why have convertible cars fallen?
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2 door coupes have also become borderline extinct.
People’s taste in cars have really changed.
Autos are more looked at like appliances now instead of expressions of who you are.
With rare exceptions, convertibles are harder to make and heavier than their counterparts because the roof structure is no long there to add strength, so lots of reinforcement is needed in the rest of the frame. Add that aerodynamics aren’t as good, and you have worse gas mileage.
By exception I mean like the Lotus Elise where the bathtub frame provides all the strength, so the hard top version just adds more weight over the convertible.
Every time I’ve thought of getting one, I’ve realized that my millennial ass doesn’t have a house with a garage yet, and street parking it outside 24/7 seems like a bad idea in a rainy climate. I also can’t afford a second vehicle, and I doubt I’d ever have a convertible as my daily driver. In other words… it’s economics for me 🤷🏼♂️
A convertible is a wildly impractical vehicle, and I have known of precious few people who have owned one as their sole automobile. If you live in a city, they’re trivial to break into, they get far worse mileage due to poor aerodynamics, growing congestion means there are far fewer opportunities to drive with the top down when it’s actually pleasant, and there are so many more alternatives for a young adult to entertain themselves than just piling in their car with their friends and just *driving*.
Remember that blue convertible car eddy used in Beverly hills cop (i know jack sh*t about cars).
That one, but fully electric to do a road trip in the u.s.a.
That is my dream..
The underlying reason fewer people value the joys of convertible ownership over the cost, noise, safety, trunk space, etc. is that fewer embrace the joy of driving. We are all too busy filling all of our time with distractions rather than taking the time to enjoy our surroundings and what we are doing, driving. The same is true of the manual transmission.
In the olden days you could leave your bicycle on your front yard and nobody would steal it. You could leave your front door unlocked and nobody would take advantage. These days if you leave anything open or unlocked people take that as a sign they are free to enter and take whatever they want and you deserve it. So it is annoying to make stops in a convertible because it is a hassle to keep taking tood on and off and after the the initial novelty runs out you discover you almost never have the roof off and don’t bother buying a convertible the next time.
Convertibles are, and always have been, a subsect of sedans.
Sadly, no one buys sedans anymore so there is less financial incentive for car makers to develop convertibles, which are themselves a different product.
Back in the day a lot of cars didn’t last much more than 100k miles. That was also when entry level convertibles began to leak through the seals, have the top crack and the rear window fog. Those convertible tops were quite shoddy. The high end convertibles you still see have much better craftsmanship better suited for the average vehicle life nowadays but there is no way that could be done on more reasonably priced modern cars.
I think for combination of location weather and unfamiliarity .
I live in California and I have a 1987 Jeep Wrangler and the 1997 BMW 318i. Not only are these insanely fun vehicles to drive, they work well in a place that has a lot of temperate weather. I keep the top down for months at a time. Right now, late in the autumn, neither of them sports a top. That’s just not possible in most of the populated US, where it’s just getting to be darn cold.
Also, most people are just unfamiliar with how fun it is driving in nature. Having the top down gives you a situational awareness everything outside that just can’t be matched, even with the most of my hardtops. I know this because I’ve driven my neighbor’s cars.
Lastly, vehicles have become boring commodity items. Just look around your neighborhood at the variety and style and color. Dark trucks, minivans that are white or gray. Boring, boring, boring, just like their drivers.
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