What next, a hardtop that's the same color as the rest of the body?
Weighing in at over 3,800 pounds, the Cabriolet is almost 400 pounds beefier than the metal-lid A4, and that makes the A4 feel a bit slow (0-60 mph takes 7.5 seconds;.6 seconds slower than the A4 3.0 hardtop).
A bidder laughed and said, "Uh, how about right next to it?" Indeed, the next car was a 1963 Impala, a two-door hardtop that had been driven just 11 miles.
He paid for his next car, a 1954 Mercury Monterey two-door hardtop that belonged to a 99-year-old retired lawyer.
Mercedes does offer the SL, a hardtop convertible that has a family tree as big as the Porsche's.
It's got... no, only joking, it's just as you would expect, mechanically identical but with the addition of a two-part folding hardtop that either hides or shows itself in 17 seconds at up to 19mph.
Which leads us to the 2015 California T, a hardtop convertible that is the first turbocharged Ferrari since the vaunted F40 supercar nearly 30 years ago.
The XLR's most notable exterior feature is a retractable hardtop made of lightweight metals and plastics.
Retractable hardtops that lift, fold and stow themselves out of sight in a precisely choreographed mechanical ballet are becoming more commonplace each year, having matured from auto show whimsy to standard equipment on a number of new luxury roadsters.
Over all, the Countryman is 15.7 inches longer than a Mini hardtop, and that stretch lends a new dimension of meaningful practicality.
