As the sun begins to show and as 10-minute periods without rain come to seem not only possible but almost likely, the minds of drivers turn naturally to vehicles without roofs. In which little topless sporty number will you be testing the durability of your hairstyle this season?
Personally, I'd happily settle for wearing a Peugeot 206 Coupe Cabriolet, which is relatively fresh off the catwalks and guaranteed to generate an admiring buzz as beach- or party-wear, but which also won't let you down on the more formal occasions.
Admirably unfussy to look at, it's cute enough and sleek enough to make the MGF (a close rival for price) look like a big lump of partly compressed metal with silly holes in the side. That said, it's probably not as pretty as the Mazda MX5, which may also compete for your attention at this time of the year. And it's definitely not as pretty as the Fiat Barchetta - but that only comes in left-hand drive, which can make acceleration past farm vehicles on windy roads more than necessarily stressful. Yet what it holds over all its rivals is potentially the key advantage - namely, an automatically retracting roof.
Previously modelled by the Mercedes SLK (which is twice the price of the Peugeot), the automatically retracting roof is the device that definitively moves open-topped motoring from the realm of the specialist to the place where the hopelessly impractical and the terminally lazy can enjoy it to the full, too.
For too long, al fresco driving was achieved only at the cost of intimidating activity involving rolls of canvas and recalcitrant poppers, or strange grapplings with perspex bubbles and monkey wrenches.
By some way the longest 15 minutes of my life were spent in an entirely unforeseeable Old Testament downpour just south of Croydon, jacketless and trying to snap the top back onto a Caterham 7, while thick traffic slushed past, chortling and tooting in merriment. The car had filled with water to a depth of around seven inches by the time I completed the task. Driving it on to its destination, in the prone driving position which the Caterham demands, I had to kick with my legs just to remain afloat.
Here's what you do when the sun comes out and you want to take the top off your Peugeot 206. You press the button, located right where you can get to it quickly, behind the handbrake. Then you sit there, cultivating a look based on images you have seen of Timothy Dalton, while the windows come down and the boot opens and the roof rises gently above you before setting off for the rear of the car, where it smoothly stows itself in the trunk. Then the boot closes and a quiet beep lets you know that you are clear to drive off.
And when the storm vouchsafed to Noah (but not to you) hits near Croydon? You press the button again and the whole graceful business repeats, only backwards.
Has civilisation known a greater advance than this? Even the MX5's cleverly effort-reduced roof-removal routine (a couple of clips to unfasten and a casual toss of the canopy over the shoulders) cannot hold a candle to doing nothing whatsoever.
Of course, this ease of access to the air won't meet with universal approval. The drivers of sports cars these days can be generally distributed along a scale with, at one end, spanner-wielding engine enthusiasts with oil on their hands, and, at the other end, hairdressers. It's my hunch that the 206 CC will be appealing to those nearer the hairdresser end of the scale.
It offers much to disappoint the purist, after all. It's a front-wheel drive, for one thing. The engine is under the bonnet, rather than behind the driver and close enough to warm his ears, which is where the purist might prefer it. It thrums rather than roars. And, despite the willing shown in a couple of the stylings (the bare metal gear-knob and interior door handles) driving the Peugeot is nothing like sitting inside an aluminium flight case which, again, is the way the hardcore tend to like it.
What we are dealing with here is, in essence, the high quality, well- upholstered 206 hatchback with most of the sensible aspects (the space for shopping and passengers, but not the airbags and the CD player) removed. The seats might be nearer the ground, but this is still not a car for people who like to read the road with their buttocks. It is, however, enormous fun to sling around the place and could even be argued to offer family entertainment.
The two rear seats, hollowed out of virtually nothing, are so laughably unrealistic that Peugeot even offer, as an extra, an aluminium wind deflector that you can bury the back seats under, thus increasing the car's aerodynamic performance with the roof down. However, you can get some value out of the rear cabin area by wedging small children into it. They don't complain and, in any case, they can't move. Also, small children seem to think open-top motoring is, of itself, the most miraculous invention since ice cream. They may be right.
