C5 Corvette with Retractable Hardtop Is an Awe-inspiring Conversion

Rare Fairway Green C5 Corvette convertible has a pretty cool trick up its sleeve. Or rather, in its trunk.

Throughout history, many exotic and fancy luxury cars (as well as some regular old classics) have been built with retractable hard tops. This interesting concept makes switching between open-air driving and having a dry, quiet cabin as easy as pressing a button. It’s a nice and convenient alternative to both actuating a soft top and dealing with a removable hard top or targa. Thus, it isn’t surprising that the original owner of this C5 Corvette, currently up for grabs on Craigslist, decided to give his ride that treatment.

Back in the C5’s day, Corvette fans could opt for three body styles. They included a fixed-roof coupe, removable roof hatchback, and soft-top convertible. But why stop there if you want to add a touch of luxury to your ride? Thus, the original owner of this Corvette owner sought out Florida shop Drop Top Customs to make his dream a reality. Reportedly, that job cost a whopping $18k to complete.

In all fairness, the results of that work look pretty OEM. If you didn’t know any better, you might think the Fairway Green Corvette came this way from the factory. Everything is color-matched perfectly, and it reportedly operates flawlessly. With the top up, it simply looks like a fixed-roof coupe. Top down, it looks like a regular old convertible.

The folding hard top is undoubtedly cool, but there are other reasons to like this particular C5. It has only 48k miles on the odometer, for starters, and looks to be in pretty nice shape. The seller also claims that it’s one of just 60 convertibles produced in this shade of green. We can neither confirm nor deny those claims, but we haven’t seen many in our time.

The only real detractors here are the automatic transmission and the price, which stands at $26k. Granted, the conversion was obviously expensive, and you don’t see these things every day. But whether or not this particular car is a collectible with a future as an appreciating asset is up for debate. We guessing that won’t be the case any time soon, so the future owner of this car is going to buy it because they think it’s cool. And we certainly agree with that, at least.

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