Two-tone paint enjoyed widespread popularity in the 1950s and a minor resurgence in the 1970s. Vinyl roofs haven’t been available from a factory in several years and yet, perplexingly, they remain common in certain regions (e.g. Florida) as a dealer/aftermarket option. But do either look good on any cars from the modern era?
My first thought was the first-generation LX Chrysler 300 thanks to its chunky, slab-sided, squared-off design. I scrolled through AutoTrader and Craigslist listings, finding the typical hordes of 300s festooned with Pep Boys fender vents, imitation Bentley grilles, that daft chrome window trim, and giant, tacky, chrome wheels. Here’s a 300 with a rather ratchet vinyl roof. Still, the 300 pulls off a vinyl roof better than, say, a Lucerne or Five Hundred would.
But can anyone tell me even a Town Car or DTS – two of the more common recipients of vinyl roofs – look better with one than without?
I’m reluctant to criticize somebody’s baby that they probably spent a lot of money on. And applying a two-tone paint job to a 300 still looks better than on, say, a Taurus. That being said, the world of customized 300s sometimes appears to be one where good taste goes to die. Considering the number of Rolls-Royce grilles, weird fender spats, and, yes, even flames that I’ve seen on LX 300s, this two-tone paint job is hardly egregious. Unfortunately, these paint jobs almost always expose the curves of the design. Car bodies have been smoothed out at the edges so much and flow more harmoniously from roof to sides and even the boxy 300 is far more slippery than, say, an old Fifth Avenue. Still, this Green Hornet tribute is one of the better paint jobs I’ve seen.
Buick publicized a collection of modified Buick Lucernes for the 2006 SEMA show and a couple of them used two-tone paint. I want to hate this but it actually highlights the Lucerne’s fairly crisp lines, although the wheels and front bumper valance need switching out.
Of course, Rolls-Royces can still convincingly pull off the two-tone look.
Maybachs were less convincing but still, I wouldn’t kick it out of my garage.
While cars are just as curvy today – and possibly more so – as they were in the 1990s and 2000s, the current trend towards sharp, aggressive feature lines and creases could make two-tone paint a feasible design choice again. Maybe. But vinyl roofs? Blech, no.
What are your thoughts?
This WORKS for me.
Yup, looks great. Too bad Ford eliminated the two-tone paint option for 2018.
It does work on the Flex, but I wouldn’t really call a contrasting roof a two-tone. Also available, and in the right color combo good-looking, on most MINI models.
I came here to post a question about whether a floating roof in a contrasting color counts as two tone. I’m on the fence about that.
But I do like how it looks on both the Flex and the Mini (are there other cars with a floating roof today)?
I’m part of the apparent minority who really likes the looks of the Flex. If I had the need for a vehicle that seated a lot of passengers it would be my first choice. I like the white roofs on a dark colored car better than the reverse.
I like Flexes, and two-tone paint — yet a Flex with a white roof reminds me too much of school buses with a “cool roof” paint scheme.
I also really like the Flex and would not be averse to driving one; in fact I’ve thought about it as a useful utility vehicle once they get a little older. Buy one, ditch the third row, plenty of space for 4 folks and cargo.
I’m not a fan of the white roof, but the silver looks nice with blue, black, or burgundy body color.
I will go on the record and say nearly every car in Mini’s lineup practically needs the contrasting roof option in order to look “proper” in my eyes, so yes, there still is a place for two-tone.
No comment on the vinyl…
+1 You’re right. It adds a layer of sophistication. The detailing elevates the design, and brands it as ‘mini’. It would look down market without it.
I’m a big fan of the tasteful use of contrasting colours and textures on modern cars. There is definitely a future for this look. The Smart car looks better in contrasting colours between body panels and cage.
It adds sophistication to the design. A modular look that creates an advanced style.
Love this look on the Renegade… it looks clean and advanced.
The Opel Adam is a car we can’t have here, and I’ve never seen one in person, but based on the photos it looks pretty darned stylish for an affordable car, in part because of the available two-color paint schemes.
Two toning seems to be done nicely on pickup trucks these days, though mainly via contrasting cladding of the lower bodies and wheel arches. Those treatments that work with the truck’s lines look pretty good, I think. It is interesting how trucks have been able to keep two-tone finishes somewhat popular even when it goes out of style on cars.
I also like the contrasting roof on the Flex, though you don’t see much of the roof color. Body two tones? I don’t think so, though I could maybe see if where the job accentuates the body’s sculpting rather than fights with it. But I don’t think many cars today could carry it off.
The carriage roof thing? Just no. The last cars it looked good on were the Continental Mark V and the 80 Cordoba, cars that cried out for a convertible offering but were denied one. Those fake convertible tops at least looked the part.
Something like this works for me.
I agree about the current trucks looking good with two tone. Especially the Ram 1500. For some reason, the white over tan is probably my favorite, with the black over tan my second choice. Something about that color scheme reminds me of all the vehicles like that in the late 90s and early 2000s as I was growing up.
Fun fact: Ram has changed the tan (White Gold) lower two-tone to RV Match Brown.
Especially Citroën and DS offer a wide range of color combinations these days. Another one that comes to mind is the A-segment Opel Adam with its two-tone paint job varieties.
A vinyl roof on any modern car? No thanks!
I saw some Adams while in the UK recently. Very nicely styled for the segment and they look great with a contrasting-color roof.
… and with the 140 hp engine are fun to drive too. I tested one when I went looking for a car in 2015 but decided that a screaming red Adam was just too preposterous once you get to a certain age.
In a recent past, there was also the Lancia Delta. Looked awesome in black on white, and still looks sophisticated today
To create contrasting colors and unique roof treatments, the latest thing seems to be wrapping the side glass around the D-pillar.
I’ve mostly seen this on SUVs and Minivans. I attached a picture on a Lexus RX, but I’ve also seen this treatment on the new Honda Odyssey and other models as well.
Maybe someday they’ll go back to putting real windows there, and we can have cars we can see out of again instead of cctv offered as a substitute.
No.
/thread
I think the effect looks better if the result is conceivable in the context of what it’s trying to be a facsimile of. For instance, I liked the gloss black roofs on Sunfires in the late 90s – did a decent job of emulating a full glass roof in my opinion. Likewise full vinyl roofs for cars that don’t have doors that wrap into the roof. Works better on hardtops then posts, but still, believable enough. Two tones look best when they follow a natural contour in the body. They can be goofy, though, such as when GM had at least 3 different cut lines for the G vans in the 80s and 90s for two tones. Also, for trucks and vehicles with fender flares where the two tone or cladding comes at least halfway up the door, I think they look bad when it doesn’t also wrap around the top of the wheelwell with the flare/cladding.
Every now and then I see a Corolla and a Camry from the early 2000s with vinyl roofs. Oddly, the vinyl roof is nearly the same color as the main part of the car (as in light tan, VERY light tan roof on a white body). I also recently saw a gold Mercury Sable (about a 2008) with a black vinyl roof. Speaking of Mercurys, Grand Marquis look pretty good with a vinyl roof.
The paint on the roof of my Crown Victoria is peeling off and I go back and forth between deciding whether to paint it white or black. Black, to try to “modernize” the look to that black center section you see/used to see on a lot of none American makes of car.
BTW, I think Ford should have offered a Flex Squire-look model, and I’m surprised the aftermarket hasn’t stepped up to offer the look.
There is a DiNoc kit for the Flex, but few have taken up the torch for faux wood wagons. Personally, I like them. It works on slab sides.
I have been saying this forever but trouble with “modern” vinyl tops is that they are usually “caps”, a fiberglass core with a layer of padding and the external vinyl, or cloth wrapped over. This is what you see on all of the featured cars in this article, and they look like bad toupees, bulging up inches from the metal. Other blights are on cars with fuselage doors that extend into the roof, as is the case on town cars, giving it a very clunky effect. Another is when the roof lacks a shoulder to divide it from the lower body, as well as not extending it down the A pillars – DON’T MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A FAKE CONVERTIBLE!
“Tight” vinyl tops never didn’t look good in my opinion, tight being the vinyl stretched and glued straight onto the sheetmetal. I think there were numerous late 60s cars that looked better with them than without in fact, such as the 68-70 Charger. This practice ended sometime in the 70s with the brougham look, and the con of it of course is it likely was worse for corrosion than the capped style tops.
As for what looks good today, as I said, few execute tight vinyl tops and the only people who would desire them are either dead from old age or would settle for the awful caps, because their eyes are bad. But I have seen vinyl tops for current Challengers, and I think it looks great. Tight fit, subdued trim, and right out of the early 70s like the rest of the design. As for two tone, it only only looked good when trim was used to divide it(like what was used for vinyl tops n fact) like in the 50s, and also on the Maybach. Pinstripes as a divider doesn’t cut it for me as the method on modern cars, and the common top/bottom two tone foose fans love, as featured on the Buick in my opinion looks like a paint livery for a taxi or police fleet.
Agreed on the fake convertible tops. And that Challenger does look quite nice. It carries it well because of its roof design as well as its retro look.
Agree, the Challenger is one of the very few modern cars that can pull this look off!
Works great on that Challenger. I wonder if a current Camaro could pull the same thing off? The Mustang, no.
IMO, it works on the Challenger because the original Challenger serves as a template. It’s not jarring at all to those familiar with the original look.
You beat me to it.
I hate it less on the Challenger than on most others, and Daniel M nailed the reason. That said, its just an awful styling cue. A better way to emulate the look would be to just paint the roof black. Or maybe a high quality bedliner material so it would still be textured…although that idea is probably a LOT better in theory than in practice.
What doinks the look of this Challenger is those craptacular wheels. With full chrome finish and all the soft edges the whole wheel is a lump of bling with no definite shape. In person they aren’t QUITE that bad, but the photograph really points out why blingy wheels with a melted shape are just…bad.
I give them a pass since they appear to be factory SRT8 wheels, and on this particular Challenger chrome works better than silver than on most other colors(I’m usually a fan of chrome anywhere else on the body *except* on wheels).
Earl Scheib used to offer something of that sort in the 70s, MoparRocker.
The modern equivalent is black painted roof, usually between the two roof “gutters”
The 2018 Camry has an optional black roof that comes down halfway on the C-pillars.
Viyl has had its day; a well judged (which normally means factory spec and application 2 tone can work. Think MINI, Range Rover, DS3, SMART.
But many are trying too hard to match or copy the originators, and lose doubly. Have you seen blue Fiesta with a white roof?
Vinyl tops and two tone look bad for the same reason pinstripes are on the outs. Modern presses can create way more complex shapes than before and a simple line can’t visually follow the amount of curves on a car made past, say, 1996 or so. (The oval Taurus was a good example of the advances in stamping and CAD at the time.)
I think the question is “Looks good to who?”
I’ve seen many attractive 2-tones. I have yet to see a car I consider better looking with any kind of vinyl roof.
Someone who likes their suits made by killing poor defenseless little polyesters may have a different take on the vinyl roof though.
While I admit that the idea of gluing vinyl to the roof of a car sounds ridiculous now, they could be quite good looking on the right car, and were initially more of a form of two-toning vs. a design feature.
I would have ordered this in a heartbeat in 1965…….
“Someone who likes their suits made by killing poor defenseless little polyesters….”
Coffee-snorting comment of the day!
This is very much the theme of the early George Lois ads for Naughahyde, which had little cartoon Naughas!
I will always cite this example as the best. The bare roof on these never emphasized the double diamond bodysides the way the vinyl top did.
Many vehicles in the past were designed and trimmed with two-tone or vinyl tops in mind. Such designs generally disappeared as vehicles were redesigned to shed their late ’70s bodies.
While factory two-tone and vinyl persisted on a some cars after they took on a more modern look, it generally didn’t look right and such options were increasingly rarely ordered.
While the two-tone isn’t bad, the factory vinyl top on this 1982 Buick Century looks awful now, and looked awful in 1982. Not hard to see why installation rates on designs like these dropped very quickly.
I think the death of the vinyl roof was caused by the Toronado. Before that, the “Thunderbird roof” in which the C pillars were on a different plane from the side of the quarter panel provided a perfect break between body and roof. Vinyl roofs looked good on those cars, such as the early Mustang or the Dodge Dart Swinger. But the 66 Toronado changed all that with a C pillar that seamlessly faired into the quarter panel, a look followed by pretty much the entire rest of the industry (like the fuselage Chryslers). That style lost the natural break between roof and body and every such car that used it required some contrived chrome strip that made a break where none existed, ruining the flow of the design. Although that didn’t stop everyone from offering a vinyl roof on those cars for years to appease the traditionalists.
I agree totally, but isn’t it ironic that vinyl roofs had only been around for a couple of years before the Toronado came along?
It was certainly less organic on cars lacking a shoulder at the c pillar. Chrysler acknowledged this with the ’74 redesign. This unicorn slick top New Yorker seems fairly representative of the ’70s approach to vinyl friendly design.
I’d say the Toronado’s influence complicated matters greatly, but there were actually a lot of designs that clung to the quarter panel shoulder, or whatever the technical term is, including, funny enough, the 1970 Toronado, and automakers tried their damndest to make them work regardless. 71 was kind of the year it came to a head with Ford’s Mustangs and Cougars, Chrysler’s Satellites and Chargers, and AMC’s Javelin. The solution tried on all of them was the “half top”, starting at the A pillars(which were still naturally shouldered by the doors) and ending on the roof at the quarter windows.
I think what killed it though was consumer revolt. Vinyl tops in the 60s were purely an option, but by the 70s it was mandatory on many of the most popular models whether you liked it or not – my Dad hates vinyl tops, but he owned TWO new Cutlass Supremes with them! – And they became more ornately trimmed than they were previously, complete with opera windows, loose padding, coach lights, and more elaborate trim pieces to divide them from the body. Vinyl tops in the mid to late 70s then essentially became what tailfins were twenty years prior, and in the memory of the public, dragging down with them the more subdued, dare I say tasteful, designs that came earlier, and making subsequent designs seem dated as tastes switched to cleaner European inspired designs (just like early 60s cars, like Fairlanes, still sporting fins).
I think two tone paints can work, provided it looks factory. The modern Rolls Royce is a perfect example, while I would like a solid one color for the most part, I will admit that the two tone paint jobs they offer are very good looking. They work.
As for Vinyl roofs. No. Or more specifically HELL NO!!! Vinyl roofs had a time, they had a place, that time and place was before 1986. If I were president (which I shouldn’t be), I would make it illegal for any car dealer to still offer vinyl roofs for customers on current cars. Aftermarket is okay (sort of), but the fact that some dealers still offer these things is one of the worst examples of condescending buyer pandering I’ve seen. Modern cars don’t have the rooflines, the height, or the look necessary to pull off the vinyl roof.
And yes, believe it or not, I have seen some examples here in California of Cadillac CTS’ and XTS’ sporting dealer installed vinyl roofs. And my first reaction is always “someone must’ve missed the exit to Boca Raton”
There are those who would say that this is unattractive. Artless philistines!
You’ll take my Vogue Tyres from my curbed, bent 24-inch wheels, sir.
The West Palm Beach Special. Gotta love Florida retirees!
That’s about as attractive as an adams apple and five o clock shadow on that ‘babe’ winking from the other end of the bar.
That looks like an old baby carriage minus it’s handle.
I just threw up in my mouth a little….
Vinyl NO, two tone certainly if well executed.
Rover 75, Jaguar sedans from 99-XF, Nissan Micra K12 and…in effect the early 90’s Mercedes were two tone (love that plastic cladding!)
It’s mostly premium and luxury cars, but also anything rectilinear and especially pillarless (the Range Rover line, GM’s latest full-sizers, the MINI line, the Flex, etc…)
In the future, as modes of transportation become more streamlined and homogeneous, swatches of colour (or metal) will be used to break up shapes and give designs uniqueness and character.
How about if somebody did up that Maybach with Di-Noc on the side instead of the second color? ?
I just remembered the WORST two tone factory paint in recent memory. The Subaru Outback had a terrible “paint as cladding” finish that looked horribly underdone, as if someone had done it in their garage. When I first saw it I couldn’t believe they let it out of the factory.
Ugh. It worked on the earlier Outback Sport (Impreza) that had them in high-contrast combinations with a vinyl pinstripe defining the break; this generation always seemed to be silver on slightly darker silver and look like a bad accident/rust repair. Fortunately they started offering it in solid colors and the arrival of the Crosstrek stripped the Impreza Sport of any wannabe-CUV pretensions.
Definitely- a pinstripe or trim piece could have made that work.
A two-toned car, done right, is a beautiful thing. Of course, not all cars could wear a two-tone (or three) paint job, so discretion is necessary.
Our old 1984 Chrysler E-Class was definitely done right and was a stunning car. Only the hood & fender tops and thin lines along the window sills were gunmetal blue. The trunk and the rest of the car was silver.
Vinyl roofs and especially fake convertible tops are a no-no anywhere!
I’m actually very surprised at how much I like the two tone Lucerne because I normally am not a fan of them.
Maybe that says something to the power of a good two tone paint job !
A Jaguar spotted in my neighborhood. I don’t think it works but am open to other opinions.
I quite like it from this angle, but the wheels aren’t right – too bright, spokes too thin. I can see it working with matte-black wheels with fewer and broader spokes. Then again, I’d need to see it front on too to get the full picture.
I think many modern cars, especially the current Range Rover SV Autobiography, look amazing in two tone. A lot of 1960s-80s cars looked fine with a vinyl roof, but I can’t think of anything current that would wear such a toupee well.
The tutone look is something that the Chrysler 300 SHOULD be able to pull off in theory. Problem is, in practice, the body lines present some challenges. Ideally, a candy apple red under that character line that bisects the door handles with a black upper would be ideal…problem is, the front fender flares cut right thru that. This one ignores that, which seems…off.
This one deals with it a bit better…it pulls the cutline up a bit, so that the upper color still includes some of the area under the pillars. The Green Hornet tribute car looks all wrong to me, since only the roof is green, none of the lower body.
IMHO, letting the cutline follow the front fender bulge is a bad idea. BUT, if you notice who’s responsible for this bad move…I rest my case…
I think this works best. Basically a wide ‘mohawk’ that covers the hood, trunk and inner roof.
Vinyl roofs didn’t look good then, and they certainly don’t look good now. Saw a nice 70 SS 454 yesterday, dark blue paint topped by a black vinyl roof. It bisected the rear pillar as it flowed into the fender. What a waste, a true triumph of marketing/money over style.
Were there any ever.
It’s really not my thing, but to each his own, of course.
Personally I think this is an even more subjective style issue than most. I’ve never yet encountered a vinyl roof (old or new, factory or aftermarket) that I thought enhanced the look of a car, they all look better without imo.
Two-tone paint’s less cut and dry for me, on the whole I’d prefer a single colour but there are a handful of designs I think really work in two-tone, most especially the early Smart and Smart Roadster which others have already covered well… also the cute little Lancia Ypsilon (briefly sold here in the UK as a Chrysler) looks neat with a two-tone coat, providing one coat is black, but it’s also emphatically an oddball design.
For the most part I’ll accept it’s subjective and a matter of different tastes, though the all-too-frequent faux-bubble-top blackouts some people paint onto FIAT Coupes – example pictured – are patently the exception and just plain wrong. If I ruled the world these cars would be confiscated and returned to stock, with the owners sent on a remedial design course to learn the errors of their ways :p
The black roof on that coupe makes it look kind of like a DSM Eagle Talon…
I don´t think so. The current cars, all of them with that muscle SUV, sedan, coupe, big truck, minivan and etc. mix of style all in the same body, destroy any chance to have these elegant paint and roof arrangements implemented in an acceptable and beautiful manner. I call the “modern car” fat pig. You need a sleek, low and wide body to receive it.
When I was very little, I had a pair of brown leather overalls, only, as we were poor, mum had made them from vinyl. Vinylhosen, yodelayheehee. They were as ridiculous as they sound, and even upon mild exertions, practically filled up like a hotwater bottle from sweat. They were dishonest (and quickly, they were dis-carded). Possibly from the trauma of wearing those shiny squeakers in public, I’ve always been leery of vinyl roofs. They look cheapening and dishonest; what are you covering up? Perhaps I remember people saying to my mum, “What have you done to him?”, because that’s the thought I have on seeing seat coverings on a roof where there should be paint. So, my answer is “no”, but it’s kinda personal.
Two-tone paint’s ok, if you must. Actually, the rather nice-looking Renault Captur looks much less interesting without it, so it still has a place. Also, I was never forced to wear it.
My personal favorite “vinyl” roof treatment was the JCWhitney kit that included tape to emulate the seams that ran down the middle of the roof and textured paint that one applied directly to the roof of the vehicle to make it look as if a “real” vinyl roof was on the car. My grandfather bought a Hornet (copper, if I remember) that had that white version of the kit applied. So that car was both two-toned and fake vinyl roof! He ended up giving the car to my brother. The only good thing about that kit over vinyl is that it did not allow moisture to accumulate and rust the roof out at the trim lines.
Two tone paintwork is fine once the two colors blend well, and Suzuki has two new models in its range that bring it off beautifully, namely the new Vitara and Ignis. The vinyl top worked in the 60s and 70s but to my mind only with two-door cars; for whatever reason, bigger cars with vinyl roof treatments always remind me of hearses.
The thick upper door frames currently defeat any attempt to apply a convertible-style roof treatment. They’re contrary to what the function would be if the car were really a convertible. When they applied a formal, padded top to cars in days of yore, it was restricted to above the drip-moldings.
Few cars look good with a high contrast two-tone paint, but if done in a subtly different shade of the same color or a complimenting one, they can look quite appealing. Subtly isn’t the strong suite of most customizers…
My favorite 2 tone paint was on the 1979 Buick LeSabre Palm Beach Edition. It’s beautiful yellow and creamy white paint which was applied at the factory looked amazing. The car had the perfect shape and character lines for the 2 tone treatment.
Full Sized Vans would look alright in two tone.
Probably a silly question, but it just occurred to me. Were vinyl tops always marketed as a cosmetic measure or did anyone ever bring up the topic that it could also have sound-insulating effect as well?
My parents were in their early 50s in 1977 when they bought their first non-used car. A 1977 strippo Dodge Aspen. With the perforated cardboard headliner and presumably not much sound deadening insulation.
I was 8 at the time but I remember Mom remarking that when it rained she felt like she was riding in a tin shed for all the noise. Compared to cars like the Model “A” her family had… Wood bows, chicken wire, padding and rubberized cloth. Which also, according to her, deflected the heat better.
Could there have been a “Silent Generation” predisposition to vinyl roofs based on more than aesthetics? Wouldn’t even a thin, glued-down vinyl roof have something of an anti-drumming effect ?
Think I read somewhere that aside from the need for wood framed bodies to have some flexibility, the tendency of all metal roofs to “drum” under vibration was one of the obstacles that car makers had to overcome before the “turret top” era.
The Aspen had a pretty noticeable speed-dependent whine at the rear end too… Music to my young ears, but even at the time I knew there was “better” out there
I’ve seen a couple of Motor Trend reviews that sort of half-heartedly suggested the padded top might have an insulating effect, but it wasn’t anything they tried to quantify. (I’d chalk it up more to their mission of being a brochure writers’ auxiliary corps.)
I think the padded top of the kind that became popular in the late ’60s and into the ’70s was primarily associated with formal vehicles (i.e., limousines) and was probably something dating back to luxury coaches, at which point it having some insulating value seems somewhat more plausible. However, the all-metal roof drumming issue had been pretty well sorted for decades before vinyl tops really became popular except as aftermarket accessories.
From a practical standpoint, a padded top doesn’t seem like an especially effective way to provide thermal or NVH insulation for an automobile. Most of the unwelcome heat gain or loss is through the windows and most of the NVH comes from below rather than above.
Even the drumming problem of your mom’s Aspen would be better addressed by adding more insulation to the inside of the roof, with a thicker padded headliner. My guess is that Dodge deliberately skimped on sound insulation in base models as a way of upselling the more expensive version — a common trick that probably contributed a lot to the popularity of cars like the early Ford LTD. (If you can tell even on a brief test drive that the fancier model is quieter and “nicer,” that’s a pretty strong selling point!)
Ah, yes, when I inherited the well-worn Aspen in with 155,000 on the clock and nary a body panel in exactly the same shade of light blue, I pulled the cardboard headliner out and stuffed a bunch of fiberglass insulation up in there. Definitely helped with the noise and heat.
And for lack of A/C I got some stainless venti-shades so I could ride with the windows cracked open during the hot rainy NYC “Hurricane Season”.
Currently I think the Kia Soul pulls off a two tone nicely, just like the Flex and MINI vehicles. I also remember the early Acura NSX pulled off a black roof treatment pretty well.
As far as vinyl…I just think it ruins a cars looks and paint job around the edges of the vinyl itself.
Ive recently seen vinyl treatments on Camrys, Avalons and Azeras…not a good look.
Yeah, I see a couple of Souls around that are black with cherry red roofs and matching side mirrors, which is a nice look. The Soul is, to my eye, one of the most aesthetically successful of the small two-box designs — my reaction when I see one is, “Not my thing, but okay” — and the color contrast is pleasing. As with the MINI, it’s easier to pull off that kind of thing with a boxy shape where the roof panel is essentially a discrete visual element anyway.
The new smaller-than-a-RAV4 Toyota crossover offers a white roof option. I suspect now that Toyota is offering it, other manufacturers will move on to something new. Though I suspect it’s to embedded in the Mini DNA for them to ever drop it.
Vinyl roofs, meh. But though a few mentioned the Impreza-based Outback Sport, I nominate the first few generations of Outback and Subaru Baja as the worst ever application of two-tone. Not just esthetically, though I found them all uniformly hideous (the trim, not the basic body lines). But why those cars? Let’s see, we’ll market a car for practical, outdoors people, and then trim it out like a ’70’s Brougham. Two tone, gold trim … yeah, right.
Vinyl roofs had their time and should be left off of the new cars. Period! Lets face it, dealerships make a TON of money on aftermarket items, and if, say, the Florida clientele bites even a little bit then I am sure the dealerships there will want to take advantage of that. But the newer designs do not look good with vinyl tops/coach roofs etc. and should never be altered. Heck, even the funeral cars look ridiculous with their added vinyl tops and extra glitz – almost like an old guy with a bad toupee!
As far as two-tone is concerned, certain vehicles look do look nice with a second color/accent added to them (Ford Flex and even the F-150 comes to mind). But the older style two-tone had its day as well, and should also be left in the past.
I always thought that the 85-88 Maxima’s looked good in the 2 tone paint offerings that they offered.