VW's T-Cross Breeze Is The Drop-Top Crossover No One Saw Coming

This is the Volkswagen T-Cross Breeze, a pint-sized convertible SUV shown at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. It'sbased on thePolo, a tinier version of the Golf not sold stateside. The world isn't exactly begging for another convertible SUV, so we're a bit confused by this. We don't really understand why automakers keep creating convertible SUVs. Have the people working at these companies learned nothing from the spectacular failure that was the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet?

In terms of convertible SUVs currently on the market it's the Range Rover Evoque and nothing else. (Maybe there's a reason for that?) Of course this is a Volkswagen and as such it would only compete with the drop-top Evoque in a literal sense, both being convertible crossovers. The 2016 Evoque Convertiblestarts at$50,000. This might come in at around half of that. All sales speculation aside, what we do know is that under the hood lives a 1.0-liter inline-three that makes 109 horsepower and 129 lb-ft of torque. It's mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission with power sent to the front wheels. Volkswagen says it should go about 497 miles on a full tank which should help take the sting out of its 10.3-second run to 60 mph.