Grace Kelly and Cary Grant cruising the French Riviera in a Sunbeam Alpine in To Catch a Thief. Dustin Hoffman’s Alfa Romeo Duetto in The Graduate. The 1966 Ford Thunderbird in Thelma and Louise. The convertible once embodied cinematic escapism and rebellion – but today, barely 11,000 new open-top cars are sold in the UK each year.
According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, sales of convertibles have fallen by nearly 90% over the past 20 years, from 109,171 in 2005 to just 11,484 last year. That collapse has coincided with the meteoric rise of the Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), which accounted for 59% of car sales across Europe last year, according to Dataforce GmbH.
“UK convertible sales fell 90% in 20 years as SUVs now dominate 59% of European car sales.”
“It’s a simple fact of people wanting more practicality these days,” said Steve Fowler, an automotive journalist and founder of the review site Carblah. “I always say SUVs are sports cars for people who can’t have sports cars any more. They’ve got that kind of image that perhaps a convertible used to have.”
SUVs now command the celebrity endorsement convertibles once enjoyed. Upmarket models such as the Lamborghini Urus, Mercedes-Benz G Wagon and Bentley Bentayga are favoured by today’s reality TV stars, footballers and music artists. Big is bling.
But the shift is also practical. “It’s very difficult to put the kids, the dog, the bike, and everything else we have in our lives into a convertible,” Fowler said. That practicality comes at a cost for manufacturers: “It costs so much money to build any car these days. And it’s not just as simple as chopping the roof off… there’s a lot of work that goes into building a convertible.”
Philip Nothard, insight director of Cox Automotive Europe, also noted the challenges, though the source did not provide his full quote.
With demand evaporating and production costs high, the convertible is becoming an endangered species on British roads. Whether the trend can be reversed – or whether the open-top will follow the way of the hand-crank starter – remains unclear.