DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour   

When I was growing up and began thinking of what kind of car I’d like to have the number one possibility always seemed to be a convertible. After all, isn’t a convertible the height of coolness? You have a convertible and you’ll have all the hot babes and “Vehicle Vixens” in town, won’t you? Yeah, "there’s be nothing cooler" than driving around town with the top down and nice breezes running through your hair.

If it happened to rain then you could pull over to the side of the road (or under a viaduct) and put the top up. It was like having two cars in one. Okay, I’ve just given the plus side of convertible ownership in under 125 words. I’ll spend the next 700-800 giving the other side of the equation.

I went through decades with two-door hardtops and a variety of coupes, sedans and even station wagons. It wasn’t until my initial mid-life crisis that I finally had my first convertible — a brand-new 1984 Dodge 600. It was black with a black top, whitewall tires, alloy wheels and a turbo engine. It seemed like a great idea at the time.

After all, I was newly separated after a 20-year marriage and I was ready to hit the dating scene again. I figured I’d put the top down to make it easier for all those women to jump inside and commence Operation “Hug Me To Death.” Was I mistaken!

When I was younger and watched guys drive their convertibles they of course had their girlfriends with them — and sometimes their wives when their girlfriends weren’t available. If it was windy you didn’t hear the girls whining about it. They just put on a scarf and that was the extent of their protestations. But when I started carting women around under the same weather conditions they bitched and moaned about their hair-dos being ruined because the wind removed all their hairspray and thus their hair’s body.

When I would suggest they wear a scarf — I probably said “babushka” because that’s what I was raised to think that’s what a woman’s head scarf was called — they’d look at me like I was Gary the Geek. They believed that only old hags wore scarves. Kind of ironic because around that very instant the woman I’d set my sights on morphed into an old hag herself. There seemed to be a lot of that going on.

Self-inflicted wound #2 came the first time I took anyone for a ride on the freeway with the top up. I think Helen Keller probably had an easier time hearing people speak than each of us inside the rolling convertible did. In the day (as is the new catch-phrase) it was possible to blow out a larynx during a conversation while riding in a convertible because the decibels it took to make yourself heard were the equivalent of the run-up of a JT-3 engine on a DC-8 that was leaving O’Hare International Airport bound for Paris.

Self-inflicted wound #3 would generally emerge at the most inopportune time like during a heavy rainstorm. It’s when I would realize that convertibles are (or at least were) not leak-proof. In the case of my Dodge the leak would come through the top at the A-pillar and down on the power windows and power door lock controls on the armrest.

When I had a jacket or sport coat on my left arm was generally soaked when I left the vehicle. On the same subject, during frigid winter temperatures icing would appear inside my windows and it was probably caused by the open spaces that always seemed to emerge during the tenure of my convertible although in discussing this at various convertible support groups I would attend, all my problems seemed to be shared by others. Also, I found the closing benediction to be kind of odd: “God grant me the serenity to accept the convertible I have while saving my money for a vehicle with a solid roof.”

So, like most of my ilk, I moved out of the soft top ghetto and went back to coupes and sedans. Now, however, many manufacturers have atoned for their sins and have designed a folding hard top that fits into an opening in the trunk and provides all the better attributes of a convertible with none of the side-affects. If it starts to rain like a Taiwanese typhoon the top goes up and the occupants stay nice and dry inside their “coupe.”

The noise issue has also been addressed and answered by some manufacturers as well. Mercedes-Benz in particular has perfected a raised lip of sorts atop the windshield that combines with a wind-deflector located behind the seating area. When the top is down the air is directed over the windshield and beyond the windscreen so that the cabin of the car is like sitting in a living room and conversations can be conducted in a normal voice.

Looks like I picked the wrong era to have my mid-life crisis. But, like I found out with my first wife, life can be fraught with disappointment.