victorian Pharmacy - Royal Pharmaceutical Society

t r a n s p o r t c o n v e r t i b l e s
Fully
converted
Britons are the most enthusiastic drop-top drivers in
the world. Matt Guarente gets out his sunglasses and
checks out some of the best on the market…
1Fiat 500
Open
There are a lot of small,
cute, practical cars for
sun-worshippers out
there but with a 500
all you need is a pair of
sunglasses and a bit of
attitude and you can
pretend you’re the star
of a Fellini classic. The
soft top of the open here
just pulls back, rather like
the deckchair-fabric roofs
of the old 2CVs, but we
assure you this version
is better engineered. In
fact it’s a tech-heavy car,
Stop&Start is standard
and helps keep emissions
low, there’s Bluetooth
connectivity, and MP3
inputs on the stereo.
Che bellissima!
From £11,700
1
IT’S a common summer motoring sight. As
the rain begins to get serious, you can spot
them under flyover bridges, pulled up and
with their roofs slowly closing up, like a huge
and slow-moving bivalve rearranging its shell.
It’s odd that, for a country with such
unpredictable weather, we should love our
convertible cars so much. We buy three times
as many convertibles as do French or Italian
motorists, and only Germans – who suffer
equally from the cold and wet – buy more
among European markets.
But it’s precisely because the sun is scarce
that we do. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out
in the midday sun because we cram in as much
time in the good weather as possible. It’s the
same with conservatories and sun-decks and
verandahs: When the sun does come out, we
want to be able to enjoy it.
The good news for motorists is that old
drawbacks of a soft-top – leaks, wind noise,
vandalism and opportunity to theft – have been
put to one side by the new generation of hardtop
convertible cabriolets and coupes kicked
off by the Peugeot 206 CC. For the first time,
steel folding roofs were installed on (relatively)
inexpensive base models – even if they were
based on technology from the 1930s.
The folding mechanism and the stowed roof
itself is normally housed in the boot, which
might compromise the available space, and you
need to take a look at this before buying.
There are a lot of quite dull but worthy
convertibles out there – such as VW’s Eos
– which win awards but probably very few
hearts. One of the most interesting cars,
Citroen’s C3 Pluriel, is now superseded by
a very dull replacement and Renault’s sexy
Megane Coupe looks similarly pedestrian in the
drop-top version.
The five models we list here look as good
with their tops up as down – not something
you can say about many convertibles – and
we tried to look at some fun alternatives.
Finally, if you are buying second hand, online
dealer Carsite.co.uk has researched the relative
prices of convertibles; the worst time to buy is
September, when prices can be as much as 20%
higher than they are in early spring.
Æ
52 Pharmacy Professional | July/August 2010
July/August 2010 | Pharmacy Professional
53