Three types of convertible tops

Three different vehicles show how top installation differs in degree of difficulty, time required and final price.

Upholstery Journal | June 2010

by Marshall Spiegel

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re an industry professional.

You well know the endless list of convertible tops and how often they require replacement, what exactly is involved in such replacements, how long they take and what they will cost. For the sake of organization, we interviewed all the trimmers we could find who know anything about the business of convertible top replacement.

The result of all this research left us with a few simple ground rules for this article. We determined that ragtop replacements could be grouped into three distinct categories: easy, least time consuming, least expensive; more difficult, more time consuming, more expensive; most difficult, most time consuming, most expensive. You get the idea. It’s the old good, better, best approach for organizing almost anything.

Before we proceed, we must explain the “time bibles” used by every upholstery house in the free world for “guesstimating” how long an upholstery job should take. Provided by the manufacturers and suppliers of major components, such as replacement convertible tops, these “bibles” list the average time installations were performed by qualified installers throughout the industry, thereby suggesting guidelines for how long the job should take.

“According to the book, it’s an eight-hour job,” is a common announcement on the subject.

To illustrate our approach, we selected three convertibles, each representative of one of our three categories.

Experts on the subject suggested that a 1997 Volkswagen Cabrio fit perfectly as the representative of the “easy, least time consuming, least expensive” category. The intermediate category, the “more difficult, more time consuming, more expensive” installation, could best be illustrated by a 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse. A 2004 Nissan 350ZX was chosen as representative of the “most difficult, most time consuming, most expensive.”

Herein we offer a step-by-step photo and caption analysis of each top representative of the category.

Special thanks to Tom Benson and the staff at Bud’s Auto Upholstery, Signal Hill, Calif., for their unyielding patience and invaluable assistance in assembling this article.

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