Top-down motoring has not quite caught the fancy of India despite an overdose of Hollywood and California on our television sets since the 1980s. Blame it on the erratic weather and the fact that convertible coupes are only available in the luxury segment that keep buyers from experimenting beyond the staid hatchback, sedans or SUVs. In a tropical country with both heavy rainfall and heat, very few cities really offer the climate for a convertible. So you would be rather surprised when we tell you that we decided to test two German beauties, the Mercedes-Benz SLK AMG and the BMW Z4, right here in New Delhi. Given the variance in weather the capital is exposed to?it is either very cold or very hot?what works is that both cars come with an automatically retractable hard-top roof that make them a coupe at the touch of a button.
Mercedes-Benz SLK 55 AMG
Price: Rs 1.3 crore
This is clearly the more powerful of the two cars. The AMG badge puts it at a breed above the rest and makes it quite an attention-seeker on the road as well. The hand-assembled 421-bhp, 5.5-litre V8 engine has a deep growl that one can hear from quite some distance away, and is 115 bhp more powerful than the plain-Jane SLK. Wide tracks, 18-inch tyres and length of over 4 metres make it a great handler on roads, and it often left me itching to do a power slide. Quick shifts from the 7-speed auto box helps the SLK AMG sprint from 0 to 100 kmph in just 4.6 seconds, all the way to a top speed of 250 kmph.
The design lines are straight and sharp, with plenty of LEDs adorning the front and back. Incidentally, I have driven the previous gen E-Class Cabriolet, so the interiors seemed pretty much the same standard Mercedes, with a few extras.
Nice touches like the IWC analogue clock, plush leather seats and good legroom made this a perfect coupe/convertible for me, though the boot with the folded roof inside was largely unusable. There are many spots you would find an AMG badge on, like on the carbon fibre trim, performance steering wheel and door sill. The SLK 55 AMG roadster also features a Harman Kardon surround sound music system clubbed with ambient lighting in the cockpit.
The only thing of note was that the auto-retractable hard roof could not be operated at speeds above around 10 kmph?I assume that is a safety feature the boys at Stuttgart came up with, but it severely limited my ability to show off to the ladies while driving!
BMW Z4 sDrive 35i
Price: Rs 70 lakh
It gets a thinner track and a much lower price than its rival in our story, but it does not mean any less fun though. The Z4 is what a roadster is all about. What you will notice right up first is the huge hood, which accounts for almost half the car’s length, and the curvy lines that feel more Italian than German. From some angles, like the front with its engine hood bulge, big wheel arches and the toothy grin of the BMW signature grill, the Z4 will remind you of the Batmobile. The BMW Z4 also gets the staple corona head lights, combined with the LED accent lights.
The 3-litre twin-turbo 306-bhp petrol heart also has enough grunt, is loud and the best part is that the super-quick 7-speed transmission helps it rev up very smoothly up to the red line. While the Z4 did not quite give me confidence to go crazy like the SLK, it is more about pure play adrenaline rush bordering on being scary?something I like about most BMW cars. Power is sharply lower than the SLK AMG, but with lower weight, the Z4 takes just half a second more for a 0-100 kmph run (5.1 seconds). Top speed remains the same at 250 kmph. On the inside, the BMW iDrive sports an 8.8-inch high-resolution full-colour central information display, with connectivity through Bluetooth and USB devices.