Vocabulaire basique de la voiture en français

What does “portière” mean in French?

A door on a house is une porte; the door on a car is usually une portière. La porte de la voiture is not wrong, but portière is shorter and far more common — il a claqué la portière is how you say someone slammed the car door. The same word covers train-carriage and truck-cab doors, so it is really the word for a vehicle door.

The clip’s other car words come apart the same way once you look. Un rétroviseur is rétro- (“backwards”) plus viseur (“sighting device”) — a back-viewer, which is exactly what a rear-view mirror is. Long French car words stop looking arbitrary once you can see the pieces.