It's Only A Matter Of Time Until The New Porsche 911 Cabrio Drops Its Top

Rendering artists have already filled the gap

Porsche has revealed an all-new 911 at the LA Auto Show this week. But as significant as it is, it's only the beginning of what you can be sure will be a nearly endless stream of variants to follow. And not the least of them will be the new cabriolet.

Fortunately we don't have to wait for Zuffenhausen to open up its new sports car to get an idea of what it'll look like, because the rendering artists have already taken a crack or two at it, and we've rounded up for you a couple of the best renditions we've seen so far.

Provided for your viewing pleasure are these speculative renderings from the prolific X-Tomi Design (pictured in emerald green) and Nikita Aksyonov (in silver, from two angles). As you might expect, they look rather similar, but such are the basic parameters. We've already seen the coupe, after all, and numerous previous versions of the 911 Cabriolet. Put them together – not without some skill, mind you – and this is what you get.

Both artists chose to base their renderings on the new Carrera 4S, which for the time being will be the top model. But what a starting point it is.

Both the Carrera S and 4S pack a 3.0-liter twin-turbo boxer six producing 443 horsepower and 390 lb-ft of torque. The only major difference between them is the drivetrain: the former channeling its power to the rear wheels, the former using all four.

Of course, there will be more. Porsche offers the outgoing 911 Cabriolet in Carrera, S, 4, 4S, GTS, 4 GTS, Turbo, and Turbo S guises. Add to those the fixed-roof and Targa variants and you're looking at a staggering array of variants, before specials like the Carrera T, GT3, and GT2 enter the picture. Suffice it to say, we're in for a ride.

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2019 Acura RDX Prototype Drops In Detroit With A Pretty New Face

Does the CR-V’s recipe for success work in the luxury segment?

If there’s a vehicle that’s going to propel Acura into the passing lane where it'll experience the same stratospheric rise that Lexus has seen in recent years, it’s the RDX. The RDX is not mass-market Lexus NX fighter that’s needed to match Toyota’s success in the luxury playing field, but as the smallest crossover in the automaker’s lineup—and an aged one at that—it had the potential to redefine the brand if only Acura would bring it into the modern era.

Well, it's about to. To signify the direction Acura wants to take, it brought the 2019 RDX Prototype along to the 2018 Detroit auto show where its fresh face stood as the antithesis to arguments that Honda’s luxury brand can’t do bold like a spindle-grilled Lexus. As the first Acura designed from the ground-up around the brand’s newest mascot—a diamond pentagon grille—the RDX gains visual athleticism via a track that’s been widened by 1.2-inches, a wheelbase extended by 2.5-inches, and a shorter front overhang. LED exterior lighting allows pointed headlights to further sharpen the front end while the lower front fascia features a similar pattern as the grille.

That helps to add drama to the flowing muscular body before it all ends at the handsome rear end that invokes passing thoughts of the current Honda CR-V. Take a trip under the hood and you’ll find a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine mated to a 10-speed automatic transmission, which Acura claims is a segment first. Horsepower and torque figures remain undisclosed, but Acura does go ahead and reveal that the 2019 RDX has 40% more low-end torque than the crossover it replaces, all of which is routed to all four wheels through Acura’s torque-vectoring SH-AWD system.

A new rear differential helps handle that low-end turbo torque while the available four-mode Adaptive Damper System, which includes Comfort, Snow, Sport, and Sport + modes, enables the driver a greater degree of control over how RDX handles bumps and corners. Acura is taking advantage of that supple ride to introduce its new True Touchpad Interface, which attempts to allow drivers a greater degree of distraction-free control by integrating a remote interface that corresponds presses on its touch-sensitive surface to the equivalent location on the 10.2-inch touch screen. Technology, as one would expect, is omnipresent here.

Despite the space taken up by a panoramic roof, Acura managed to squeeze thin speakers into the ceiling of the RDX for a fuller audio experience. Should that prove to be too immersive for safe driving, Acura integrated its full suite of AcuraWatch driver aids. All five occupants can also enjoy the onboard WiFi system and travel in comfort with the knowledge that the RDX will be built in East Liberty, Ohio when it launches later this year.

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The 2019 Porsche 911 Cabriolet Drops Camouflage Revealing Track Upgrades

It could join the ranks of being one of the world’s few hybrid convertibles.

Earlier this week Porsche surprised us by letting one of its new 911 prototypes roam around in the snow without wearing any camouflage, much to the pleasure of our pesky prying spy photographers. Only thing is that there are three body styles of the 911, a coupe, cabrio, and targa, and the previous images only showed off the hard-top version of the sports car. Not so anymore as Porsche has just sent the second of those three models, the cabriolet, out into the wild for the same round of testing.

Like the coupe (and pretty much every other Porsche 911 ever), the new 911 looks almost identical to its predecessor. If it ain’t broke don't fix it right? Just like every Porsche before it, the changes made to this 911 are incremental, following Stuttgart’s tradition of a crawling slow-paced evolution. Different here is the hood, which creeps ever so close to the front bumper, kissing it without an impeding dividing section of front body panel. From what we can see, Porsche engineers really wanted to wring every ounce of track ability out of the chassis to make this 911 inexplicably better than the previous one. No manipulation of physics is made to accomplish this goal, though, just old fashioned tactics.

These include widening the car for more control in the corners and adding a massive active rear wing that runs the length of the rear end. New door handles complete the transition to the next 911 body while a larger rear apron houses four exhaust pipes, signifying that this cabriolet has the optional sport exhaust package. As with the coupe, the cabriolet could be one of the first 911s to get Porsche’s hybrid system which, as ironic as it seems, would continue the trend of having supercars like the Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta and Porsche 918 Spyder being some of the world’s only hybrid convertibles. The new 911 Cabriolet will hit the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2019 leaving, thanks to this naked mule, only its specifications as a mystery.

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