Today Mazda's decade-old MX-5 RF is the only coupé-convertible (CC) you can buy. Amazing, really, considering that 20 years ago the market was awash with them.
Mercedes-Benz was to thank - or perhaps blame – for this craze. "The innovative electrohydraulic hard top, dubbed 'Vario top', has the ability to transform the SLK from a coupé into a roadster in just 25 seconds," we explained in 1994, as the firm unveiled an evolution of an earlier roofless sports car concept.
"At the press of a button, the aluminium roofing structure splits just above the rear window and the leading edge of the bootlid tilts upwards. The roof then folds within itself and is stowed in a dedicated well behind the seats. The process is completed with the bootlid snapping shut and the parcel shelf moving into position."
Mercedes had been thinking about making an affordable sports car since the late 1980s, but it took the roaring success of the original MX-5 to give it the confidence to proceed.
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The design team (led by stalwart Bruno Sacco and prominently featuring future Porsche 911 supremo Michael Mauer) felt that such a car would need a unique selling point and settled on a retractable metal roof.
Two years later, the SLK came to Autocar for road testing and we concluded that, despite it weighing a significant 33kg, "the Vario roof is quite simply the best convertible roof we have ever seen", playing a major part in making this £30,000 newcomer "the ultimate no-compromise roadster".
Such affordability for something so stylish and the perceived practical benefits of a hard top combined to make the SLK an instant hit: Mercedes had expected demand for some 30,000 annually, yet sold 55,000 in its first full year.
Suspicions of copying were thus natural when Peugeot previewed a CC in early 1998 and fuelled by the fact that its designer, Murat Günak, had actually worked on the SLK.
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