In parts 1 and 2 of this series, we traced the origins and peak of the American vinyl roof. Like all fads, what goes up must come down, and the vinyl roof was no exception, which began to fall out of favor by the early 1980s. European-inspired aerodynamic design, led by the 1983 Ford Thunderbird, marked the beginning of the end of the trend that, ironically, the Thunderbird had launched two decades before.
Let’s track the decline, starting with Ford Motor Company.
1991 Ford LTD Crown Victoria
Not surprisingly, Ford was the first of the big 3 to abandon the vinyl roof, as they were the first to embrace aero design with cars like the 1983 Thunderbird and 1986 Taurus (neither of which were ever available with a vinyl roof). The last Ford to leave the factory with a vinyl roof was the 1991 LTD Crown Victoria (which incidentally was the last Ford to be called LTD). Likewise, the last Mercury with a vinyl roof was the 1991 Grand Marquis.
1992 Lincoln Town Car
Lincoln last offered a factory vinyl roof option in 1992. Vinyl had already become quite passe at this point – all the cars pictured in the brochure featured steel roofs. The only mention of vinyl was a single small inset photo, shown above. To be sure, plenty of Panther platform cars were equipped with vinyl roofs after this point, but these would have been installed by the owner or dealer – none would leave the factory so equipped.
1994 Chrysler LeBaron
Next up: Chrysler. You would think that the company that Lee Iacocca (re)built would be one of the last to sell vinyl roofs, and you would be right. Chrysler’s last vinyl roofed car was the 1994 LeBaron. Iacocca retired in 1992, making the AA body LeBaron the last Chrysler to have any of Iacocca’s direct influence.
1986 Pontiac Bonneville Brougham
Moving on to GM: GM’s divisions would phase out vinyl roofs roughly in increasing order of the age of their average buyer, surely not a coincidence. Pontiac, GM’s excitement division, was the first car division to abandon the vinyl roof. 1986 would be the last time a vinyl roofed car appear in a Pontiac brochure, with the Bonneville Brougham. The 1987 Grand Prix (the final year for the G-body version) was available with a vinyl landau roof, although all the examples pictured in the brochure featured a steel roof.
1987 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight
1987 would be the last year Oldsmobile featured a vinyl roof in any of their brochures, in their efforts to become GM’s import intender brand. However, vinyl would still be available as a factory option on the Eighty-Eight Royale and Ninety-Eight through 1990.
1990 Chevrolet Caprice Brougham
Chevrolet’s last factory vinyl roof would also be sold in 1990 with the final “square body” Caprice. The “whale body” Caprice, debuting in 1991, was only sold with a steel roof.
1992 Buick Riviera
1992 would be the last time any vinyl roofs would appear in a Buick brochure (on the Riviera and Roadmaster). The Riviera would still offer a vinyl roof option until 1993, while one would optional on the Roadmaster until 1996, but they would never appear in any brochure wearing a “hat” after 1992.
1996 Cadillac Fleetwood
Cadillac would also offer a vinyl roof until 1996 on their Roadmaster sibling, the Cadillac Fleetwood. This makes 1996 Buick Roadmaster and Cadillac Fleetwood the last mass-produced cars to be equipped with a vinyl roof from the factory (although dealers would continue to offer to install vinyl roofs for decades to come). Unlike Buick, Cadillac proudly pictured the vinyl roof option in their brochures until the very end, as shown above.
2001 Cadillac Eldorado with simulated convertible top
And while this might be the end of the vinyl roof era as far as manufacturers were concerned, the aftermarket is always ready to step in where manufacturers won’t. Modern aftermarket vinyl roofs almost always take the form of simulated convertible tops, complete with fake ribbing, fake seams, and fake snaps for a non-existent convertible boot. And while these fake convertible tops may not be to everyone’s liking, I will grant them one thing: They are true to the original concept of the vinyl roof dating back to the 1940s and 1950s – to give a fixed roof car the appearance of a convertible model, a thread that Detroit had lost by the mid-60s.
Closing
For serving no useful function, vinyl roofs had a surprisingly long run from the early 1960s into the mid-1990s. While researching this piece, I found several sources claiming that manufacturers had a significant financial incentive to push vinyl tops on buyers for so many years: Vinyl roofs are one of the few options that cost manufacturers almost nothing (and in fact may even have a negative cost, as we shall see), meaning that virtually every dollar they bring in is pure profit.
The reasoning is that cars with vinyl roofs do not require as much surface preparation and finishing of the seams and welds underneath, which saves time and money during assembly. Indeed, the Wikipedia article on the Lincoln Mark Continental III specifically mentions this, but in true Wikipedia fashion, provides no source or evidence to support this claim. I have no way to prove or disprove this (few people outside of Ford’s cost accounting department probably would), so I will leave this theory to the commenters here to discuss.
Related Links
Automotive History: The History of the Vinyl Roof, Part 1 – Origins
Automotive History: The History of the Vinyl Roof, Part 2 – Peak Vinyl
I worked at a Volvo/Lincoln/Mercury dealer as the Volvo Sales Manager from 2001 to 2007, and was always amazed at the number of Town Cars the Dealer Principal would install vinyl roofs on. Huge markup, but then the number of customers requesting this feature died off.
I know of a few European cars (the “long wheelbase” version of the Citroen CX or of the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow) to have vinyl roofs just to hide the seam between the roof panel of short wheel base model and the “extension”. Apart from those specific cases, the only cars I can remember with Vinyl roofs were coming from Ford, Opel and Chrysler Europe.
Jaguar XJ6/XJ12 coupes?
Just a comment on the XJC. My understanding is that Jaguar used a vinyl roof not to cover welds etc, but because the roof panel had so much flex the paints of the day would not stick. A lot of the Cs that have been restored have had their vinyl removed and just have modern paint that seems to adhere just fine.
Personally I like the XJC with the vinyl top, it looks right to my eye.
If paint is having a hard time sticking to a surface, it’s not the paint’s fault, it’s due to the painting process. Modern paint [from the 1950s acrylic enamels onwards] has a decent flexibility built in to it. It’s possible that because the C was built on a different assembly system, it might have used a different painting process.
I’ve seen plenty of modern factory paint on wrecks, where the body panels have more waves than the ocean, and the paint adherence is 100%.
Now with the old Nitro Lacquers, the least little change in the body panel, and it will crack. I’ve had numerous coachbuilt alloy bodied cars, built with what the trade calls “soft aluminum”, where after a dozen or so years, no matter how well cared for the car was, the paint begins to crack and flake, because the body panels expand and contract based on outside atmospheric temperature changes.
I have a vintage limousine now, with original paint, about 15 coats of Nitro Lacquer that still has plenty of shine left in it, but the paint is flaking off all over, because it’s laid down over a body of soft aluminum over a wood body frame.
Also the Volvo 262C/Bertone/Coupe – and again, to cover up roof surgery. Or maybe it was just for style – the last couple years could be had with a painted roof.
Audi offered them until 1982 for the C2- and B2-platform in Europe.
Were they very popular in Europe?
Wow, I’ve never seen or even heard of that! The brochure page posted says it was even available with the sunroof option.
It took me a little bit to confirm the info, as someone who ran a Rolls-Royce restoration and repair shop for years, and a former owner of a 1973 LWB Shadow, I can report that the LWB cars were not regular wheelbase shadows that were cut and lengthened. They were built with longer panels to include the roof, doors and floor sections.
My shop has done complete shadow interior R & R work, and I can say we never noticed any sectioning of the roof, no seams were visible on the inside. We had to replace one of the “Everflex” vinyl roofs, but the body underneath was fully painted, so no seams were evident either. And FYI, installing an Everflex vinyl roof is probably the worst vinyl top to install, as it requires special effort to stretch the material into the built-in rain channels, and you only get one chance!
Vinyl roofs have not passed the test of time. Exposed to the weather they disintegrate, hold moisture to rust the roof metal, and have an outrageous cost to replace.
That’s a salient point about vinyl roof cost: very cheap and easy to install, but quite difficult and expensive to remove and replace. Maybe someone can go into more detail into what it takes to get all that adhesive off. Seems like it would be a whole lot harder than just sand-blasting off old paint that had no adhesive on it.
As to why they went out of vogue, the easy answer would seem to be aerodynamics. With one notable exception (the 1970 Plymouth Superbird I spoke about earlier), Ford really got the aero trend going with the hugely successful 1983 Thunderbird and 1986 Taurus. I once read somewhere that Ford stylists specifically designed those cars to be unable to affix a vinyl roof to them. While true or not, it’s notable how the door frames on those Fords went much further into the roof than previous domestic cars. Once GM and Chrysler followed Ford’s lead, well, that was it for the vinyl roof.
At least from the factory. To this day, there is still a substantial market in one locale. I’m obviously speaking of good ‘ole Geezerland, Florida. Florida dealers still enjoy a solid market of upgrading cars with aftermarket vinyl roofs, even those that need separate, additional pieces of vinyl to go around the top of those window frames I spoke about. None of them look all that good, but Florida seniors sure seem to like them to this day.
Interestingly, although I really can’t recall ever seeing a 1st generation Aero-Bird with a vinyl roof, the Cougar version, with it’s upright, formal backlight, was much more conducive to getting a dealer-added vinyl roof, almost always one of the old-school landau versions that just went from C-pillar to C-pillar.
Amen to the rust issue.
What could’ve usually been an easy-fix rear collision would become a disaster if the roof’s “rust belt” had weakened things enough to cause a buckle or separation there.
And if the collision didn’t cause the rusted area to deform or separate, chances were a hard pull when straightening the quarter might.
Great point about aging vinyl roofs contributing to weakening structural rigidity, particularly on unibody vehicles in rust-belt states. An older unibody car with a badly rusted roof that was hidden underneath a vinyl applique seems like it would be a veritable deathtrap in any kind of collision.
Eh vinyl tops certainly create their share of localized corrosion problems, but weakening the structure to the point of the car being dangerous? I don’t buy it. It’s the same thing I hear people say about cars with sunroofs “the drains drain water into the rockers causing rust!”, as if the cars without them of the same age and exposure to the elements in the salt belt fared any better.
Rust in and around the vinyl top is a good indicator of the extent of rust in the rest of the car but it’s not the reason for it. The reality is the era vinyl tops were the most popular coincided with the era of notably lackadaisical quality and substandard steel used in automobile manufacturing.
I’d agree that it’d take an unlucky hit for rust at the “catwalk” to make a difference in the outcome of a collision, but, it could happen.
As to the weakening created by such rust causing collision damage to concentrate there, that was definitely a reality.
A minor nod to rockers… they didn’t rust for about 30 years – whatsoever.
Apparently engineering must’ve misplaced the memo of: “ALL rockers to be protected by electroplating process…” because the rust-prone rocker made a strong return in the ’90s.
Removing vinyl top adhesive is easy in theory, but very, very messy. It involves a large right angle grinder, preferably the large kind that takes 2 hands to control. You need to install a cup-type wire wheel on the grinder head, and use the coarser wire, or you’ll be clogging the fine wire version with adhesive.
Remove as much of the vinyl material as you can with putty knives and scrapers, then break out the angle grinder, protecting adjoining car parts with multiple layers of duct tape. And do put covers over the windows and other body parts to protect them from little bits of wire that fly off the grinding cups!
You can’t use solvents to remove the adhesive, because you have to end up with a completely dry and solvent free surface. Even the slightest amount of solvent will be trapped under the new material, and slowly work against the adhesive.
And I suggest you invest in what construction workers call drywall scaffolding, these are long runs of scaffolding that are only about 2 feet off the ground. If you try to do this job while standing on the ground next to the car, your poor arms will be screaming at you by the time you stop, ’cause you’re holding a 20 pound grinder up above the car’s roof while moving it from side to side, over & over again!
It’s my belief that if you need to replace a vinyl top, do yourself a favor and pay a shop that specializes in that work. It’s worth the $.
I started work at AMC in 1974 and part of that first year (before I got my electrical apprenticeship), I spent working leading A & B pillars on the lead line. The more experienced guys (real artists) did the C pillars because even the slightest imperfections would show there. On my breaks I would often go up to see a cute girl who sprayed the adhesive on and installed the vinyl roofs. Her boss would occasionally come into the booth and give her verbal instructions to install a vinyl top on a car whose build sheet didn’t call for it. One of the C pillars would have a grease crayon circling a flaw that was too visible. When I asked him about this he said that when the salesman delivered the car to the customer, if the customer said he hadn’t ordered it with a vinyl top, he would be told it was a mistake at the factory and they took the charge for the top off the bill. He said they were always happy they got something for nothing. All they really got was substandard body work.
The largest producers of vehicles with vinyl tops as standard equipment, continues to be the stretch limousine market. Try to get one without the vinyl roof.
In the 1980s I was the owner of a limo service in the Baltimore-Washington area, and we featured vintage vehicles only. I started keeping track of the times people rented our car for their wedding, and also rented one or more modern stretch limos for the guests and family members.
Looking into possibly offering stretch Lincolns, I started discussions with various coachbuilders. Since none of our vintage cars had vinyl roofs, I wanted our limousines made without the vinyl roof. Only one coachbuilder was even willing to discuss the possibility. Their estimated cost to do this to a Lincoln Towncar almost doubled the conversion costs! [Not included in the conversion price is the donor car.]
An interesting problem that boosted the costs upwards was the coachbuilders paint booth. As the booth had to be custom built and the length extended by about 20 feet, to keep costs down they built the booth height at 10 feet instead of the typical 16 feet to accommodate standard sedan and pickup truck bodies. The lower height not only kept the booth purchase costs lower, but also allowed a substantial financial savings on booth heating costs [high heat temperatures were typically used to cure the paint].
I realized what they were talking about. The highest part of a typical limo with a vinyl roof that needed to be painted, was the hood and deck lid. They told me the high estimate also included transportation to/from a large paint booth used for busses and large trailers, and a day’s rental of said booth.
After I crunched the numbers, I made a wise decision not to buy a couple of modern limousines, instead, we forged some agreements with limousine companies with stretch limousines that complimented our cars.
This decision also meant that in the nationwide meltdown of the limousine business that ravaged the industry in 1990 & 1991, because I owned all of our vintage cars outright, without monthly long-term financing obligations, I was able to close the limo service without facing financial ruin, unlike many limo company owners in my area.
Fascinating! Stories by insiders with real experience are the best.
I would never have guessed that the economic constraints of paint booths dictated roof styles. I hope Paul invites you to write a longer article on the limo business as seen from inside.
Agreed. I would love to see an article (or series) on the limo business.
Wasn’t there also a reason that (supposedly) on a long stretch limousine there was a chance of the roof showing a certain amount of buckling due to sag in the stretch chassis? Supposedly, the purpose of the vinyl roof is that it hid this buckling. Which, from the description, wasn’t a severe buckling, but would show in the paint.
Syke,
95% of the stretch Lincolns made in the 1980s & 90s were limited to 60″ additions, that was the maximum that Lincoln allowed. The 2 primary reasons for the limits were extreme body flex risks, and braking ability. I never looked at Cadillacs because in our area, most clients wanted Lincolns, but I would assume Cadillac had similar rules.
I’ve seen these long Lincoln stretches [coming out of Chicago] featured in a YouTube series by a local scrapyard in Hutchison Kansas. Several were terribly rusted underneath, yet the outward appearance of the roofs was still quite flat. The guy making the videos* even featured a badly rotted 60″ Lincoln stretch that was too long to fit in his crusher, so he had to take his big forklift/loader and actually fold the body in half, and it was apparent the roof was probably the hardest part to make fold in half!
*Shoutout to Silas from my girlfriend Nikki, who loves your videos!
That was a short recession. Did the stretch limo business recover nationally, or was there a change of taste? I remember a few absurd stretches in the 90’s for declasse Vegas-style cruising.
Ralph L,
While the recession was short lived, a total transformation was underway in the Limo Biz.
I’m planning on a detailed CC story in the near future, so I don’t want to go into details too soon!
Interesting articles, thank you. Towards the end of the era, Cadillac offered both standard vinyl roof options and the true fake convertible top Cabriolet option, a fiberglass shell with a textured nylon wrap.
This mimicked the aftermarket treatments, but was available new, and were prominently featured in their brochures. I have a 1989 Deville so equipped. The car was otherwise in exquisite condition and selling for a song, hence the purchase. Unfortunately, no matter how I try, I can’t embrace the concept. The standard vinyl roof looks better.
Furthermore, the upright, square lines of any 80s GM C- body don’t lend themselves to a roof treatment of any kind. Large sleek 70s cruisers looked great in vinyl, breaking up such large expanses of metal with vinyl worked well. But the downsized C body? They had a lot of detail in a smaller package, additional detail doesn’t work.
I enjoy my Deville, but imho it wears the roof ironically, as a homage to the era. I’ve never seen another one like it, even in the heyday, these faux convertible tops were only popular in certain US markets but virtually never seen in Canada. My particular car was from Florida.
I enjoyed the whole series, and really liked the wrap-up paragraph, about the most recent dealer-installed setups (often seen on Crown Vic and Marquis in my wanderings) imitating the convertible with the snaps and such—very true. Like whitewalls, I wonder if they’ll ever find their way back into the market?
Thanks for all your work on this, Tom Halter!
The first and last shot of the Seville and Eldorado should have been enough to turn even the die hard against vinyl tops… yuck… and I have three out of four cars with vinyl.
The Polara, being all white, would be hard to stomach if ALL white and no black top. Parklane a greenish car but the vinyl does set it apart from the more pedestrian Monterey. Mustang a small car in pebble beige and didn’t need a black top. The Cougar, in the same greenish color I have seen in painted top and black vinyl top while mine is in a darker green top added by the dealer from that on a Thunderbird. The green top does make it much btter looking and acceptable on a smaller car versus a black top and it is painted underneath.
If you look at GM brochures circa 1979-1980 it seems like they were picturing an end to the trend nearing at that time. Early E bodies, for example, are often pictured without landau roofs, though one almost never saw them that way in reality. The bustleback Seville never had a vinyl roof option (nor did its imitators actually).
But then it seems like there was backsliding. The 1981 G bodies seem to have been designed specifically to accommodate vinyl roofs, with the rear windows inset from the belt line. And in fact the early 80s saw as many vinyl roofs on GM cars as the late 70s.
I suspect that whatever GM styling staff may have wanted, there was pushback from dealers, who liked the extra markup of selling cars with “optional” extras on the body. You see this in the emergence in the 80s of faux luggage racks on trunklids. And in the 90s with additional spoilers.
Great series, thanks for taking us on this decades long journey through one of the styling fads of the era. As the industry usually practices, ultimately its done to a tasteless death.
One variation worth examining is the ‘formal-ized’ padded vinyl tops exampled by the 1980-’81 Lincoln Versailles, the ’80’s M-Body Chrysler Fifth Avenue and ‘luxury’ K-car variants as well as Lincoln Town Cars with the AHA coachbuilder-installed formal tops. All utilized a fiberglass roof cap bonded to the backlight opening with steeper formal rake, a small ‘limousine-style’ rear backlight and frequently padded vinyl half-tops to evoke the Classic Era town cars. Some also closed the door vent window for more formal affect.
Given my well know abhorrence of vinyl roofs, I’m amazed that I found the article interesting, and got thru the whole thing without puking.
That opening photo must have come pretty close though. I know it did for me. Best looking Cadillac for something like 30 years, and someone goes and does that to it!
I won’t say this is the best looking Cadillac in recent years, but the combination, oh well….
What I haven’t seen so far with a vinyl roof: Cadillac CT6, CT5, Lincoln Continental, and last generation Buick LaCrosse. But what I’ve seen with vinyl roof: Current Chrysler 300, and Dodge Challenger!
And any modern 6-window sedan looks awful with vinyl roof. I saw the last generation Impala with it, it looks very impressive.
I believe it was the ’77+ Caprice that turned the corner on vinyl roofs. I don’t remember ever seeing a 4 door with one, or a 2 door with a full roof. OTOH, all three 1980-4 GM C bodies were rarely seen without one. Cadillac even had a curved crease in the sheet metal for the bottom edge of the vinyl. But the Chrysler and Cadillac with the silly and ugly vinyl around the fixed rear door window put the nail in the coffin.
I’ve been getting Eldorado ad alerts from Hemmings for over a year, hoping to see a ’79-81 with a steel roof. Instead, that generation is 90% Biarritzes with the overstuffed cabriolet and SS roof. Those must have been the pampered garage queens.
Your dates are wrong on the fords. I personally had a 04 ultimate edition grand marquis with a factory vynal top. I’ve also had a 94 Merc with a half top. The Lincoln’s offered vynal roofs factory till at least 97….
Given that it’s usually spelled vinyl, I highly doubt those tops were factory-installed.
For me the ’62 Falcon Futura nailed it, taking a design rooted in the ’50’s and crisping it up to kick off the ’60’s junior executive look, finding full expression in the 1967 Ford Cortina 1600E which hit the sporty executive sweet spot, taking a basic sedan and making it a hot property.
I am now wondering about some of the later pre-98 Town Cars, specifically those Jack Nicklaus Signature Editions. I saw plenty of those with vinyl/fabric coach roofs – were those all aftermarket?
I remember reading that when Lincoln introduced the 92 aero Town Car they prohibited dealers from adding vinyl because they were trying to stimulate a younger demographic, and didn’t want a bunch of vinyl roofed TCs clogging city streets and turning off younger buyers. I don’t think that edict held up very long, and maybe it was just PR anyway.
Researching the last vinyl roof was surprisingly more difficult than the first ones. Other than Cadillac, most manufacturers went out of their way to hide the option by the 1990’s.
1992 was the last time vinyl appeared in the Town Car brochure or option sheet. Was it still available as a DSO after that? Perhaps, I’m sticking with 1992 as the date it was last “generally available” on the TC.
I can’t find it anymore, the president of Lincoln-Mercury was asking the name of the dealership who put vinyl roof on Lincoln LS on the internet when the car was new.
I assume it is a lost battle. I saw a restyled last Lincoln MKZ with vinyl roof in metro Detroit. The vinyl roof lasted as long as the Lincoln sedans.
At the Cadillac owners forum, 2nd & 3rd owners are still putting roofs on their DTSs. It’s surprising they look as good as they do, since the DTS (and last Deville) has limo-style doors breaking up the vinyl. It may be occurring because new owners want to put their stamp on a car used by someone else. I haven’t seen many on other recent Cadillacs, however.
So what was the last “sporty” car to offer a vinyl roof? In the early ’70s you could get them on Camaros, Mustangs, and muscle cars of all descriptions, but by1980 or so, they were considered unsuitable for anything that wasn’t an American-style luxury car. What caused this change in perception? Even cars that offered vinyl roofs usually didn’t allow them on the sporty or “European style” versions, like, say, the Regal Grand National (I haven’t checked into this, but I’ve never seen a GN with a vinyl roof). I do remember a few early Fox body Mustangs had vinyl roofs.
I want to say in the automotive world, vinyl roof is the Americana reflected in its overall styling, preference from the buyer demographic and capitalism ( cheap profit, how it was achieved, and corner cutting without bottom line, as it wasn’t subject to federal regulations as I’m aware of ) not unlike some movies under French or Italian directors showing the Americana in a dark shade. It is uniquely, instantly recognizable as something of American origin. Even though many other cars with strong national identity came with vinyl roof ( Toyota Century ), American vinyl roof is uniquely American.
Ironically, for many American cars restored overseas, non-American vinyl roofs look very different. It is an American thing to have, with vinyl roof.
British cars seemed to be big users of them too, Austin princess, triumph dolomite, Rover P6, Jaguar XJC are all cars I instantly think of with vinyl tops equipped.
Mutual admirations:
Daimler 420, Cadillac SeVille.
Ford Granada, Wolseley Saloon… ( not aged well )
And Opel Admiral, pretty German American and American German at the same time.
Good thing is this particular chapter was turned away. ( but more are on the way, iPad screen is one of them )
The Mk 3 and Mk 4 Cortinas looked pretty sharp with a vinyl roof.
Certainly did, and there were a lot of them here too, mostly GL/Ghia models. Maybe it was the curvature of the roof that helped – the Mk V with full vinyl roof still looked good but the III and IV were better. Min you the Mk V where they just put vinyl on the C-pillar vents looked decent.
Thanks! I’ll just park this here…. 🙂
And interestingly, one place it didn’t rust was under the vinyl roof.
My wife once owned a ’91 Riviera with a vinyl half roof. Not always garaged. Used acrylic floor wax on it up until it was nearly 20 years old. By then deteriorating, still half way presentable. Wish I had that car today. Also used LEXOL on the leather seats, really helped.
Donaldo [and everyone else],
Lexol is a great leather cleaner, however car owners should be aware that it contains silicone.
Many older cars with leather seats are often reconditioned with various products that can be brushed or sprayed, with excellent results if done right. Problem is, if the seats were treated with a product containing silicone, the silicone seeps into the leather. ANY attempts to re-coat a leather [or vinyl] surface that was treated with products containing silicone, will quickly have the new paint begin to “crater” at each point where silicone is present, and the new coating will simply peel all over. The only way to solve the product is to install an all-new interior.
Not surprising the 96 B/D body was the last vinyl topper, as those were the last in several things.
-RWD separate frame car from GM
-live axle sedan from GM
-small block chevy in a sedan from GM
– double wishbone front suspension in a sedan from GM
-recircilating ball steering in a car from GM (did Ford CV have R&P steering by then?)
-traditional full size wagons from anyone
-two way tailgate from anyone
-gas filler behind license plate from anyone
-94 Caprice last unsplit bench seat in a car from anyone
That’s all I can think of now, but I’ll bet there’s more.
Nothing says ‘old man`s car’ like a malaise era or later vehicle with a ‘coach’ or vinyl roof But I like them!
Back when I worked at GM Fremont in 76-81, I recall vinyl topped cars came down the line fully painted. They were taken to a vinyl top installation room that was part of the factory. This was where the tops were installed by very skilled, thorough, installers. Not just anyone was allowed near those tops! It’s fashionable to say that all auto workers did crappy work back then, but these installers, as well as those that did the hand painted pin stripes, and even the guys that did after line repair work, were very proud of their work.
There was a very thorough vinyl top removal and replacement article back in the ’90’s in Car Craft magazine. It also described how repairs had to be done prior to re-installation of the new vinyl top. It explained that it was usually not feasible to finish the surface to a level that could be painted.
I think that the vinyl top on the 4 dr 1967-71 Thunderbirds are very nicely done and integrated into the overall design. Neat the way part of the C pillar opens with the door, as well. And the landau bar works rather well with the design. Overall, an elegant looking car with the vinyl top – it would look terrible without. One of those cases where the car’s design really calls for a vinyl top without exception.
Re: the FWD Olds Ninety-Eight with vinyl–I can’t say I’ve seen any of the (already very rare) 1985-87 Ninety-Eight 2-door models that didn’t have the padded vinyl roof. Buick Electras, yes, but if they ever made an Olds with the bare roof, it never made it to the brochure photoshoot.
Even as a kid, I could not understand why anyone would want a vinyl roof. My dad’s last vinyl roof was on a Park Avenue Brougham and it had enough padding on it to leave a thumb impression in it when you pressed down on it. That roof cracked and absorbed water like a sponge. It rotted out the roof above the windshield and during the last year of its use, would end up leaking all over the thick tufted-pillow padded bordello interior, making the car interior smell like a rotting basement. Nasty.
Vinyl roofs on cars are so stupid.