Drop-Top Madness! 20 Classic Convertible Ads

1985 Dodge 600 ES Convertible — 1985 Dodge 600 ES

The bad news is that fewer than one of every hundred cars sold in the United States is a convertible. (I will spare you the fractional math required to pass along the number of manual-transmission-equipped convertibles sold on our shores last year, but it’s fewer still.)

The good news is that American has a rich heritage of top-down motoring, and no downward pointing trendline can take that from us.

One question, however, is when did Americans begin buying convertibles because they were convertibles? Obviously the earliest automobiles were topless—but they did not “convert,” as no provisions were made for weather protection. If it rained while you were out in your Curved Dash Oldsmobile, you got wet.

For some insight on this matter, we turned to Collectible Automobile Editor-in-Chief John Biel, who explained:

There were some convertible-like cars in the Teens (I know Ford and Buick had them) with roll-up glass side windows and fully enclosing fabric tops, but they weren’t called convertibles. Ford used the name “Coupelet” for instance. Then in the mid Twenties the idea caught on again, and this was the start of the modern convertible. Packard listed a Dietrich-bodied two-passenger car it called a convertible coupe as early as 1925, and some independent coachbuilders may have been using the term for similar bodies around the same time. In 1927 Cadillac, LaSalle, and Buick all added weathertight (no snap-in side curtains) soft top cars they called “convertible coupes,” so the word was coming into common use for this type of car by the end of the decade. To confuse things, there were some cars with this same type of design that didn’t use the term convertible, but called them cabriolets. Others may have used the term convertible in conjunction with a roadster because, well, the top did convert. . . .

There’s not much confusion about the cars seen below. We have collected 20 classic convertible print ads, and one bonus truck for good measure.

If you have owned a convertible at some point in your life, please tell us about it. The place to leave comments is down below.

More classic-car print ads