The best convertibles you can buy

Welcome to Top Gear magazine's round up of The Best Cars In The World. That might seem a trite observation, but after much deliberation, haranguing and three bouts of raised voices, the vehicles represent the cars that TG magazine would happily recommend to family and best friends, without reservation.

Any of these cars - within their brief - are the best at what they do. They are the TG benchmarks, the class leaders.

There are three loose price points to scale our ambition: an attainable version, an aspiration and a dream.

So, allow us to guide you through the cars you should consider before all else. Today, it's the turn of the convertibles...

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"Everything that can be invented has been invented." So stated, according to popular legend, Charles Holland Duell, commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1898 to 1901.

In fact, Charles Holland Duell said nothing of the sort, because he was a) the boss of the US patents office and b) not an idiot. Even so, the history of technological progress is littered with examples of confidently held opinions that, with the benefit of hindsight, sound a trifle daft. In 1909, the scholarly periodical Scientific American declared that "the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development".

Away from cars, in 1939, the New York Times boldly stated: "Television will never be a serious competitor for radio, because people must sit and keep their eyes glued to the screen." Got any stock market tips, chaps?

Pictures: Lee Brimble

This feature was originally published in the September 2014 issue of Top Gear magazine

We may snort at these silly, backwards souls of yore, at their closed-mindedness at the inexorable advances in science. But you, TopGear reader, are shortly to become one of the same, a Luddite refusing to acknowledge the relentless march of technology, a fuddy-duddy to be mocked by future generations.

Because you have, have you not, glanced at the three convertibles on these pages and thought, "Sure, perfectly nice, but they're a bit... hairdresser, aren't they? I, because I am an Enthusiastic Driver who believes ardently in the art of heel-and-toeing, and the clipping of apices, will have myself a proper coupe-slash-hatchback instead. Now pass me those dumb-bells, it's time for a few reps."

Yes, it's true that, once upon a time, convertibles were floppy, hideously compromised atrocities of engineering that, at the first sight of a corner, twisted their chassis into a neat bow-tie before depositing you into a field with a rear brake light wedged into your armpit. But no more. Technology has moved on.

Cars have become less bendy. Like it or lump it, modern convertibles offer - with a few exceptions - everything that yer run-of-the-mill coupes and hatches can do, but with the added bonus that (and you guessed this bit, didn't you?) you can drop their roofs should the mood take you. They're not a compromise. They're two for the price of one. A bargain.

If you're now snorting dismissively into your protein shake, you're only digging your own grave, Neanderthal. Today, the question shouldn't be, "Why would you buy a convertible?" The question should be, "Why wouldn't you?"

Case in point: the Fiat 500C, a convertible so stealthy that, roof-up, many might fail to notice it isn't a standard hatch. Drop its top, and the 500's roof rails remain in place, the fabric centre section ruching back towards the bootlid like a curtain. It's an arrangement mimicked by the Citroen DS3 cabrio, one that means no significant loss of structural integrity or manliness.

In fact, it's actually more manly than the 500 hatch, because, roof back, you can stand up in the driver's seat, and bumble down the road with your head craned over the top of the windscreen, like a tank commander staring down the barrel of a rifle-gun at the battlefield ahead. With the minor difference that, instead of being strafed by enemy gunfire, the artillery barrage comes from airborne insects. And nothing says "Grrr, I'm manly, me" like a wasp in the nostril.

Disadvantages against the 500 hatch? I'm stumped. You get no less bootspace, no less handling fizz, and a little more of the cheery putter from the TwinAir two-cylinder. True, with the roof in its fully retracted position, rear visibility is broadly nonexistent. But, hey, who needs to see what's behind, anyhow? Don't live in the past.

And, OK, the 500C isn't the most testosterone-pumped of motors. But neither, be honest, is the 500 hatch. If you've decided you need a bug-eyed Italian city car in your life, you've already checked in your chest-hair at the door, whether you go hatch or cabrio.

Because you're not a fair-trade Notting Hill cupcake merchant, maybe you'd prefer the manly, rorty BMW 435i, and its manly, rorty straight-six engine and rear-wheel drive. This engine, with the standard six-speed manual gearbox, is one of the great drivetrains on the planet, a drivetrain made just a little greater by removing the metal barrier between driver and the aural goodness of that delicious 3.0-litre twin-turbo six.

Even so, I will concede that, of this trio of fine convertibles, the BMW is the most difficult to justify as a cabrio without compromise. Because the 4-Series boasts a folding hard-top rather than fabric roof, there is, admittedly, one small compromise to be made: bootspace.

At least it doesn't boast the swollen-arse profile of hard-top cabs from a few years back, but with the roof retracted, the 4's trunk could reasonably be described as boutique. There are, however, plenty of narrow apertures between the roof's lid layers, ideal for filing letters and tax returns and so forth.

But, that said, this is a 4-Series. You don't buy a 4-Series because you want to ferry two adults, a pair of children and all their respective accoutrements to the south of France. That's what the 3-Series estate, and Gran Turismo, and X3, and X4 are for.

You buy a 4-Series to transport two people and occasionally a bit of other stuff (luggage, kids, whatever), and on that score the 4 cab is barely less practical than the 4 coupe. And besides, at least with the roof lowered, those rear-seat passengers will have plenty of headroom.

Less precise, more cumbersome than the 435i hard-top? Maybe microscopically. But not much: BMW says the 4-Series cab is 80 per cent stiffer than the old 3-Series convertible. And to get too angsty about a few microns of difference in the handling department seems, I fear, to misunderstand what a 4-Series, or indeed any other modern saloon-coupe-convertible-thing, will actually be used for.

I'm well aware that TopGear has built an empire on sexy powersliding photos and devising countless synonyms for "flailing oversteer", but really, even a 302bhp rear-driver like the 435i just isn't ever, in the real world, going to do that, is it?

In the real world, the 435i - fast and potentially slidey though it is - and its ilk will spend its life piling up and down motorways and dual carriageways, loitering outside offices and supermarkets and schools and, every once in a while, cutting loose down a nice bit of B-road.

And for that task, the 4-Series cab is all but as proficient as the coupe. And when it's sunny - and, even in the UK, you're still more likely to encounter a sunny day than to encounter an empty racetrack and a large stack of free tyres - you can set the roof on its origami course into the boot and revel in the unencumbered, manure-scented freedom of the British countryside.

Because driving, for those of us who aren't F1 pilots, is less about absolute, empirical excellence than it is about sensation. And a convertible - much as you might baulk at its tanning parlour undertones - gives you more sensory input than a coupe or hatch ever can: more noise, more whoosh, more smell. A good drive is as much about hooking you into the landscape as it is about hooking you into the innermost workings of your car's suspension. An experience, not a calculation.

And so, the Bentley Continental GTC V8S, an experience as magnificent as any that exists in motoring. The Conti is a grand, daft, glorious event of a car, and in cabrio form it's just the little bit grander, dafter and gloriouser. If you're buying a 16-foot, 2.4-tonne, chrome-laden Bentley, why wouldn't you have the convertible?

Honestly, if you're the sort of person who can differentiate the handling of a Continental coupe and Continental cabrio on normal roads, you're not the sort of person with whom I want a lift to the pub. Were you to thrash your Conti around Spa, you'd discover the soft-top was slightly less precise than the coupe in the corners, but exactly zero people have ever thrashed their Conti around Spa.

What are you losing by going cabrio? Whispery, roof-up refinement? Not a bit of it. True, not so long ago, there was no quicker way to ruin the serenity of a posh, hermetically sealed GT than by fitting it with a canvas lid, expensively engineered in-cabin silence replaced by the scream of wind penetrating every nook and cranny. No longer

At motorway speeds, roof-up, nary a decibel of the nasty outside world permeates the Conti's cabin. And, when you do want noise, allow the Bentley's roof its several minutes of stately descent and then bathe in the delicious Saving Private Ryan salvo of the big, blown V8. Why would you protect yourself from a sound so violently sweet?

If you're still worried a convertible diminishes your manliness, it's time to get with the programme. This is the second decade of the 21st century. Being manly - whether you're a man or a woman - no longer means stabbing salmon to death with pointy sticks and cultivating a devastating roster of back hair. Manliness has embraced moisturising, and not smelling like you've been entombed in a wheelie-bin overnight.

To cling to the notion a convertible is somehow more effete, more tiara-and-sequin-stiletto than a coupe or hatch, is to remain trapped somewhere in the mid-Nineties, wearing a Global Hypercolor T-shirt and waving a glo-stick. Times have changed. The automobile has not reached the limit of its development. Everything that can be invented has not been invented. Charles Holland Duell could've told you that.