[SkyMan 08]

I was surfing and found th eOpel website in Germany, They will have a version of the Kappa it looks like called the Tigra.. And it has a folding hardtop... take a look at this, and let the General now we want one on the Sky!
http://www.opel.de/shop/cars/tigra/index.act

 

[swatthefly]

i could be wrong, but i think the tigra wasnt the one on the kappa platform. i think that was a different one. i am pretty sure the folding hardtop idea wont work for the sky based on three reasons: first, price... it would be much more expensive to do it that way. second, space... the trunk barely fits the soft top, and the hard one wouldnt be as flexable. and third, buttresses... how would they get folded in?

 

[Dante]

Oh, wow, that's cool! I love the ads they have on the site there. I laughed my butt off at them. Too bad GM/Saturn couldn't get away with ads like that here in the states, maybe they'd sell more ads if they did.

I don't really like the rear end on the the Tigra so much, it's too high, the car looks kinda squatty, but yeah, you can definitely see the relation to the Sky/Sol. That power retracting hard top kicks ass. I realized that the rear end on the Tigra is a bit taller than the Sky/Sol, but that's probably so they could fit that big bulky hood in there. I imagine having a higher trunk lid would give you a lot more storage room too. My guess is they have at least 5 cu. ft (on par with the Miata now!) or better when the roof is up. Very cool man, thanks for the link!

 

[brentil]

The Tigra is in no way related to teh Kappa platform. The car is smaller and is also FWD. The Kappa platform is RWD only. The reason this type of roof is possible is also due to the fact that the TIgra is FWD. If you look at any of the trunk pics you'll figure out real quick why it can't be done on this version of the Kappa cars. The Kappa has a RWD layout, therefore it has a rear differential and a drive shaft powering that differential. Due to this drive shaft and differential being there the fuel tank is raised up behind the seats. It pretty much makes it impossible for the Tigra style roof to be on a Kappa car.

 

[SkyMan 08]

The Tigra is in no way related to teh Kappa platform. The car is smaller and is also FWD. The Kappa platform is RWD only. The reason this type of roof is possible is also due to the fact that the TIgra is FWD. If you look at any of the trunk pics you'll figure out real quick why it can't be done on this version of the Kappa cars. The Kappa has a RWD layout, therefore it has a rear differential and a drive shaft powering that differential. Due to this drive shaft and differential being there the fuel tank is raised up behind the seats. It pretty much makes it impossible for the Tigra style roof to be on a Kappa car.

Ok i can;t read german, so i know it looked alot like one of the Kappa cars, It is hard to tell just from the pictures, I guess i Boo Booed again... but i still like the car and the top idea...

 

[brentil]

If you go to www.opel.com it's in English. Here's the English Tigra flash site;
http://www.europe.opel.com/brand_sites/tigra/happiness_site/main.html

 

[achieftain]

The Tigra is also sporting somewhere in the neighborhood of anywhere from 90 to 120 hp, not what you would call a speed demon.

 

[SkyMan 08]

If you go to www.opel.com it's in English. Here's the English Tigra flash site;
http://www.europe.opel.com/brand_sites/tigra/happiness_site/main.html

Thanks, I see that now, but you have to admit it is a cool design....

 

[swatthefly]

Thanks, I see that now, but you have to admit it is a cool design....

any hardtop vert is! maybe someday in the future ill have one, but for now, ill be just as happy with cloth.

 

[t.henss]

As I'm from Germany, I can maybe help.

The Tigra "Twin Top" is in NO WAY related to the Kappa-Series.

The Tigra is based on the current Opel "Corsa" which is a really small car even for us Europeans. (Same class as VW Polo, Ford Fiesta, Peugeot 206, ...)

The Tigra was launched by Opel to compete with the best-seller Peugeot 206 CC. I don't know if this car is offered in the US. It (the Peugeot) has also a folding hardtop and was the second car with that feature on the world-market after the first generation Mercedes SLK roadster. (Ignoring this one Peugeot oldtimer whose name I've forgotten.)

The Peugeot has 4 seats but you can forget the two in the rear. No one older than 10 years will fit. The Tigra has only 2 seats.

Both cars are FWD and have LOTS of trunk space. The Tigra has 250 L trunk space with the top down and 440 L with the top up (8.83/15.54 cu. ft)!
An additional storage area behind the passenger seats provides another 70 L (2.47 cu. ft). So all together the Tigra can carry ~ 510 L or 18 cu. ft.

As was already pointed out, the construction of a foldable hardtop puts strong constraints to car design.

I don't know a single convertible of that type that doesn't have the "big ass" problem, as we call it. It is quite obvious that this problem is bigger, the shorter the car is. I think that the rear of the Mercedes SLK is very nice but I have to agree that both Tigra and 206 CC look very strange from behind.

Besides the technical reasons that prevent the Kappa roadsters to be equipped with a foldable hardtop there are others. Pontiac has a new harttop-convertible and Opel is presenting the Astra Twin Top at this years IAA in September.

At least for Opel there'll be no reason for that feature because they will then have three convertibles, two of them being quite practical with huge trunk space and foldable tops and the Opel-Kappa with a traditional cloth-top (and a trunk space that is a bad engineers joke).

 

[brentil]

Yeah, the Tigra almost has more storage/trunk space then passenger space.

 

[airbalancer]

Here is a cool site about retractable hardtops http://retractable.free.fr/