I drive a convertible. I have ALWAYS driven a convertible. My first one cost $200. You can afford one, too.
Convertibles:
Are Cool
Make you look cool
Let you feel the wind in your hair (you can’t get this on a motorcycle anymore, you’re supposed to wear a helmet)
Let you get tan.
If you are a hot babe, you provide a service to society by giving truckers an unobstructed view.
Provide cheap and CFC free air conditioning.
Let you experience life instead of just watching it pass by through a window.
Let the world share your taste in radio stations.
Make you feel sexier
Alleviate stress.
Make you seem better looking and more interesting than you really are
If you don’t drive a convertible, what’s the matter with you for chrissake? Do you not like fun? Are you a stick in the mud? Are you too dull?
CONVERT NOW YOU HEATHEN SCUM!!!
Note: If you live in the arctic circle you are excused. If you drive an old pickup truck with the windows down and a dog in the bed you are excused as well because I think that that is kinda cool in its own way. If you have vampirism, albinism or some other kind of medical -ism that prevents you from driving a convedrtible you are excused.
If you are afraid you are going to mess up your hair, or are afraid of the increased sound, or that the wind might give you windburn, or that it might be too much on your sensitive skin, or if you drive a freakin’ SUV, minivan, or other four wheel box, stop being a drone and get your act together. THere really is no excuse!
You need to readjust your priorities for crying out loud. Look at you you’re a disgrace. Was this what you wanted to be when you were a kid? Live a little. CONVERT!
Are Cool So are Margaritas; I don’t drive them, either.
Make you look cool Sorry. See #5.
Let you feel the wind in your hair (you can’t get this on a motorcycle anymore, you’re supposed to wear a helmet) I’ve stood on a ship’s deck in gale-force winds. I don’t like the wind in my hair.
Let you get tan. Melanoma.
If you are a hot babe, you provide a service to society by giving truckers an unobstructed view. I’m not a babe. I really don’t want the attention of any trucker who wants to ogle middle-aged guys.
Provide cheap and CFC free air conditioning. See #3.
Let you experience life instead of just watching it pass by through a window. There is no life outside a minivan filled with a hyperactive 10-year-old and a young dog.
Let the world share your taste in radio stations. My Chopin always loses to their Metallica.
Make you feel sexier See #'s 5 and 11.
Alleviate stress. As you determine that the only way that you can outrun the clown that you just cut off at 75 mph is to continue pushing ahead instead of stopping to put up the top, you realize that the thunderstorm ahead of your hood ornament is not going to wander off the road before you get drenched.
Make you seem better looking and more interesting than you really are I’m already married. Why do I care?
I know your fear. Believe me, you are not to far gone. I have seen worse. Don’t wait until your midlife crisis to realize the truth.
Have your midlife crisis now while you’re still young and can enjoy your recaptured youth (don’t try to understand the logic of that statement there isn’t any,) just go with it.)
With the top down, the kids will not scream. The dog will put his head outside and slobber. Who cares about you, your wife will look better! Let the wind blow your hair while you still have some. If you watch oncoming traffic for windshield wipers you won’t get caught in the rain. As a bonus, if you drive a '73 Buick Centurian ragtop in anything but the heaviest rain at speeds in excess of 50 mph, the rain will not enter the car! (My first car, the only one I tried it in.)
I agree with Scylla, but there need to be more excuses. Mine is that as a poor college student, I don’t drive anything. Another good one is if you live in an area where the risk of theft is real enough to make a convertible impractical.
I have always thought it would be incredibly fun to drive around in a nice convertible with the top down and some good opera music playing on a kickass stereo system. And I’m generally not an opera person.
Geez. When I read the title, I thought it was Shayna going to the “hard sell” in her attempt to find a significant other…
I suppose a convertible might be kinda neat, but I’m paranoid about the theft issue.
[HIJACK re car theft]
I never had a bicycle stolen, or much else stolen, when I was a kid. When I got my car stolen two years ago, it really hit home. I believed that if I could kill who did it, I would have.
They eventually recovered my car…not really badly damaged–I think they wanted the briefcase I stupidly left in there, because I never saw the briefcase again, and there was evidence that they abandoned the car the same night it was stolen (it started to get parking tickets right away, and only a few miles from where it was stolen)
Stupid me. I found out AFTER they stole my car that Toyota Camrys were the easiest/most popular cars to steal. Before they found it, I had the TV on in the background, and there was some “Cops” like rip off that showed the police cruising
around Inglewood trying to recover stolen Camrys. Stupid DRY became glued to the TV, hoping desparately the TV camera would pan over HIS car. (I’m not sure what I would have done if I saw a car that looked like mine…Take a cab down to Inglewood and cruise the streets??)
[/HIJACK re car theft]
Car theft. Come on. What determines whether a car is likely to be stolen, is how easy it is to steal. THe convertible top is hardly an inducement. Your average car thief can open a door with a slimjim almost as fast as could slice the top.
Camrys get stolen because their ignition system is easy. I’m currently driving a Sebring, and that has a chip in the key which shuts down the engine unless it’s present. THis makes it difficult to steal.
YOu do have to be careful about leaving packages or purses in view inside the car, and I recommend staying with the factory stereo which has a security code and is difficult to steal. I lived in NY and NJ in fairly high crime areas and never had a ragtop sliced.
Funneefarmer:
Of course the tractor is exempt, but only if you have one of those radio things on the side that let you listen to music while you plow. I feel sorry for the people who sit in the enclosed cab tractors.
I’m sorry, I could never put down the top for the same reason I cannot legally open my windows–I’m under orders to protect the environment from my choice of music.
Do you know what I did for my midlife crisis? I went out and bought a couple of kids and traded my Rabbit in for a Caravan. There is nothing like the exhilaration of facing two small people and advancing age at the same time. It makes ragtops look like kiddie coasters.
I come from a long line of people who don’t go bald. (In addition, you obviously weren’t paying attention when I mentioned my shipboard experiences. Standing at the bow of a ship going 16 mph directly into a wind blowing 62 mph (no windshield) has given me enough wind in my face and hair to last me the rest of my life. Any more wind than it takes to lift a kite and I start looking for a lee wall.)
My 8 month old daughter loves nothing better than to ride in my ragtop (the childseat in the back of course.)
If Mommy is out shopping, and my daughter is fussy… Well. we just cruise around the block for a while, looking cool. She laughs her fool head off the whole time. (you would have to see the look the neighbors give us as we circle the block every three minutes at 15 mph, Dad in the front trying his best to look cool, with Baby in the back laughing like a drunken sailor. After we pass some guy who’s out mowing his lawn 10 times or so, I can tell they start to get real curious about what exactly it is we are doing circling the block repeatedly. I’m still waiting for somebody to call the cops on us.)
I’ll agree with you that kids are cooler than convertibles, but I doubt you can top kids IN convertibles. THAT is the summit of coolness and coolosity.
As for the wind, I am not talking about gail force, rip the skin off your face, batten down the hatches wind here. That’s why you have a windshield. Imagine a light breeze lightly tousling your hair on a warm summers evening as you relax in the hammock outside with a beer. Soon you will get up and Barbecue a few perfect steaks. But not yet. THIS is the kind of wind I’m talking about. If you don’t like THis wind, then I cannot help you.
I recommend the Sebring convertible. A good family car. It’s got a big back seat, lots of trunk space, front wheel drive. Practical yet sporty. Stylish yet not ostentatious. Friendly yet slightly arrogant. Epistomological but not Freudian.
After I get my sunburnt butt out of the car, pick the bugs out of my teeth, comb the tangles out of my long hair for three hours, put spray on the bug stings, I’ll tell you why I don’t drive a convertible.
I had a convertible. Mustang. The road noise was horrible when the top was up. It was cold in the winter. I had this horrible fear of getting hit and flipped. I traded it.
THe Sebring is rated for 3 rolls (which is 3 more than I’m planning on,) has a double insulated top, so it’s very quiet, and quite toasty in the winter. It heats up faster than my wife’s Goddamn Durango.
How were you picking bugs out of your teeth? Are you so tall that your head was higher than the windshield? Did you have a windshield? If you didn’t, then that might also explain why it was so cold. Put your hair up, wear a baseball cap, use a baret (or whatever you call those things,) stop complaining and enjoy life.
Unclench the ole sphincter muscle, and stop worrying.
I drove a Mustang convertible for 3 days while the Caravan was being serviced. I loved it. I’d vroom the kids off to school while hearing Scotty’s voice in my head saying, “More power, captain!” After a lifetime of playing it safe, it was fun to have a glee inducing car, though I don’t think I’d enjoy it constantly. Plus, I had that parental guilt about not carting the kids around in something safer, like a Sherman Tank.
Oh, and I listen to opera in the car all the time and I cranked it.
