The rear wind deflector is glass.

 

Great pictures, thanks a bunch. Just makes me more anxiousw for mine. September sure is a long way away. Oh well, that will give me 2-3 months of decent top down weather.

 

My thoughts Exactly. Didn't they realize that they couldn't take a Miata top and put it on a Z without it looking really bad.

Why couldn't they have made it look more like this:

 

My last car was a convertible. I dont miss it at all, but it probably had to do with the car and not the convertible. Now I really like the Lemans, but I could never get rid of my silverstone. I think I just found a soultion. I should just get a Lemans Roadster. Save my money or buy another Z? Oh well.

Looks great, thanks for the pictures!

 

That is a fair question.

There are a few good reasons the top was not made like your picture. (Granted, your picture does look better top up). Any engineering design like this consists of a series of compromises.

The car in the picture above would virtually no trunk since the back edge of the top must drop straight down when lowering the top. As someone who ordered a roadster I will gladly take a decent trunk (for a roadster) over extending the back edge a little bit.

Secondly, in the above picture it seems unlikely that there would be room for the hard boot that covers the top when it is down. That happens to be my favorite feature of the roadster.

So, I agree that (top up) the top is less than stunning. However, I feel the engineers deserved a little defense because I think they made some reasonable decisions by giving us a nice hard boot and a decent sized trunk.

If they had done it the other way, magazine would be slamming them for the non-existant trunk and huge blind spots. Sometimes there is no engineering solution that will make everyone happy.

(This was not a flame, just playing devil's advocate and defending my fellow engineers.)

 

Andy-
I certainly didn't take your respone as a flame. I well understand that every vehicle is a series of compromises. The coupe is a compromise, too.

Your points are valid, but the only areas that I would take issue with you are trunk space and blind spots. As has been well documented, the view from the coupe isn't exactly great, and it has plenty of blind spots. When I sat in the convertible at my dealer (with the top up) the first thing I noticed was how much worse the blind spots were than even in the coupe.

And trunk space???? If anyone buying a roadster is even remotely concerned about trunk space, they're probably buying the wrong car!!

The convertible is a nice ride, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.