Apparently, somewhere in the country the other day, the sun came out. Which prompted a flurry of internet searches for paddling pools, baby oil, and beer.
But there was another search trending, too: convertible cars.
As long as soft-top cars have been the exception rather than the rule, this seasonal summer search has been a thing. Before, it would be thumbing through pages upon pages of Auto Trader or Exchange & Mart, or for the posh stuff, The Sunday Times. There would be phone calls, lots of questions and generally helpful salesmen (remember them?) who’d patiently answer every one of your questions as though they hadn’t already for 17 other callers earlier in the day.
Now, it’s Google we turn to, and according to its Trends site quite a lot of people aren’t just looking for a convertible – they want an ‘affordable’ one.
Plainly, they’re wrong. What you want from a convertible is class. Because what’s the point of skimping if a car like that doesn’t make you feel like a million dollars? And as time has gone to show, the most classy cabriolets came out of the 1990s.
This was a time when carmakers were still ruled by engineers, perfectionists who weren’t inclined to worry much about parts-sharing initiatives and had never heard of a cost-benefit analysis. They got what they wanted and so what if it hit the company’s bottom line – they knew the car would be better as a result and the customer would be happy.
That means I’m going to discount some of the usual soft-top suspects, for the simple reason they don’t pass the class test. If you arrived outside the swanky Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge in a Rover 200, a Peugeot 306, or a VW Golf MkIII, they’d respectfully ask you to move on – regardless of whether it has burr-walnut veneer trim, was designed by Pininfarina, or was built by Karmann.
One drop-top that scored a distinct advantage in terms of class standings was the Audi Cabriolet. I vividly remember pulling up at a traffic light in Knightsbridge in the ’90s and looking across at the dark blue Audi Cabriolet on my left, then doing a double-take: There was Princess Diana, adjusting her hair in the rearview mirror, driving her favourite car by far. She owned three during the first half of the decade, and that association sprinkled magic dust all over the staid German brand.
This was when the Royal Family still did ‘the right thing’ and drove cars made in Britain. Audi said that her endorsement – Diana personally bought the cars from Dovercourt Audi, in St. Johns Wood – led to an almost doubling of sales nationwide.
To this day, that royal endorsement lingers around the Audi Cabriolet like perfume in a car. It doesn’t speak of speed or any technical grandeur. But it will always attract admiration.
An equivalent-era BMW 325i is nicer to drive and throw about – thanks to that classic layout of a straight-six engine up front driving the rear wheels – but you have to ask yourself how often you’ll ever throw it about? And the quality is a little lacking, especially when you compare it with the other German four-seat soft-top from the time, the Mercedes E-Class.
Now, an A124 (as it’s known) lacks nothing in the quality department. In fact, it was positively over-engineered, one of the final products to emerge from Mercedes when it still lived by its mantra, “Engineered like no other car.” Pull at the door handle, feel the well-oiled weight as the door swings open, slide into the driver’s seat, and lower the beautifully insulated fabric roof, and you will instinctively picture a month-long roadtrip touring through France, Spain, or Italy, the boot steadily filling with cases of rosé, Rioja, or Barolo.
Handsomely understated, the E-Class cabriolet looks like the product of good breeding, a car that could hold its own parked at the races alongside a Bentley Azure, roof down, picnic out and champagne corks flying. And yet, today you can pick up a tidy six-cylinder E320 for £10,000.
There’s one more contender in the classy cabrio camp. And while it might seem less than obvious today, back in the ‘90s it was very much à la mode: Saab’s 900.
Somehow Saab kept the 900 in showrooms from 1979 until the mid 1990s, no mean feat when you consider that it was evolved from the 99, a car that was 10 years old by the time it left the road for good. But it had what modern cars even then increasingly lacked – character.
It appealed to free-thinking architects and banker’s wives in equal measure, both camps appreciating the 900 for the sort of intangible qualities you can’t put your finger on – like a nonconformist streak running through its Swedish blood.
With the roof down and the turbo on song – call me snooty, but when it comes to the 900, it has to be a turbo – you could better appreciate the offbeat thrum of the exhaust manifold and whine of the ever-fragile manual five-speed gearbox. Plus, somewhere in the background was the squeal of spinning rubber as the Pirelli P6 tyres did their best to deliver all 175 horsepower to the road.
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like the Audi, Mercedes, and Saab – desirable cars when the ink was still drying on their brochures – are becoming more alluring with age.
They were built at a time when engineering integrity was ingrained in the people who worked for the companies, rather than being just a buzzword on a Powerpoint presentation about corporate values.
So if you’re tempted to search for a convertible this summer, rest assured, these are the only ones to come with class as standard.
