A reader contemplating the purchase of a convertible called last week, asking for advice: Her last convertible was a 1970 MGB, and she was wondering how new convertibles stack up.
Well, compared with a 1970 MGB, it's the difference between the Flintstones and the Jetsons. But the improvement took awhile.
In 1991, my office wasn't far from the Ford regional office, and the regional manager, Bob Bierman, called one afternoon and offered to deliver a new Ford Mustang GT convertible for a test. We went to lunch, and I dropped him at his office. The ride was mostly spent in silence. The new Mustang convertible shook and rattled every time it hit a bump -- railroad-track crossings were the worst -- and the car felt like it had 100,000 miles on it, instead of 200. I knew it, Bierman knew it, and it just seemed best not to mention it until it was time to write the road test.
It was not that long ago that this was pretty typical of convertibles -- a friend recently told me of his older Chevrolet Corvette convertible, which had so much body flex that, if he parked it on an uneven surface, the doors would jam shut and wouldn't open. And I haven't mentioned the leaks -- a hard rain could leave you damp, and driving through a high-pressure car wash could leave you soaked. Rubber gaskets wouldn't seal properly, and even if they did, after a few years, the rubber could get old and brittle and in need of replacement.
As the federal government began ramping up rollover-strength standards in the 1970s and '80s, the convertible market thinned until manufacturers figured out how to strengthen the convertible chassis to the point where it would pass rollover standards. Ford and Chrysler, in particular, worked hard to build back the convertible market, and General Motors wasn't far behind. The 1990 Mazda Miata singlehandedly revived the sports-car market.
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But still, like that 1991 Ford Mustang GT convertible, problems remained. When you cut off the roof of a car -- which, literally, was how many convertibles were built, including the Mustang -- you lose a remarkable amount of body and chassis rigidity. Eventually, manufacturers began learning to brace the chassis properly and beef up the body. The result: The 2011 Ford Mustang Shelby 500 convertible that I tested a few weeks ago. You can drive over all the railroad tracks you want, and I'd defy anyone to tell the difference between the convertible and the coupe.
And that's the norm now, not the exception. Some convertibles may still demonstrate a slight degree of "cowl shake," which is the term for that flexibility you feel when you hit a big bump, but I can't remember the last convertible I drove that wasn't satisfactory.
This includes both conventional, cloth-top models, like the new Mustang, and retractable-hardtop convertibles that manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have helped popularize. When the retractable hardtops are up, they add some structural integrity, but down, a convertible is a convertible.
No argument, convertibles have their own set of problems -- with a cloth top, for instance, anyone with a pocket knife has access to your car's interior -- but mechanically, most all of them built in the past decade are just fine.
