Summer Cars

It's the British summer. Yes, that's right: in between the hail, wind and rain, the sun might just, if you're very lucky, get his hat on.

So time is of the essence. You'd better get your convertible roof down quickly before the sun retreats behind the next cold front.

Which car should you buy to best take advantage of those short bursts of sunshine? And come to that, which car will fold its roof back up when the inevitable shower threatens to rain on your parade? Which new car has the fastest roof in the west?

All this talk of sun (hah!) is making us lazy, so we're restricting our list to electric folding roofs. If you choose a manual roof, you could do it even quicker: for example, Mazda reckons it's possible to fold an MX-5 manual soft-top in under six seconds if you practise hard.

We're only allowing current convertibles too. An honourable mention should go to the now-defunct Honda S2000, whose electric roof folded away in just six seconds (although you needed to unclasp it first, adding about another six seconds). There are plenty of soft-tops today that beat 12 seconds...