I have had immense pleasure with cabriolets right through my formative years. There was a rumble seat Ford Model B coupe which gave me the first experience of wind-in-my-hair motoring. A classic second world war surplus Ford-built Jeep was the next and then there was the big daddy Ford Custom, a large four-seater which looked the part even though its underpinnings and the mechanicals were pretty ordinary.

What really turned on the fascination for open-topped cars was seeing the action movies from Hollywood in the 1960s where the large open-topped, multi-finned Caddies and Chevys and Mercurys and Fords vie with each other to capture the public eye. And when we used to see these same cars running on the inside track of the RWITC race course during the horse racing season at Pune's famed race course, the memories just kept being etched in the mindscape.
Contrary to what many might believe, cabriolets or convertibles are not a modern day automotive innovation for India. In fact the Standard Herald was available to the general public in open-topped form and even the hard top versions could easily be given the surgical treatment for the wind-in-the-hair motoring sensation.

Mercedes-Benz India has been selling a two-seater cabrio for the last few years in the form of the sleek and youthful SLK, mostly as a CBU for the privileged few. Privileged not as in the indecent amount of money they were charging but because of the special category of people who were allowed to import it. But with the new auto regulations and the changed policies under WTO, Mercedes-Benz has stolen a march over everyone else and begun offering virtually its entire model range to anyone who can stump up the cash for the model of choice. This is also the reason why we have been featuring test reports of the cars with the three-pointed star regularly for issues in a row!

One of these models just happens to be the CLK 320 cabrio which the company has homologated recently. OVERDRIVE was offered this smashing automobile to test and there was no stopping yours truly from getting behind the wheel and soaking up the pleasure which is unique to open-topped motoring.