2018 Nissan Leaf gets a one-off convertible variant

5 years, 10 months ago - 30 May 2018, Autoblog
2018 Nissan Leaf gets a one-off convertible variant
You won't see this at dealers anytime soon

Your eyes are not deceiving you, that is indeed a real, honest-to-goodness Nissan Leaf convertible. Nissan built it to celebrate having sold 100,000 Leafs (Leaves? A tree? What exactly is the proper plural of the Nissan Leaf?) in Japan. We're almost surprised it took this long to sell 100,000 examples of the Leaf in Japan, since the U.S. hit that mark a couple of years ago. The Leaf has enjoyed more than 320,000 sales worldwide.

 We digress, though. The fascinating thing here is the open-air Leaf itself. Nissan didn't provide much information on it. It's called the Leaf Open Car,  which is apt. We also see that it has lost its rear doors in the convertible conversion process. There still appear to be rear seats, though. It looks like the whole rear hatch is intact, as well, since it's attached to a piece of roof that was retained. Nissan didn't say whether there's a removable top for it, but we're leaning toward no, since this is mainly a show car, and calling it "Open Car" and not convertible seems to indicate this does not have a closed setting.

One thing Nissan did make clear is that this is not going to be a production model. So you won't be seeing one at your local Nissan dealer anytime soon. But we suppose that if you really, really wanted a convertible Leaf, there are alternatives. For instance, there's that company that turned an F-150 into a convertible. We're sure they wouldn't have any qualms about cutting into whatever car you brought to their door.

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