Gullwing doors were originally developed by Mercedes-Benz on the 1952 300SL, and since then have been commonly found on expensive exotics and concept cars. While highly impractical for day-to-day driving, gullwing doors have an undeniable “cool” factor, and America has long sought to copy this German design for its own.

Even Ford got caught up in the gullwing door craze, and in 1962 they introduced the world to the Ford Cougar concept. Billed as the car of the future, it featured a fuel-injected V8, a bubbletop cabin, and of course gullwing doors. Too bad, as Jalopnik notes, they never made it.

Then again, the Ford Cougar definitely borrowed liberally from the original Mercedes gullwing, among others, though it isn’t clear that Ford ever had any intention of producing such a car. This was around the same time Ford started trotting out its “Mustang” concepts, and plenty of resources were being devoted to designing and launching the four-person sports coupe.

Built on a Thunderbird chassis and sporting a 406 cubic-inch fuel-injected V8, it is not impossible to imagine Ford could have made this car a reality. Unfortunately, the collective corporate willpower just wasn’t there, and America would be denied a gullwing vehicle until the DeLorean hit the streets in the 1980s.

But Mercedes reintroduced gullwing doors on the SLS AMG coupe, and Tesla Motors has their own take that they call “falcon-wing” doors on their all-electric SUV. Might an American automaker like Ford dare to bring back gullwing doors on a genuine production model?

We won’t hold our breath.