OEM 356 Hardtop--A real Ruetter

I think that the general consensus is that original 356 hard tops won't fit a replica 356 unless they are modified quite a bit.

You could order your 356 cabrio back then with only a hardtop , or a folding top only or both.

the problem with these hard tops is that you have to remove the complete folding top to install the hardtop ,

Still neat to have if you have the room to store it , and live in a part of the country that has wet winter and you drive your car a lot.

That's definitely a Cabriolet top, and won't work on a Speedster or Roadster.

Hmmm. With Carey and Greg’s backlog of builds, I wonder if a guy could buy that, make a mold, and make it worth his while to supply SE and Vintage with hard tops.

But then I’m a hard top kind of guy. One of the reasons I’m interested in an SL to replace my 968. Also why a hardtop is in the top 5 considerations in Boxster shopping.

Then again, I’m probably in a minority. There’s probably a reason Porsche offered so few factory hard tops over the years.

If only I was a younger man. And liked itching 24/7 from working with fiberglass.

Fellow SOCer near me (NW FL) has this one that he originally got from DrClock.  He said he was going to add rain gutters and add rear window - but that was ages ago.  Other than the younger man part (and FL heat) I'd be on making a mold from it and splashing a dozen tops - leaving rear legs a bit longer to compensate for different cars.  Here it is sitting on my CMC way back.  I thought it fit pretty good.

That looks really good Wolfgang. And it confirms my suspicion that a silver top would look good on a midnight blue Boxster. (There’s two silver ones in junkyards. No other colors currently.)

@dlearl476 posted:

That looks really good Wolfgang. And it confirms my suspicion that a silver top would look good on a midnight blue Boxster. (There’s two silver ones in junkyards. No other colors currently.)

ps: There’s probably plenty of boat places down there that would be happy to do the itchy part for you.

I wonder if the guy building kits in MX would be interested. Like you say, you could adapt the mold to work with any of the bodies AFAIK.

The point I think is if you have a Roadster that top could be used to get a mold and fit a  roadster or cabriolet.  I like the extra window on it which is not like IM does it's roadster tops.  @chines1  Maybe Carey is interested it certainly gets you cloxe to the Emory/Oates car that Phil was talking about.  Just saying.

I recently acquired a 59 D hardtop mold.  It's a pretty rough mold but would allow me to make a proper fitting hardtop and then make proper molds should I chose to.  I also have a few Speedster hardtops in one of my storage buildings that I started playing with years ago and never finished.  We just don't get asked about hardtops often.  Maybe 1 a year...  My distributor in Australia fits hardtops to all of his cars,  but each one is hand modified, regardless of how goods his tops start off as, and he tells me that he winds up $5-6k per top after all the fussing around.  

That was Henry’s comments to me when I was ordering my car everyone of them needs to be fitted and it just IS time consuming to fit to every car in the end it just seemed to me a better choice to drop the hardtop but If you were in an area with a longer driving season it would make sense but then the demand is low may stay low … is it due to unavailability?

The methodology to remove the soft top and install the hardtop has to be easy to do as well.  

I often wish now that I had ordered it but IM is no longer on the other hand it might have been a garage ornament