Driving a convertible car is one of the joys of life, even in the UK
Editor Paul Barker laments the decline of the affordable convertible car
We Brits can be a bit of a strange bunch with our car choices. Just look at the number of small sports car firms that have come and gone over the years as an example of our love of an oddity and willingness to embrace something different, fun and slightly illogical.
For a country so obsessed with how bad the weather is, we have historically bought a frankly absurd number of convertibles. It peaked about 15 years ago, when a motor show wouldn’t pass without another regular car having the angle grinder taken to its roof to add a complex, folding hard-top system. The Ford Focus, Nissan Micra, Peugeot 206, Vauxhall Astra and Renault Mégane were all at it, along with others, and they really weren’t very good.
Roof-up, they were more refined and quiet – and certainly more secure – than a fabric-topped model that lived in constant fear of being slashed on a city street. But the extra weight and loss of rigidity did predictably bad things to the driving experience. And then there was the reliability, or lack of it…
Packaging a hefty metal folding roof didn’t do much for the styling either, with many of these so-called coupé-convertibles looking like you could land a helicopter on the rear deck. But drivers put up with it, because they liked the concept of being able to drop the roof when the sun made an appearance.
The metal-roof fad passed and fabric tops got better, with more lining to add refinement and security. But mainstream brands moved away, with cabrios becoming the domain of premium marques. Now, though, as our investigation into the decline of the convertible illustrates, even BMW and Audi have stopped building reasonably affordable drop-tops.
That’s a shame, because wind-in-the-hair motoring – on the right day and the right road – is among the purest pleasures you can have from behind the wheel, especially if the car is good dynamically. On a beautiful sunny day, it’s a real joy.
Which is why, when affordable convertibles are an endangered species, we should cherish the Mazda MX-5. A motoring oddity taken to the heart of a country that loves a motoring oddity, it’s a drop-top that no other brand has ever managed to compete with, and still bucks the trend to this day. Long may it continue.
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