When discussing this subject, you mustn't confuse a proper sports car with a softtop to one of these new breed oc CC cars. They are two different offerings imho, and the CC often contains many compromises that the sports car doesnt because the CC tries to hard to do too many things.
One of the biggest issues is boot space. two people in a sports car can still have adeqaute lugage space, yet 4 people in a CC dont have adequate space so have to leave the roof up when travelling anywhere. To me this is a design flaw.
People often complain about fabric roofs discolouring or showing signs of wear. Unfortunatly, this is a feature of soft top cars, and shouldnt be treated as a straight forward fault. Yes, if you fold a material (any material, even metal) it will stress and eventually become damaged. The CC gets around this by not infact having a folding roof, but by having a solid roof that has segmented, hinged parts. This adds great weight and complexity to the mechanism.
Many of CC cars suffer from unreliable roof mechanisms, and personally I would be worried about buying a CC car thats gone out of warranty. One snapped cable or failed motor is going to leave you stuffed, with an undrivable car thats open to the elements and needing an expensive roof rebuild.
Soft top car on the other hand suffer degredation of their composite materials over time. The weather, over use, and even just material degredation will cause the vehicle to become rather tired looking over time. Usually when a soft top roof fails however it can still be closed manually (although not with the current Mini I beleive). However, soft top roofs are easily replaced after some years of use, there are many specialists that provide this service. An old MX5 or MGF can usually be re roofed for under £500 (fitted).
So its pro's and cons with open topped motoring, usually more cons. Technically, buying a soft top is really a good way of wasting a couple of grand. Many people fail to use them during good weather, for many reasons. Women dont like the hair being blown around, the kids find theres too much sun sat in the back, people cant hear each other talking at anything other than slow speed etc etc. There seem to be many reasons why people dont put their roof down, even in sunny weather. So, you buy a car (avergae car use is just 5% of people time), and then you choose to spend a couple of thousand pounds more getting a convertible.... which you only use 5% of the time that you are actually in the car.... So, in fact, you spend thousands on a device thats only used for a few hours at most each month. Lets say a total time of 2 days in a year.
They just really dont make much economic sense, as well as being the biggest set of design compromises ever put together........ |