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Beautiful, Body and Soul
2005 Chrysler Crossfire Roadster

Beauty demands attention. It does so quietly. You see it, touch it, feel it, you want it.

Thus, it is not so much that beauty is its own excuse for being as it is that it needs none. It exists because we need it.

Consider the 2005 Chrysler Crossfire Roadster. It comes to us this spring in a market already filled with impressive drop-tops — the Audi TT, BMW Z4, Cadillac XLR, Ford Thunderbird, Nissan 350Z and Porsche Boxster.

You can argue that we don’t need another one. You’d be wrong — as wrong as saying we don’t need another day of sunshine, another lovely face, another love song.

What the Chrysler Group of DaimlerChrysler Corp. has done here is magical. It has taken the Mercedes-Benz SLK’s platform and given it a new body and soul. That transformation actually began a year ago with the introduction of the Crossfire coupe, a visually stunning two-door hardtop.

But something was missing from the coupe. The absence of that something bothered me in a tested pre-production model, but I couldn’t define it. I thought it was the general character of a pre-production vehicle, one released for evaluation before the regular retail-ready run.

Pre-production models often have glitches, such as the manual gearshift knob that came off in my hand in the hardtop coupe. I thought that was the problem — poor quality. But that assessment did not hold up. Everything else in the coupe was perfect.

It was not until I drove the Crossfire Roadster that I knew what was missing. Sex. Oh, shush! I’m not talking about Eros alone on his throne. I’m talking Eros with agape, the latter being the spirit of love that makes the physical meaningful, memorable.

The Crossfire Roadster has that spirit. It is clear that the car was designed by people who loved every second of what they were doing, who paid attention to detail, who made the right choices, such as forgoing the retractable hardtop used on the SLK in favor of the Crossfire Roadster’s triple-ply cloth top.

The SLK, by comparison, is Teutonic techno — more male, more gear-oriented, more unnecessarily complicated. The Crossfire Roadster is substantially more poetic. Its cloth top drops easily, nicely, within 22 seconds, into its boot. Twist the “D ring” on the headliner, push a button, and it’s done without the extensive mechanical ballet of a hardtop retraction, without interrupting the seductive lines of the Crossfire’s “boat tail” rear end.

Trunk space is lost when that top is lowered. It shrinks from an already tiny 6.5 cubic feet to 3.6. But beauty frequently eschews practicality. So, there are two seats in the Crossfire Roadster and coupe, just as there are two in the SLK. Roadsters, after all, are about romance in which “two” is the perfect number. Three or more yield a crowd.

Performance? It’s there. The Cros sfire Roadster retains the 3.2-liter, 18-valve, 215-horsepower V-6 used in the Mercedes-Benz SLK and the Crossfire coupe. But horsepower alone is misleading.

Feel is important. Torque is important. This car has lots of torque — 229 foot-pounds at 3,000 revolutions per minute.

The Chrysler Group’s marketers brag that their roadster has more torque than the Boxster, TT Roadster and the Z4. But, as often is the case with bragging, their boast is somewhat misleading. It all depends on which version of their rivals’ cars they are talking about.

The Chrysler marketing people should know better than to look at the wrong thing. Their car — with its distinctively grooved hood, seductive rear end and stunning interior — wins on looks alone. In this case, that truly is a good thing.

Nuts & Bolts

Downside: It’s more of a fear. Chrysler’s strategy is to sell the yet-to-be-officially-priced Crossfire Roadster at a price below that of its prim ry rivals — the Audi TT Quattro, BMW Z4 and Porsche Boxster. But the likelihood is that demand for the Crossfire Roadster will outstrip demand for the Crossfire coupe, which already beats the U.S. monthly sales of all Porsches put together. That means possibly high dealer premiums on the Crossfire Roadster.

Ride, acceleration and handling: Excellent in all three categories. It’s competitive with all rivals.

Head-turning quotient: The Crossfire Roadster is to the automotive industry what Halle Berry and Salma Hayek are to movies. Simply stunning!

Body style/layout: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, two-door two-seater with an automatically operated cloth-top roof.

Engine/transmissions: The Crossfire Roadster is equipped with a 3.2-liter, inline six-cylinder engine that develops 215 horsepower at 5,700 revolutions per minute and 229 foot-pounds of torque at 3,000 rpm. The engine can be linked to a six-speed manual or a five-speed automatic overdrive transmission.

Fuel capacity and type: Fuel capacity is 15.9 gallons. Premium unleaded gasoline required.

Mileage: In the manual transmission version, I averaged 26 miles per gallon in mostly highway driving.

Price: The 2005 Crossfire Roadster goes on sale this spring. Estimated pricing starts at about $35,000. Expect dealer premiums on this one.

Purse-strings note: You won’t find a prettier roadster in any price category. Considering the competition, that’s saying a lot.