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Now in its 18th year, Car and Driver's Lightning Lap establishes benchmark lap times for the top performance cars across all price categories. VIR's grueling 4.1-mile Grand Course functions as America's Nürburging, and the lap times here provide the ultimate measure of a vehicle's overall performance.
2025 Bentley Continental GT Speed
2025 Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing
2024 Hyundai Elantra N
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
2024 Lamborghini Revuelto
2024 Lucid Air Sapphire
2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata Club
2025 McLaren Artura Spider
2024 Mercedes-AMG GT63 Coupe
2023 Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS Manthey Racing
2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT
2024 Subaru BRZ tS
2025 Subaru WRX tS
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13 hours ago
- Yahoo
Soak Up the Sun With These Wallet-Friendly Convertibles
There's something about a convertible that just feels like summer. Maybe it's the open sky, the warm breeze, or that sense of freedom that only comes when the top is down and the road stretches ahead. Whatever the reason, if you've been dreaming about owning one, now's a great time to start looking. While some convertibles come with six-figure price tags, there are still plenty of models that offer open-air fun without draining your savings. Whether you're into classic styling, modern tech, off-road adventure, or pure driving joy, there's a convertible out there that fits the bill. Why We Chose These Cars We looked for convertibles that balance three key qualities: affordability, reliability, and driving enjoyment. Some are brand-new models with updated tech and safety features. Others are slightly older, pre-owned picks that have held their value and still offer a lot of fun for the money. All pricing and specifications were sourced from trusted sites like Car and Driver, Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, Cars & Bids, and official manufacturer websites. A few discontinued models made the cut because they're still widely available and worth considering if you're open to shopping used. From sporty roadsters to rugged roofless SUVs, this list offers a variety of drop-top experiences for every kind of driver. Ask just about any car enthusiast to name the best affordable convertible, and chances are they'll say 'Miata.' And for good reason. The 2025 Mazda MX-5 Miata stays true to what has made it a favorite for decades: lightweight design, balanced handling, and pure driving enjoyment. Mazda reports that the 2025 model keeps its 181-horsepower 2.0-liter engine, with your choice of a six-speed manual or automatic transmission. It's not just fun—it's efficient, too, with a combined 29 miles per gallon. Thanks to its near-perfect 50/50 weight distribution, the Miata carves through corners with confidence, making even an ordinary drive feel like something special. If you like the idea of owning something collectible, Car and Driver shares that Mazda is releasing a 35th Anniversary Edition in a deep Artisan Red with tan Nappa leather seats. Only 300 are coming to the U.S., so it's a rare find. Whether you're a longtime fan or just looking to add some fun to your weekends, the Miata is proof that joy doesn't have to be expensive. If you're after a convertible with charm, personality, and a bit of British flair, the 2025 Mini Cooper Convertible delivers. It's compact, stylish, and built to make everyday drives feel a little more playful. Mini offers a variety of ways to customize your car, from bold paint colors to interior trim and tech features. No matter how you configure it, you still get that signature Mini look and the famously fun 'go-kart' handling that makes it such a joy to drive around town or through winding roads. The base model includes a 161-horsepower engine paired with an automatic transmission. It's zippy without being overwhelming, making it a great option for drivers who want something sporty but approachable. For those who want something a little different without straying too far from comfort and quality, the Mini Cooper Convertible offers just the right mix of fun and refinement. If you want American muscle with your open-air experience, the Camaro is a great choice. Car and Driver reports that the 2024 model offers a choice of a 335-hp 3.6-liter V-6 or a 455-hp 6.2-liter V-8. You can also choose between a 6-speed manual or a 10-speed automatic transmission. For drivers looking for a little more pep in their step, CoPilot found that the ZL1 trim is a beast with 650 supercharged horsepower. In addition, if you need serious track performance, check out the 1LE package. The Fiat 124 Spider is a stylish roadster that combines Italian design with Japanese engineering. The popular car marketplace, Carwow, states that the car features a 1.4-liter turbocharged engine with 160 hp and gets 29 mpg combined. Unfortunately, according to Fiat, the 124 Spider was discontinued in 2020. However, you can still find many used models on online car marketplaces. For another car that is no longer in production but still a fun ride, the 2019 Beetle Convertible is a modern take on a classic. It's got that iconic shape and a fun, retro vibe. Edmunds reports that the 2019 model features a 174-hp 2.0-liter engine and a 6-speed automatic, getting 29 mpg combined. Giving a loving tribute, Car and Driver states that the Beetle's history in America starts in the 1950s and took off in the 60s when it was featured in the popular Disney movie The Love Bug. Still, to this day, it remains one of the most recognizable cars in history. For the adventurous, the Jeep Wrangler is the ultimate go-anywhere convertible. You can take off both the roof and the doors for a truly open-air experience. Jeep states the 2025 model offers a choice of engines, including a 285-hp 3.6-liter V-6 that gets up to 19 mpg combined. Jeep's roots are deep in American history, with one of the first models being used in World War II, where it served as a military vehicle. Now, the Wrangler comes in tons of configurations, including two-door and four-door versions. The Ford Bronco is another rugged option, directly competing with the Wrangler. It also has a removable roof and doors, with retro styling. Car and Driver reports that the 2025 Bronco offers many engine options, with the standard being a 300-hp turbocharged four-cylinder that gets a combined 18 mpg. There's even a Bronco Raptor trim with a 418-hp engine for serious off-roading. Unfortunately, you need deep pockets to get your hands on one, as this over-the-top Bronco will run you about $92,000, putting it well outside the affordable category. The Ford Mustang is a classic American muscle car that goes back all the way to the 1960s. Moving into the 21st century, The Mustang Convertible offers several engine options from the base 315-hp 2.3-liter inline-four EcoBoost to the iconic 480-hp 5.0-liter V8, and buyers also get to choose between a 10-speed automatic and a 6-speed manual transmission. The average mpg ranges from 17 to 25, depending on your engine configuration. Maybe that roaring V8 is worth a few extra bucks at the pump?! Further on our list is the 987 Porsche Boxster, which is a fun little roadster featuring top-of-the-line handling and an exciting top-down driving experience. This particular model of Boxster ran from 2004 to 2012. The car auction website Cars & Bids shows pre-owned models ranging from $11,100 to $55,000. Porsche Club of America states that the 987 Porsche Boxster was offered a couple of different engine options, from the base 2.7-liter to a 3.2-liter flat-6. It's also available with several transmission options, ranging from a 5 or 6-speed manual or a 7-speed automatic. If you're looking for something stylish and refined, the Audi A5 Cabriolet delivers a quiet, confident kind of luxury. It's not flashy, but it turns heads for all the right reasons—with clean lines, tasteful chrome accents, and that unmistakable Audi grille. Available with Audi's Quattro all-wheel drive, the A5 Cabriolet gives you a sense of security and traction that many convertibles can't match, especially if you live somewhere with unpredictable weather. Most models from this era come with a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, offering a smooth ride and plenty of power for highway cruising. Inside, you'll find a comfortable and thoughtfully designed cabin. Even the earlier models feel upscale, with features like leather upholstery, dual-zone climate control, and a surprisingly quiet ride when the top is up. For under $20,000 on the used market, the A5 Cabriolet is a strong option for drivers who want an open-air experience without giving up comfort or refinement. It's a convertible you can enjoy daily, and still feel good about when you pull up to dinner on a Friday night. The BMW 2 Series Convertible is what happens when German engineering meets top-down driving fun. Compact and athletic, the 2018 230i strikes a great balance between sporty performance and everyday comfort, making it a standout in the used convertible market. Under the hood, you'll find a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine that delivers 248 horsepower to the rear wheels. That means sharp handling, smooth acceleration, and a driving feel that's unmistakably BMW. You can choose between an eight-speed automatic or a six-speed manual, depending on how involved you want to be behind the wheel. The interior is classic BMW—clean design, quality materials, and just enough tech to make life easy without feeling cluttered. It's also surprisingly comfortable for a small car, with supportive seats and a well-insulated soft top that keeps things quiet when it's up. For drivers who want a convertible that feels refined but still has a bit of edge, the 230i is a strong contender. With used prices falling around $16,500 to start, it's a great way to enjoy premium quality without stepping into luxury-car price territory. If you're looking for a convertible car that's fun to drive, reliable, and affordable to keep running, the Toyota MR2 Spyder is your next car. This sporty convertible was in production from 1999 to 2007, but disappeared from the American market in 2005. According to Kelley Blue Book, the Toyota MR2 Spyder came standard with a 1.8-liter inline-4 engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. No matter your style — sporty, rugged, nostalgic, or refined — there's a convertible out there that can turn your everyday drives into something memorable. The best part? You don't need to empty your savings to get one. Whether you're eyeing a modern Miata, a throwback Beetle, or even a used Porsche that still has plenty of punch, the options are surprisingly accessible. And if you're leaning toward something a little less traditional, like a Jeep or Bronco with the top off and the trail ahead, that counts too. So if you've been waiting for a sign to start your top-down summer adventures, consider this it. Take your time, do your homework, and test drive a few. The right convertible isn't just about looks or speed. It's about how it makes you feel every time you turn the key (or press the button) and roll out into the sunshine. Happy driving, and don't forget the sunscreen.
Car and Driver
a day ago
- Car and Driver
1990 Toyota 4Runner Driven: Finally a Four-Door
From the August 1989 issue of Car and Driver. Since the dusty dawn of modern off-roading, most mini-trucks with enclosed rear passenger quarters made do with two doors. That's changing faster than the weathered face of the still-wild West. Consider Toyota's 4Runners. Tall and tough trucklets from the rogues' gallery of 4Runners have glowered on the wanted lists of sport-utility buyers for years. Now Toyota has fattened its hand with a rework of the whole 4Runner lot—including the handy option of hanging an extra pair of doors on each truck. The new range includes two-door, four-wheel-drive models that are strongly reminiscent of the early tough-guy 4Runners, plus thoroughly civilized four-doors fitted with a choice of two- or four-wheel drive. Each chassis layout includes two engine choices: a four-cylinder or a V-6. The rear-drive models offer only a four-speed automatic transmission, but those propelled by four wheels can be paired with either the automatic or a five-speed manual gearbox. Toyota also offers a shift-on-the-move system that lets you snick into four-wheel drive at speeds up to 50 mph. Called 4WDemand, it's standard with the V-6 and optional with the four-cylinder. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Elbow past the extra doors, the added civility, and the familiar looks and logos and you see that the new breed was bred to be "bad" from the knobbies up. Yet Toyota's priority was to make the 4Runner all-around better by making it all-of-a-piece. That meant doing away with yesteryear's detachable fiberglass top. The 4Runner made its reputation for toughness as a pickup saddled with make-do weather protection—something like an early Conestoga wagon, albeit far more hospitable. It worked: for the past three years, Toyota's saddle-soaping of details put the 4Runner atop the sport-utility ranks in the JD. Power & Associates' Compact Truck Customer Satisfaction Index. Still, the factory wants the 4Runner to show schoolmarm manners without giving up old-hand toughness. So rather than tacking on a fibrous shell, Toyota builds a steel roof integral with the new and stronger unit body. Now it's all tight. Depending upon how you buy options, you can brew up fixings from milquetoast mild to mountain-man wild. The trucks' stance, sheetmetal, and exterior trim leave no doubt that Toyota wants its 4Runners to rise from the landscape with a meaty presence. Their curb weights, which range from about 3600 to 4150 pounds, live up to their looks. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Taking a seat in many two-door mini-trucks calls first for clambering up to cab height—a tallish task due to most mini-trucks' lofty pretensions of being barely minimized maxi-trucks. Then the tight packaging pinches access to the back seat, even for flexible youths. Two doors are fine as far as they go, suggesting a certain spartan sportiness, but older and stiffer folks can scissor into the back only through torso-twisting contortions. Thanks to the more modern four-door mini-trucks, including the new 4Runner, passengers' transitory aches and pains go the way of Conestogas on the Santa Fe Trail: into oblivion. Consider mainstream sport-utility wagons that take on five-door convenience through four doors and a tailgate: the Isuzu Trooper II, the Jeep Cherokee/Wagoneer, and the Mitsubishi Montero. (Toyota's Land Cruiser, heftier and costlier than the 4Runner, has hauled the sport-utility faithful since about the time Moses said he didn't want to get his sandals wet. Age works against the Land Cruiser, though, when you idle it up beside products of fresher thinking.) The new 4Runners embody talents extracted from the mountain goat, the Conestoga, and the touring car. Meant to traverse the badlands, they also ditty-bop through the good life. You feel the newfound structural solidity and a blissful infusion of mechanical smoothness. The isolation from NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) often makes the 4Runners feel eerily removed from the action of the moment. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver We sampled a gaggle of 4Runners in the deserts, forests, and mountains of northern New Mexico. The Toyotas had to brave power-sapping altitudes, making us wish for instant turbo kits, but revealed a glimpse of their repertoire through the 4wd paradise between Santa Fe and Taos. The 4Runners' interiors come across as handsome as the exteriors, which you could classify as strong, silent types. The designs and materials applied to Toyota's truck interiors rank alongside those fitted into its best cars. That puts them near the top for concept, comfort, fit, and finish. From basic seating to complex sound systems, the top-notch materials, logical design, and righteous execution seem to come through. Those parts we can be pretty sure of. We'll reserve judgment on the suspensions, brakes, and powertrains. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Each 4Runner's chunky nose sits up on control arms, torsion bars, gas shocks, and an anti-roll bar. The rear holds up its end with a rigid axle, four trailing links, coil springs, gas shocks, and an anti-roll bar. The power-assisted steering turns via a recirculating ball (and slowly, at 5.2 turns lock-to-lock, which helps cushion off-road nastiness). The burly brake system bulges with vented discs up front and drums in the rear. We focused on the upmarket 4Runner we'd be most attracted to, the 4WD SR5 V-6 with the five-speed stick. Toyota outfitted it with optional 7.0-by-15-inch alloy wheels and matching 31x10.50R-15 M+S tires, plus a standard 10.2 inches of rock-avoiding ground clearance. The sweet manual gearbox helps sustain zip that would otherwise be lost to the elasticity of the even-smoother automatic. In the high country especially, the 150-hp 3.0-liter V-6 pulls its load much more easily than the 116-hp 2.4-liter four. Though unrelated, both engines are electronically fuel injected and fitted with a belt-driven single-overhead-cam layout. The four-cylinder offsets some of its horsepower disadvantage by making its peak torque at 2800 rpm, a useful 600 revs lower than the V-6's max-grunt point. Both engines pump valves and whirl cranks with lubricious ease. Very little crosstalk between components penetrates the veil of isolation that drapes the firewall and enfolds the drivetrain. View Photos Larry Griffin | Car and Driver Sport-utility vehicles now knock off more than a million sales per year. Toyota would like ten percent of this growing market by the mid-1990s, a threefold increase in its share. Because all of the vehicles we drove were prototypes, we can't predict with confidence how Toyota's new sport-utilities will do: like all strong, silent, tough guys new in town and dressed to kill, the new 4Runners remain unknown quantities. What we do know is that the 4Runner V-6 that caught our eye will sell for about $18,000. That seems a reasonable sum to pay for four-star four-play. Specifications Specifications Year Make Model Trim Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear/4-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 5-door wagon PRICE Base: $18,000 (est) //Base price of vehicle as described in specs hed// Options: Option 1, $XXXX; Option 2, $XXXX ENGINE SOHC 12-valve V-6, iron block and aluminum heads, port fuel injection Displacement: 181 in3, 2958 cm3 Power: 150 hp @ 4800 rpm Torque: 180 lb-ft @ 3400 rpm TRANSMISSION 5-speed manual CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: control arms/live axle Brakes, F/R: 11.3-in vented disc/11.6-in drum Tires: Bridgestone Desert Dueler M+S DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 103.3 in Length: 196.5 in Width: 68.1 in Height: 67.3 in Curb Weight: 4050 lb EPA FUEL ECONOMY (PROJECTED) City/Highway: 16/18 mpg C/D TESTING EXPLAINED
Car and Driver
a day ago
- Car and Driver
Airstream's New Trailer Embodies Frank Lloyd Wright's Designs
Airstream has partnered with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for a new limited-edition travel trailer. The Usonian trailer employs many of the design principles found in Wright's architectural masterpieces, such as the Taliesin West property used by Wright as a winter home. The limited-edition camper costs $184,900, and only 200 units will be built. Compared with the multi-level rectilinear look of Fallingwater and the monolithic rotunda of New York's Guggenheim Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West home in Scottsdale, Arizona, cuts a far subtler silhouette. The property, which served as Wright's winter oasis and is now home to the famed architect's eponymous foundation, consists of a series of low-slung buildings that blend into the surrounding desert. But while Taliesin West lacks the grand presence of some of Wright's other creations, it perfectly encapsulates many of his design philosophies. So, when Airstream—maker of those iconic aluminum campers—decided to partner with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation on a new limited-edition trailer, Taliesin West was the ideal inspiration. Airstream Airstream Airstream Airstream Airstream Airstream Airstream Caleb Miller Associate News Editor Caleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.
