Short Take Road Test
Convertibles take us back to our very roots. They are still the beginning and the end of cool. Cary Grant and Grace Kelly whipping around the Monégasque mountains in To Catch a Thief. Robert Redford driving Jay Gatsby's Duesenberg. Dustin Hoffman's desperate sprints in The Graduate up and down the California coast in an Alfa. Thelma and Louise and their top-down T-Bird. Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man in that sweet old Buick. Convertibles are cool, but there is a reason we don't buy very many of them: A lot of the time, they are no fun to ride in. Just ask Isadora Duncan.
In real life, convertibles have been disappointing to some of us, what with all that yardage flapping above your head when it's closed, all those boot snaps to snap when it's open, smelly and unforgiving vinyloid compounds unreeled for your inspection at grim top shops, cracked and cloudy rear windows. The four-wheeled-balloon look at anything over 55 mph. Having to shout to be heard above the rock 'n' roll. All that water and wind getting through at the corners. Bodies with all the structural rigidity of al dente pasta. Saggy doors.
Poof! Flash! Gone! In one fell swoop, Audi seems to have perfected the art of the four-seat convertible, fixing all the objections in one swift redesign. The new A4 cabrio is right in there with the BMW 3-series and Mercedes CLK and well ahead of the Volvo C70 and Saab 9-3 in stiffness and tightness. This new A4, which, as usual, lags behind the new sedan body shape by a few months, is the stoutest, quietest, most uncharacteristically cool convertible this company has ever done. Okay, maybe the two-seater TT is cooler overall, but the A4 holds more stuff. Credit this one to the Audi design team under former head Peter Schreyer, who is now at Volkswagen.
They started with the new A4 platform and sheetmetal and limited it to front-wheel drive to keep weight and complexity to a minimum. The sadly lacking 2.8-liter V-6 engine of old has been replaced by the new 220-hp, 3.0-liter version, with a like number of torque ponies (221) and an amazingly fast-acting and versatile six-speed Multitronic CVT transaxle behind the north-south V-6. If this is the state of the art in CVTs, bring them on.
This powertrain is as smooth and elastic and purposeful as the surgical rubber bands on my old Wrist-Rocket slingshot, and it has the ability to make you suddenly wish you were driving in a rally, or at least a snowstorm. Can we have another thousand rpm of this, please?
