William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

October 6, 2013

The roller-coaster ride of the Toyota GT86 Convertible rumors appears to have crested. According to What Car?, Toyota has canned GT86 Convertible project for the timebeing. No apparent reason was given for the cancellation, but there is speculation that the added rigidity needed could have added too much weight for the coupe, ruining it's perfect weight balance.

The report does say the project could be 'fast-tracked' if Toyota's management wants to restart the project once again.

Source: What Car?

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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I don't think Toyota-Lexus-Scion offer one convertible. That is pretty lame from such a huge car maker.

Lexus IS-C... though I think that is done soon.

Lexus IS-C... though I think that is done soon.

Yeah, I think there is a 2014 IS C, but after that... Its gone.

As an owner of a Scion FR-S, I would be very interested in a convertible variant, the more options the better in my opinion. Though perhaps a convertible is thought to be philosophically inconsistent with what the FR-S is, I've always heard that loosing the roof adds weight and worsens handling, and what is an FR-S without ether of those things?

We had our first major fall storm of the year in Seattle with sustained winds of 60mph. It shut down the floating bridge across Lake Washington, numerous power outages and major disruptions to the ferry system, etc. Sadly convertibles did not get a good name as a man was nearly killed when a tree got blown onto his new Ford Mustang convertible and the local news talked it up that he would have survived better if he had a steel roof.

Course I think either way, a heavy 150 foot tall evergreen crashing down on your car was going to cause injury no matter way. Maybe a bit less with a steel roof, but they still would have had to cut him out like the fire department did on his convertible as they cut the support structure of the roof away and the side of the car to get to the man.

While I know there are those that love a convertible and the open wind type driving, without plenty of money, the low cost cars that are convertibles are just not fun to drive.

The only difference between a convertible and a hard top in that situation is which tool the Firefighters use to cut the smashed roof off the car with.