Photo: X-Tomi Design
Miles of clear sky above you, nothing to remind of your receding hair or the lack of respect your children are showing. Convertibles are amazing, especially the supercar kind.
But why can't the little ones be as fun? Nowadays, we can extract Honda S2000 levels of power from a 1.4-liter turbo, an admittedly high-strung one. But not even Volkswagen, who specialize in making fast Golfs, were able to make the GTI or the R Cabriolets successful.
The main attribute of a cheap car is being cheap, just like the main quality of a Ferrari is costing too much money. The regular hardtop shape is naturally durable, but also easy to make.
Take the new Suzuki Swift, for example. Before garnishing it with the trinkets of modern technology, the Hungarian factory that makes it only needs to stamp and weld a few lightweight steel components, like the floor, roof, sides and front frame. It's been the same for several decades.
But a convertible based on the same chassis would need at least another hundred kilograms of underbody bracing and beams to counteract the flex. And it's not the absence of a roof saves you any weight, as the complex folding mechanism that fits in its place bulks the car up.
And even when an automaker adds every kind of underbody bracing, the car is usually about half as stiff as it could have been. Thus, the chances of a Suzuki Swift Cabrio like the one X-Tomi rendered are slim.
F1 cars don't have such problems, So naturally, companies with motorsport heritage found a way to add stiffness without the weight. The tub of the Porsche 918 Spyder is made up of carbon fiber, and so is that of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider. Of course, the Mazda MX-5 is surprisingly stiff for a car made using conventional tech. But no company has yet been able to offer that in a family-friendly hatchback body.
I guess the only thing to do is to buy both a Suzuki Swift and a Mazda Miata. You could even have the latter in retro form to save money.
The main attribute of a cheap car is being cheap, just like the main quality of a Ferrari is costing too much money. The regular hardtop shape is naturally durable, but also easy to make.
Take the new Suzuki Swift, for example. Before garnishing it with the trinkets of modern technology, the Hungarian factory that makes it only needs to stamp and weld a few lightweight steel components, like the floor, roof, sides and front frame. It's been the same for several decades.
But a convertible based on the same chassis would need at least another hundred kilograms of underbody bracing and beams to counteract the flex. And it's not the absence of a roof saves you any weight, as the complex folding mechanism that fits in its place bulks the car up.
And even when an automaker adds every kind of underbody bracing, the car is usually about half as stiff as it could have been. Thus, the chances of a Suzuki Swift Cabrio like the one X-Tomi rendered are slim.
F1 cars don't have such problems, So naturally, companies with motorsport heritage found a way to add stiffness without the weight. The tub of the Porsche 918 Spyder is made up of carbon fiber, and so is that of the Alfa Romeo 4C Spider. Of course, the Mazda MX-5 is surprisingly stiff for a car made using conventional tech. But no company has yet been able to offer that in a family-friendly hatchback body.
I guess the only thing to do is to buy both a Suzuki Swift and a Mazda Miata. You could even have the latter in retro form to save money.
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