DriveTimes Five

Five cars you didn’t know had targa tops

The Mazda MX-5 is a convertible roadster, right? Except for the version that isn’t. That’s right, the MX-5 RF is technically a targa top, a style of (sort of) topless motoring made famous by the Porsche 911 Targa (although it wasn’t the first to have a targa roof) in 1966. Today we take a look at five other cars you may not have realised had targa roofs.

Bentley Continental SC

The Bentley Continental R was a massive super-luxury coupe made by the British manufacturer between 1991 and 2003 and was the first Bentley since 1965 to not share a body with a Rolls-Royce model.

A convertible version called the Azure was launched in 1995, but four years later Bentley combined the two styles of motoring in a slightly weird targa-roofed version called the Continental SC, for Sedanca Coupe. Only 73 were ever built (as well as six uber-spec Mulliner versions) and one was even bought by Mike Tyson. He declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards, so read into that what you will.

Ferrari Superamerica

Ferrari has used the Superamerica name on several of its top-end V12-powered models over the years, but none were as odd as the 575M Superamerica from 2005.

While there wasn’t necessarily anything too weird about most of the 397kW 5.7-litre V12-powered car, its roof was just blatantly strange. The 575M Superamerica featured an electrochromic glass targa panel that could not only change the level of its tint (everything from completely black to completely clear), it also opened by rotating 180 degrees to lie flat on the boot of the car. Both were firsts on a production car; neither exactly caught on.

Toyota Sports 800

The tiny Sports 800 was Toyota’s first sports car and featured an equally tiny 790cc horizontally-opposed two cylinder engine that produced 33kW. Built as a response to the Honda S500, the Sports 800 was one of the first production cars to feature a targa roof (beating the 911 to it by a year) and around 3000 examples were built between 1965 and 1969.

It is incredibly rare today, however, with only around 300 surviving. Interestingly, the Sports 800 was actually Toyota’s first hybrid car as well, with a one-off gas turbine Sports 800 being built for the 1979 Tokyo Motor Show.

Ford GTX1

Back in 1965 Ford was playing around with its successful GT40 formula to see what else could be done. And one of the things it tried was an aluminium chassis/targaroofed version called the X1. Raced by Bruce McLaren and driven by Chris Amon, the X1 was a testbed for improvements made by Kar Kraft, Shelby and McLaren to the GT40 and was never produced as a road-going version.

Until 2006, that was. Well, sort of. In 2005 Ford showed a targa-roofed version of the GT at the SEMA show which was so popular it entered into a partnership with the Genaddi Design Group for a limited run of 600 cars.

Renault Wind

The Renault Wind was a small twoseat targa-roofed sports car based on the Twingo and was essentially the last gasp from the French company’s run of blatantly weird cars that looked like they were designed by attacking several normal models with an axe (think the Spider, Avantime and Vel Satis).

Essentially a bulbous Honda CR-X del Sol 12 years too late, the Wind was entirely unremarkable, save for two things – its Ferrari 575M-style roof that flipped 180 degrees and its name, that gave British motoring journalists open slather to partake in their two favourite pastimes of making fun of a French car and bad fart jokes.