Photo credit: General Motors.
That Seventies’ substitute for real convertibles actually dates back to the 1940s and lasted into the 2000s.
Of all the many bummers that were raining down on the automotive marketplace in the 1970s, one particularly sad trend was the death of the convertible. Fears of impending government regulation, the rise in popularity of air conditioning, high-speed freeway driving, and deteriorating air quality all had a hand in dragging down sales of convertibles and their resultant disappearance from American showrooms. By 1976, the Cadillac Eldorado was the sole convertible offering from a domestic carmaker, and it was in its much-ballyhooed final year. European sports cars such as MG, Fiat, and Alfa Romeo hung in there—having no other choice, really—but drop-tops were all but dead.
In the same year that the Eldo convertible sailed off into the sunset, the drop-top’s new stand-in made its first big splash: New removable hatch roof panels in the ’76 Pontiac Trans Am—T-tops, as they’d come to be known—arrived to keep the spirit of open-air motoring alive.
T-tops, however, were an idea that dated back to the late 1940s. Credit industrial designer Gordon Buehrig for the invention. Famed for his work on the Cord 810/812 as well as Auburns and Duesenbergs, he was hired to design a prototype sports car for a startup company after World War II. The resulting concept for The American Sports Car Company (TASCO) had many wild and innovative elements, including fully covered wheels in fenders that were separate from the body. One key item, for which he received a patent, was a transparent roof with removable panels on either side.
Photo credit: General Motors.
The idea languished until the debut of the C3 Chevrolet Corvette for 1968. That car introduced T-tops to the market, and the feature was standard on all hardtop Corvettes. (Buehrig sued GM, and the company reportedly paid him a settlement.) The Corvette offered the option of glass T-tops starting in 1978, and aftermarket vendors sold them as well. T-tops would remain a Corvette fixture for the entire C3 run, but come the C4 generation, the Corvette switched to a one-piece lift-off roof panel, a feature the model retains to this day.
The 1976 Buick Century with Hurst hatch roof. Photo Credit: General Motors
T-tops remained a Corvette exclusive until 1976. That year, in addition to the Trans Am, T-tops became available on two-door versions of the Oldsmobile Cutlass and the Buick Century/Regal. Offered as the Hurst Hatch roof, they were a $550 option. At Pontiac, the Hurst Hatch roof initially was part of the midyear special edition black-and-gold Trans Am. Production problems, however, forced Pontiac to remove the feature from the Y82 Special Edition Package, and ultimately only 643 of the 2,590 Special Edition Trans Ams had T-tops.
1977 Buick Century Custom Coupe. Photo credit: General Motors.
Critically, four of those (with 1977 styling updates) were cars given to filmmaker Hal Needham to use in the movie “Smokey and the Bandit.” That movie made the feature famous, cementing it as a fixture of the Firebird—and, by extension, the Camaro, which got them in the ’78 model year.
The success of T-tops, in part due to Smokey and the Bandit, spread to the Chevrolet Camaro in 1978. Photo credit: General Motors.
Pontiac’s early T-tops were not installed on the production line. Instead, completed cars were shipped off to Hurst Performance to have the roof modified and the removable panels fitted. Come 1978, Fisher would replace Hurst as the T-top supplier, and a new design featured larger panels and a narrower roof structure in between, as well as a different latching system. It was also less prone to leaks. Aftermarket vendors, including American T-Tops and Cars and Concepts, also got in on the action, so great was the mania for T-tops. Cars and Concepts would later install T-tops on the Pontiac Fiero, which added them as a factory option in its final year of 1988, although earlier cars could have them fitted as a dealer option.
Above images courtesy of Ford.
The Ford Mustang had a serious case of Trans Am envy in the late '70s, so it’s not surprising that Ford rushed to make T-tops available for 1977, the second-to-last year for the Mustang II. Ford marketed the option as the T-Roof Convertible, and it was available on any Mustang II hatchback. When the Mustang switched to the Fox body platform for 1979, the T-Roof initially was unavailable, but it returned in ’81 (and, naturally, was shared with the Mercury Capri). On the Fox-body Mustang, the T-Roof could be had on notchback as well as hatchback body styles. It remained on the Ford pony car’s options list even after the convertible was resurrected in 1983.
Besides pony cars, T-tops also appeared on many of Detroit’s mid-size “personal luxury” coupes, as Chrysler, then Ford, quickly followed GM’s lead with the Cutlass and Regal. The Ford Thunderbird added them for ’79, where the feature worked well with the seventh-generation T-Bird’s basket-handle roof treatment. When the 'Bird was downsized again for 1980, however, T-tops disappeared (along with most of the car’s appeal).
In 1977, the Dodge Daytona joined the T-top party along with the Chrysler Cordoba. Photo credit: FCA.
Chrysler got into the T swing with the popular Cordoba and the Dodge Charger SE for 1977, and kept the option for the follow-up Dodge Magnum. Chrysler retained the feature in 1980, when the Cordoba and its Dodge sibling—now called Mirada—switched to smaller bodies with straight-edged styling.
The Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare also offered T-tops for the first time in 1977. Photo credit: FCA.
Chrysler also offered T-tops on the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré two-doors, starting in 1977. The related Dodge Diplomat and Chrysler LeBaron coupes followed suit for ’78 and ’79. The feature had a longer run in the Dodge Daytona front-drive performance coupe, lasting from 1985 to 1990—with the Daytona’s Chrysler Laser sibling joining in for 1986.
1977 Pontiac Grand Prix. Photo credit: General Motors.
T-tops were even more widespread and longer-lasting on GM’s personal-luxury cars. After Buick and Oldsmobile led the charge in ’76, the Pontiac Grand Prix followed in ’77. The feature was retained as the Cutlass, Regal, and Grand Prix were downsized for 1978, and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo joined in as well. T-tops would remain available on those cars through their entire run on the rear-wheel-drive G platform. When their front-drive W-body replacements arrived in mid-’88, the hatch roof was gone from the menu.
1992 Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo. Photo credit Nissan Motor Corporation.
Foreign nameplates joined the T party as well, none more enthusiastically than Datsun/Nissan. Datsun debuted T-tops on the 280ZX in 1980, and kept them for the succeeding Z31-generation 300ZX that arrived for 1984. In both cases, they were available on the two-seat and the 2+2 body styles. They appeared again on the redesigned Z32 for 1990—as standard equipment that first year. A plain hardtop variant joined the lineup for 1991, but T-tops remained standard on the 300ZX Turbo (and available on non-Turbo model) all the way until the 300ZX reached the end of the road after 1996. Nissan also offered T-tops on the smaller NX2000 coupe and the Pulsar NX.
Photo credit: Toyota
Toyota offered T-tops on its mid-engine MR2 in both its first- and second-generation models before going full roadster with the final iteration. One of the more obscure imports to rock T-tops—as standard no less—was the Suzuki X90 mini SUV coupe of 1996-'98. Another oddball imported utility vehicle, the Subaru BRAT, offered what appeared to be T-tops with the second-gen model’s “Halo Twin Roof,” but it was really just twin sunroof portals under glass hatch panels.
Fittingly, the two cars that are most identified with T-tops, the Firebird and the Camaro, are the two that stuck with them the longest. Both offered the option all the way until the very end of the fourth generation in 2002. Noting that the option was chosen by more than 50 percent of buyers, a brochure for the 2000 Camaro brochure rhetorically asked, “What’s [a] Camaro without T-tops?” Not quite as iconic, we’d answer. And a whole lot less rad.
Photo credit: General Motors.
