Set your stall out early with any drophead version of an existing tin-top. There are two questions: how much heavier and how much more bendy? It’s only after you’ve established those ground rules that you can address its looks, how many of your fingernails the folding top removes, the power, the performance, the dynamics, yadda, yadda…
I was thinking about this as I drove Ferrari’s newest drophead, the 12Cilindri Spider, along the cliff-top roads north of Cascais in Portugal. Glassy waves, cued like school rulers wait their chance at the beaches and car parks are full of surfers’ vans, waiting for the seventh of the seventh to appear on the horizon.
Is this the last unassisted naturally aspirated V12 in existence on a new car price list? Discuss. Aventador, M760i, Phantom have all gone, or gone hybrid or turbo, and can you honestly still buy a Valkyrie? And how much is a Gordon Murray Automotive T.33 for Pete’s sake? (£1.8m since you asked, for an entry ticket to the only extant n/a V12 manual transmission motor car.)
