Category: Convertibles 
Price Range: £31,260 to £41,050
Exceptional refinement roof up or down, ride quality, build integrity.
Huge weight blunts performance and driving enjoyment, disappointing looks.
A fine car and better than its immediate rivals, but still asks the owner to pay a considerable dynamic penalty for the pleasure of top-down motoring.
Just looking at the way the roof raises by flipping back the boot-lid, producing a stack of three roof panels, and sliding one forward, another back and leaving the third in place, is enough to give those worried about complex mechanical engineering an anxiety attack, especially when you consider this is BMW's first stab at a folding metal roof. But in fact there is almost certainly nothing to worry about. For a start BMW outsourced the engineering of the roof to an acknowledged expert, and the durability testing it would have been subject to means it would work on the moon.
The rest of the car is as impressively put together as you might expect. The cabin materials are second only to Audi in this class and the construction integrity of the whole is beyond serious criticism. Such is the structural rigidity of the car and the precision of the roof mechanism that at high speeds with the roof up you'd swear you were in a purpose-built coupe.
