Quote:
Emperor said:
The difference is that the F50 and CGT are roadsters rather than convertible and didn't have their structural rigidity reinforced resulting in added weight. With that being said close to zero of the CGT's performance is compromised because of the targa top.The supposed 430 Scuderia will be noticeably compromised as a performance car if turned into a convertible. Performance will be noticeably inferior to the coupe.



Any car which has an open top, especially a high performance one - be it targa or convertible - requires significant strengthening work. Both the F50 and CGT would have been lighter had they been engineered as fixed head cars. Interesting that you "surmise" performance will be compromised when none of us are aware exactly what steps Ferrari would take to strengthen the bodyshell of a spider version. A lot of the strengthening of the shell which involves steel in the standard spider could be replaced with carbon fibre in a Scuderia version for example. Ferrari's own stats for the F430 spider show that it is 0.1 sec slower from 0-62mph and only 3mph down on top speed. I really wonder if you could notice 0.1 of a second difference Most Scuderia's will never get anywhere near a track in any case and in on road driving a 10th of a second is hardly a huge performance gap.