5 Convertibles That Simply Shouldn’t Exist

Enjoy the wind in your hair in these godawful convertibles. Heads will be turning for all the wrong reasons!

Nothing beats the feeling of taking the roof down on a hot summer’s day and driving around with the sun on you and a cool breeze rushing through your hair. The barrier between you and the great outdoors is diminished making your commute to work or your Sunday drive less about arriving at the destination and more about enjoying the journey to get there.

Well, you can forget all of that when you’re driving one of these monstrosities. Honestly, some cars just shouldn’t be made into a convertible for the sake of our viewing pleasure. No one wants to see these on the road and the people driving them don’t even have to suffer the awful aesthetics of the exterior of these Frankenstein-like creations.

Here’s our list of some convertibles that simply shouldn’t exist.

Aston Martin DB-AR1

Here’s an Aston Martin that most don’t know about. It’s the only variant of the DB7 to not have the ‘DB7’ name, probably because Aston Martin didn’t want this ugly duckling to be associated with it.

The DB-AR1 stands for ‘American Roadster’, which may help explain why it’s so revolting! Of course, that’s just a joke, because the AR1 is actually just the convertible version of the DB7 Zagato Coupe, therefore the Italians are actually the ones to blame for this car that looks like it’s had botched surgery.

It’s hard to decide what the worst part of this car is. Is it the green paint paired with cream interior? Is it those chunky wheels? Is it the bulging abscess-looking thing on the door? And the design of the front and rear hasn’t aged all that well either…eugh.

Range Rover Evoque Convertible

No, not the woman. That’s actually Naomie Harris who starred as the famous Moneypenny in Skyfall. The ugly thing behind her is the Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover’s answer to a sporty-looking luxury SUV. The Evoque is usually a nice car to look at, but only when the roof isn’t made from fabric.

I must admit, once the roof is down the car looks… semi passable at best. With the roof up, it’s a whole ‘nother story. And let’s face it, in our British climate, the car will be in the roof-up configuration 90% of the time.

Furthermore, one of the great things about an SUV is that they’re massive and often have a shed-load of boot space. With the Evoque convertible, the huge boot is reduced to a small storage cubby with 251 litres of storage, which is about 40 litres less than in a Ford Fiesta. Why does this car exist?!

Citroen C3 Pluriel Convertible

The C3 Pluriel Convertible had way too much in common with Ikea furniture for a car. No one wants to have to manually disassemble and reassemble their car, especially to this degree. If you watch the tutorial on how to take the roof of this car off, you can quickly get a sense of the pain and frustration the owners of this abomination must suffer if they want to go topless.

With a roof frame that doesn’t fold down with the rest of the roof, we’re left with two massive arches that you have to store. Not only does this mean extra work, but it also means that if you’re leaving your home with the roof down, you better pray to the deities that it doesn’t rain because it’s now impossible to put the roof back up because you’ve left the arches at home!

You may be thinking, do they fit in the car? No. Citroen made no special holders to fit those arches in the car so if you want to bring them with you, you’ll have them sticking out of the car moving-day-style.

One positive you can take away from this, though, is that it’s essentially a pickup truck. The boot space won’t be taken up by the folded roof, leaving you with no roof and a huge open-air boot. Great for carrying large items, but we’re guessing that’s not why people bought this car…

And I don’t want to kick a car while it’s down, but it’s one ugly-looking SOB as well.

VW T-Roc Cabriolet

Pretty much the same story as with the Range Rover Evoque. Volkswagen looked at the convertible Evoque and thought to themselves ‘wow, that is a stunning car that will sell very well’. Unfortunately, half of that is actually true because the Evoque Convertible has sold reasonably well – well, it didn’t totally flop. As for the part about it being stunning, that’s not so true.

Dear car manufacturers, stop making convertible crossovers!

Chrysler PT Cruiser Cabrio

As if the standard PT Cruiser wasn’t awful enough.  In April 2006, Chrysler graced the UK with the all-new PT Cruiser Cabrio that apparently has plenty of “unique good looks” that “make a real statement”. Sounds like something my mum would say to me during my blunder years.

The ugly bar in the middle is called a “Sport Bar” and helps to guide air over rear passengers so that they don’t end up with gale-force winds in the faces on car journeys. I can appreciate that, definitely, but it doesn’t make it any less hideous.

“Nearly all PT Cruiser customers tell us that one of the key reasons they buy a PT is the stunning design, so our designers have made sure that we haven’t lost the car’s unique looks.”

Spokesperson from Chrysler.

Wow. Thank god they kept the same good looks from the original PT Cruiser! Who would want to buy it if it was, oh I don’t know, slightly less hideous? Guess we’ll never know.

If only we had a time machine, we could have stopped these awful convertibles ever making it to production.

What’s your least favourite convertible? Let us know!

If you enjoyed this, why don’t you read about why we think the Mercedes-AMG GLB 35 is an AMG that nobody asked for!