Retracting hardtops are replacing the fabric roof to offer buttoned-up security and weather protection for top-down driving

A great drive in a great car stays with you forever, but a great drive in a classic roadster ruins you for any other automotive experience. Nothing else comes close to the physical sensations of an open car on the open road – the wind in your face, the scent of fresh-cut grass, the feel of perfectly responsive gearing, the subtle symphony of sounds generated by a finely engineered machine.

The very word roadster evokes memories of pre-war British beauties or nimble MGAs, elegant Jaguar XKEs and marvellous Morgans from the Fifties and Sixties. Italy and France gave us sleek Alfa Romeos, Ferraris and Bugattis. In the U.S., the luxurious Auburn and Duesenberg were the automobiles of the stars, princes of the road, magnificent status symbols that sacrificed performance fizz for glamorous glitz and paved the way for Chevrolet’s iconic Corvette and the timeless Ford Thunderbird.

But by the 1980s convertibles had gone completely out of fashion, not just passé but completely dead, a victim of increasingly restrictive government safety regulations.

Against this background, a saviour appeared in 1989 from an unexpected quarter. Japan, home of the sensible, fuel-efficient compact car, produced the Mazda Miata, an obvious – and totally successful – reworking of the legendary 1960s Lotus Elan. Almost single-handedly, the Miata kicked off a veritable roadster renaissance.

The engineering advances of the past few decades have been nothing short of astounding, with the result that today there’s a roadster for practically every personal style, budget and garage.

Almost 50 convertibles are listed for sale in Canada. Thirty-five models sport traditional soft fabric tops. Seventeen are typical twoseaters, a handful offer 2+2 seat layouts to accommodate occasional short-trip passengers, while 13 are full four-seaters ranging from Chrysler’s affordable PT Cruiser to Rolls-Royce’s outrageously expensive new Phantom Drophead Coupé.

But nowadays, the trend seems to be for retracting hardtops rather than a fabric roof. Why? Because they offer the allure of open-air motoring and the buttoned-up security and weather protection of a solid roof.

Fabric-roof convertibles are often compromised tools too. The extra weight and reduced structural stiffness they suffer compared with their fixed-roof siblings usually results in a car that is a bit less dynamic to drive. Chassis flex can be evident in hood shake going over bumps, not to mention assorted creaks, squeaks and groans elsewhere in the cabin. The push of a button now powers most soft tops up and down easily while multiple fabric layers have helped reduce road noise and improve weather protection.

But, where there is a high risk of car theft, the added security of a folding hard roof is a major selling point. Another benefit can be seen in the clean body shape achieved with the hardtop retracted from sight. Gone is the unsightly bulge ahead of the trunk lid, where the folded soft top often sits.

For automakers, the attraction is obvious. Retractable hardtops fly off the lots and command higher-than-average prices, which means bigger profits. It costs more to engineer and install a retractable roof, but the cars’ target buyers – women, especially – see it as a big advantage in safety and security.

While it didn’t pioneer the retractable lid (Ford sold the Skyliner for three years in the 1950s), Mercedes-Benz’s handsome little SLK roadster revived its usage in modern automobiles. It was soon followed by a similar treatment for the company’s bigger SL-Class roadsters and Lexus gave its SC430 coupe a retracting hardtop.

Today, you can choose from 11 hardtop convertibles, five of which are brand new entries for 2007.

Compact four-seaters are suddenly all the rage and three of the five 2007 newcomers – the BMW 328i/335i Cabriolet, Chrysler’s Sebring Convertible and the Volkswagen Eos – fit into that category.

The Chrysler Sebring Convertible is a complete redesign of its popular drop-top and has two claims to fame. First, it’s the only convertible in its segment that can hold two golf bags in the trunk when the top is down (top up, it can hold four).

Second, you can choose from three different fold-down roofs: vinyl, cloth and metal. All are power operated and reside under a hard tonneau when down. The tops feature automatic latching and unlatching, and key fob remote operation of the roof is optional. Up or down, the process takes 24 seconds with a soft top, 29 with the hardtop.

With the BMW 3 Series Cabriolet you get a choice of 328i and 335i model choices, both with a three-piece metal hardtop that can be powered down in 22 seconds. A 3.0-litre, 230 hp inline six-cylinder engine powers the less costly 328i version while a wonderful new 300 hp twin-turbo six motivates the 335i Cabrio. A six-speed manual transmission is standard with a paddle-shift six-speed auto optional. One benefit of the hardtop is better visibility with the roof up: compared to its fabric-top predecessor, there’s 30 per cent more glass area at the sides and 38 per cent at the rear.

In simple terms, you could call the new Volkswagen Eos a belated successor to the old VW Golf Cabriolet – though this is a much more sophisticated car. One thing that sets the Eos apart from other hardtop convertibles is a standard power glass sunroof.

That’s right: if you don’t want to drop the top the whole way (a process that takes 25 seconds) you can leave the tin top in place and slide back the sunroof. The only engine available is the same crisp and punchy 2.0-litre, 200 hp turbo unit as in the Golf GTI.

The Lexus SC430 and Volvo C70 round out the four-seat group.

If a 2+2 seat arrangement is your preference, the Pontiac G6 offers a snug tin top while the Porsche 911 Targa 4 offers open-sky motoring like the convertible and the stunning lines of the coupe. Two arches going from the windshield to the rear, maintaining the legendary 911 profile, replace the soft top. The normal glass rear window of the coupe sits behind, but a large, sliding glass roof occupies the space between. The glass roof can be retracted at all speeds in seven seconds, providing a spacious 4.8-square-foot opening. Not quite true to the retractable hardtop idea, but close enough for argument’s sake.

The last of the 2007 arrivals is a new twist on the Miata, now saddled with the rather less evocative MX-5 nameplate. You’d think after reworking the design from the ground up last year that the wizards of Hiroshima would have taken a well-earned rest. Apparently not. The poster car for “cheap and cheerful ragtop” gets all posh and sophisticated for ’07 with a new power retractable hardtop. This $2,195 option is available on any of the two-seater’s three trim levels. The top retracts under a hard tonneau cover and, incredibly, doesn’t steal any trunk space. Way cool. Also cool is the fact that the only other available two-seat hardtops are Cadillac’s XLR and XLR-V, plus the SLK and SL roadster series from Mercedes-Benz – all capable of making deeper inroads on the financial side.