EMISSIONS:WE IRISH are often a deluded lot, a fact best displayed by the hordes of stubborn folk who insist on buying convertibles, writes KILIAN DOYLE
They are all insane. For in a country like ours where summer only lasts for six days and a month’s worth of rain can fall in 11 minutes, cabriolets are about as appropriate as flip flops in the Arctic. Sure, they’re great for poncing around the Riviera. But for cowering in during a July deluge in Belmullet? I think not.
Cabriolet drivers don’t see it this way. Most probably think the reason the rest of us are smirking at them from our stuffy saloons and hatchbacks is that were are jealous. We’re not. What we are actually thinking is that, as sure as death and taxes, they will some day end up driving a glorified four-wheeled swimming pool.
They may, in their defence, point out that many modern convertibles can raise the roof in 12 seconds flat, even while moving. This is impressive, but given the ferocity of Irish summer downpours, not impressive enough. In 12 short seconds, your barnet will go from being an expensively coiffured work of art to a sodden mess that’s damper than an otter’s oxters.
Even if you get enough sun to leave the hood down for a few hours, you’ll end up with a head like a rotting loganberry, a mouthful of bluebottle intestines and sparrows in your ears. And your car will handle horribly. It’s an indisputable fact that most cars wallow about like deboned hippos when their roof is chopped off.
The Irish convertible owner also has to contend with the mass of bitter begrudgers who see them as ideal targets for mindless vandalism. Drive a drop-top in Ireland and you will soon find your precious car filled to the brim with beer cans, dirty nappies and other unsavoury projectiles, hurled into it by guffawing oiks as you pass. Your head will be covered in so much phlegm people will think you are the bass guitarist in a punk band, feral kids will gleefully help themselves to your handbag/manbag/iPod/ dignity while you’re stopped at the lights and, if you park it anywhere, you’ll return to find your cloth roof slashed to ribbons and some goofed-out wastrel asleep in the back seat.
This petty destructiveness doesn’t happen in civilised countries. In California, for example, you can happily leave your Ferrari uncovered while you pop into the salon to get your backside waxed, safe in the knowledge that when you rush back to cool your freshly-plucked bits on the plush leather, it will be untouched. Then again, they do crime differently over there – Americans are far more likely to shoot you in the face than key your paintwork.
Finally, there is the vexed question of whether or not straight men can drive convertibles at all. Other than Italian classics, there are very few drop-tops a male can get away with driving without appearing camper than Liberace’s hairdresser.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you understand. It’s just an unfortunate image to project for a man trying to do what any straight man driving a convertible is doing (whether he’ll admit it or not) – namely, trying to make women fancy him. Hetero blokes parading about in convertibles are the motorised equivalent of baboons flashing their lovely blue backsides at lady baboons to show how virile they are.
But women – intelligent creatures that they are – know a man must possess qualities beyond the wherewithal to buy a convertible to make his children worth having. Such as being inordinately handsome. The problem with this is that if you are lucky enough to be irresistibly gorgeous, women will automatically assume by your looks and choice of car that you are either gay or a self-absorbed onanist and ignore you.