BMW has made a lot of great convertibles of hardtop and soft-top varieties. Unfortunately the less you use them the more they tend to break. As the New York Tristate area is infamous for long and frigid winters these convertible tops go unused for over half of the year and that causes problems once summer comes and customers try to open their convertible tops. Mechanical components jam, electrical components short out and that leaves customers with inoperable convertibles. Once the summer driving season rolls around we get customers with broken convertible tops coming into our shop. These aren’t cheap, quick, or fun to repair. They are time consuming and very tedious to the point we turn down working on some of them as they take up too much time and resources to be cost effective for our business.

Like sunroofs and passenger side windows regulators the less you use these components the more likely they are to break. BMW convertibles are complex with many mechanical and electrical components which lie hidden behind the car’s interior and require a lot of panels and trims to be removed to access and diagnose. Then once everything is opened we can then forward to hours of diagrams to test each component individually to figure out what is causing the issue on our customer’s German automobile.

BMW hardtop convertibles tend to be more finicky as they must be precisely aligned to function and if out of alignment must be aligned with a laser to get them to operate properly again. Then if components need replacement the cost to repair increases significantly as there is no aftermarket for convertible components for BMW, Mercedes, Mini, Porsche, or Audi. All components must be ordered from their respective dealer and the prices are substantial.

Convertibles seem fun and cool. They bring to mind warm sunny days of driving with the top down with loved ones having lots of fun. Advertisers are great at creating those images. Unfortunately for the few weeks of summer we experience in New York and the astronomical potential repair cost owning a BMW convertible is great until something breaks and you have to fix them.