What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

The topless tease luring men to ridicule ^{VW Golf Cabriolet GT}

You may dream of driving a convertible car through the mountains of southern France on a beautiful summer’s day. But, having done this sort of thing on many occasions, I’m able to tell you that you will arrive at your destination with a comically red nose and a shirt that appears to have spent the past few months at the bottom of a stagnant pond.

As a general rule, you should not drive a convertible with the roof down when it is more than 70 degrees. But here’s the problem. If you try to drive a convertible when it’s less than 70 degrees, pretty soon you will notice that your fingers have frostnip, that your nose has fallen off and that you are in the advanced stages of acute hypothermia.

It’s not just the temperature that causes problems, either. It’s also the wind. Wind is the most debilitating of all climatic phenomena. I have experienced extreme cold at the North Pole, and, while it’s extremely unpleasant, the human frame can cope. It’s the same story with extreme heat. I once interviewed a man, in December, in the Australian outback, and at no point did I feel I was suffering from the onset of madness. I’ve also been drenched without problem. But wind is different. In one hour at our holiday cottage on a peninsula on the Isle of Man in March, I became a drooling vegetable, incapable of rational thought.

Wind is like a barking dog, or an early-morning Italian strimmer. It’s inconsistent. There’s no regularity or predictability. The noise goes away but never for very long, and you never know when it will be back. I don’t know why the CIA uses waterboarding to extract information from suspects; just put them on a boat in the Irish Sea for ten minutes and they’ll tell you anything you want to know.

Wind also messes up a girl’s hair. This is a fact. Every girl I know loves the idea of driving with the roof down, but after just a few moments every single one wants to put it up again.

Even if you are impervious to heat, cold and the constant pounding from Uncle Hurricane, you still have the problem of embarrassment. This is very real. You may think, as you cruise about in your convertible, that you look good. But unless you are Angelina Jolie or Pierce Brosnan, which you are not, I can assure you that actually you look a tool.

What message are you giving out? That you are carefree? That you are young at heart? That you are available? But you aren’t. You’re middle aged and a bit pathetic. Driving with the roof down when you are paunchy and balding is like having a sign on your desk that says, ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here…’ There is a rule we devised on Top Gear. Once you are past the age of twenty-seven, you can drive alfresco only when it is safe to drive naked. In other words, when no one is looking. Because if people are looking, they will laugh at you.

To sum up, then, driving a convertible is uncomfortable and will cause other road users to think that you are a prat with manhood issues. And yet, despite this, we buy more convertibles in Britain than any other country in Europe. And we are certainly the only country where you will find people going to work dressed as Scott of the Antarctic simply so they can get the roof down. We are all mad.

Perhaps this is why Volkswagen is now offering two versions of the Golf convertible. There’s the Eos, which is a Golf with a folding metal roof, and the Golf, which is a Golf with a folding canvas roof. I’ve always rather liked the Eos, but I will concede that it is quite expensive. The new Golf is not: £25,000 for the GT version I drove is really not bad at all. And the diesels cost considerably less.

The roof on the new car is a triumph. Even though it’s the size of a family tent from Millets, it can be raised or lowered in less than ten seconds. And, what’s more, even if the lights turn green before the manoeuvre is completed, you needn’t worry. Because it all still works provided you keep your speed below a precise and Germanic 18 mph.

When it’s up, the refinement is genuinely astonishing.

You can drive at motorway speeds and there is absolutely no sense at all that you’re separated from the slipstream by only a pac-a-mac. And things are similarly amazing when you fold it away. Gone is the hysterical, hair-whipping madness you endured in the original Golf cabrio. Provided you use a sturdy hairspray, you have no worries at all.

Another thing that’s gone from the original is the rather awkward-looking roll-over hoop. That car was built by Karmann, but you would have been forgiven for thinking that actually it had been constructed by Silver Cross. The new car, built by VW itself, also has a roll-over hoop, but it’s hidden away and will burst forth only if it thinks you’re about to turn the car over.

Sadly, however, there’s something else that has gone missing: any sense of joie de vivre. Those early Golf drop-tops were joyously raucous and wonderful, with their peppy 1588 cc injected engines. The car I drove may have been badged as a GT and it may have developed 158 horsepower – nearly 50 more than the original – but it’s not what you’d call peppy.

It’s an interesting engine. Although it’s small – just 1.4 litres – it is fitted with a supercharger, which you don’t notice, and a turbocharger, which you do. On a motorway, if you caress the throttle pedal, you feel it working, girding its loins, preparing extra boost for when you stop the foreplay and dive right on in.

However, when you do dive in, it pulls up its knickers and won’t deliver. I suppose the fact is that the Golf cabrio is a heavy car and a 1.4-litre engine simply can’t deliver enough oomph to make you nod appreciatively.

That said, it’s refined and economical, and the moderate power sort of suits the comfy ride. This is a car for cruising rather than blasting about.

The interior? Well, although the boot’s quite small, the car’s fairly spacious. However, like all Golfs, it’s a bit like the inside of Eeyore’s head. Gloomy and dark. You even have to pay £130 extra for what VW calls the ‘luxury pack’. Although, as far as I can see, all this does is give you fancy door mirrors.

There is one stupid thing. The radio tells you what song you are listening to at any given moment, which is a nice touch, but it relays the message by scrolling huge flashing letters across the screen. It’s as if you’re sitting in Times Square.

It’s actually quite easy to sum this car up, though. In the olden days the Volkswagen Golf was a fun, lively little thing, and the original cabrio was an extension of that. Today the Golf is a byword for common sense and dour practicality. And the new soft-top is a reflection of that.

I can’t see the point, frankly. If you want a convertible, you want something that’s a bit daft. And this new car… just isn’t.