Except for the million dollars or so of extra tooling required for no good reason... Now, figure it this way... let's say this is a 5 year program with 20,000 units per year of convertibles built, and half of them are manual tops...

We'll estimate the extra tooling for the top is $1,000,000, plus $250,000 or so for added complexity in the GM plant (fixtures, etc...), plus another $1,500,000 for GM additional tooling...

You can't use the same wiring harness anymore, the tonneau has to change as it can't be power either, you need a latching/checking system for the tonneau now that it is mechanical instead of electro-mechanical or hydraulic, you have to automate the glass anyway to drop out of the way when the latches are released at the header so you don't save a penny on the window regulator system, you now have TWO body controller iterations instead of one, etc...

There, so assume the grand total for investment is then an additional $2,750,000. Divide that by 10,000 units (it assumes that half the convertible volume is manual tops) times 5 years and you've got $55 tacked on per car just due to the complexity ON THE MANUAL TOP, and since you aren't utilizing the full volume to amoritize the power top tooling any more, the cost of that option goes up too (most likely by quite a bit more).


There are marketing experts who know better than me, but how many of you seriously think a salesman is not going to push a car he has on his lot (instead of ordering one) that has a manual top and a manual latch to a nice little old gal who's looking at a convertible because she's going to have to wrestle with the thing to close it??? Hell, he'll justify it to himself a million different ways just to get the thing out the door.

She's not going to be happy about it the first time she has to go and buy a truck winch to close her top, and technically it isn't a warranty issue, so... she's screwed, Chevrolet gets nasty-grams via phone and email, the supplier takes a black eye, and the only happy person is the salesman because he/she moved a unit on the lot instead of having to order one or do a dealer trade to get one with a full power top.

Nope. Not worth the cost and the mass. If I told you the actual cost difference between power and manual latching, you'd spit your coffee at the screen in disbelief. It isn't worth the headache and complexity of NOT having power latching.