.
DIY Shaved Door Handles
Shaved door handle kits are rated in pounds, based on their ability to open heavy doors.
For example, a kit available for about $70 includes a remote, two solenoids, two-button and one-button switches, wiring, poppers for two doors, a relay with socket, two fuses, and a trunk release solenoid kit. It’s everything you need to open a two-door car and its trunk. It should work on a door that weighs about 100 pounds.
This door from a 1977 Datsun 280Z was offered on eBay. It already has shaved handles.
More expensive shaved door handle kits might increase the range of the remote and provide heavy-duty wiring.
An alternative is buying doors that are already shaved. If you have a 1967 to 1972 Chevrolet or GMC truck, there are pre-existing filler panels to aid in converting to shaved doors.
Implementing shaved door handles takes a bit of work. But it pays off big-time with the undeniable clean, classic look.
Also read our post about Lead Sleds—mid-century cars that are shaved, chopped, and channeled.
