Quote:
Originally Posted by nick3753
The soft top looks so much more natural on a larger coupe (which this has become). To me, the hard folding roofs only look appropriate on roadster sized vehicles. They take up more space, weigh more, and are costly to repair. Some say using a soft top is for cost cutting, but many higher end verts use them (Bentley Continental GT, S class coupe, DB11) so that argument seems invalid to me. I (like many, many others) have been critical of BMW lately, but this is a move I applaud.
|
I don’t think that’s a conclusion you can draw. The ultra high end coupes have basically zero volume relative to the 3/4 series convertibles. Aston in particular can’t afford to do their own engines or infotainment, so they definitely can’t afford to engineer a hardtop. Also, none of those cars have the same kind of expectation of everyday usage that you might expect from a 4 series, so while there may be romance associated with the fabric roof, it’s also not an investment that anyone wants to make today. BMW benefited from having a design language on coupes that had thin c-pillars which makes the roof stack easier to package.
When the E93 hardtop was introduced, it was the best implementation of a three piece retractable roof and was it was BMW just at their best relative to the competition- lots of examples where the E9x cars really set the standard at the time. The fact that the roof unit was basically carried over unchanged to the F33 seems to indicate that BMW wasn’t keen to spend the money to redevelop the roof. Retractable hardtops have great visibility, look good, and add meaningful rigidity when closed. They are heavy and take up more space than a softtop but I think the E93 in particular handled the visual mass well with the trunk cutline and notchback roofline that evoked the New Series.
The other high volume four seat convertible- the Porsche 911, actually has a fabric covered retractable hardtop, with the only “soft” elements being the pillars, because the curving 911 roofline would have been hard to package with a fully rigid design.