Why We love going topless
The wind in your hair. The feeling that after years of slog you deserve it. Suddenly women of a certain age are splashing their cash on sporty convertibles. Best-selling author MAEVE HARAN explains why ...
FOR her 60th birthday last October, Theresa May probably splashed out on some more of those nice leopardskin shoes.
For my own 60th, I did something much more earth-shattering. I bought myself a silver sports car.
It is, for those who care about these things, a £20,000 Volvo C70 GT Auto convertible, with a 2.5 litre engine capable of 130mph; and torque of 220 Nm (don’t ask).
It’s a familiar cliché that when men hit the midlife crisis and existential angst, plus baldness, sets in, rather than contemplate their mortality, they buy a Porsche 911 and have an affair with their secretary. But what about women?
Figures show that soft-top cars are now most likely to be bought by women in their 50s, with 7 per cent of this female age group driving them. Sales have quadrupled in just 15 years.
A sporty convertible is a status symbol for affluent middle-class women who reward themselves for years of toil — maybe illness, divorce or simply the long slog of bringing up a family.
My car was bought not because I was fretting over grey hairs and middle-age spread but simply because, after a lifetime of ferrying children in battered old people carriers, I thought it was time I had a car for me.
My attitude to cars has always been one of supreme uninterest. Actually, that’s not quite true: when I look at the photo of me taken in the Eighties, during my ‘smouldering period’, all hair and kohl eyes, wearing a red flying suit that matched my red Fiesta, I remember how proud I was of it.
Then there was a photo of me taken in the early Nineties, leaning on my Renault estate — a car I would spend the next decade filling with baby seats, cricket bats, GCSE artwork, musical instruments (including a double bass) and the contents of several university flats.
The car that would follow was a Mitsubishi people carrier, a small bus that no one could possibly love. Sexy, it wasn’t.
So by 60 I thought it was time to get a car that would make my heart zing.
I am, of course, part of the ‘me’ generation, one of those wicked baby boomer beneficiaries of cheap housing and stable employment. Buying a fast car would no doubt add to the list of my sins. But what the hell, I love it. I’m proud to be a silver racer.
sOwhy should a sports car appeal to women, who — unlike men — aren’t trying to compensate for the size of their equipment or ward off the Grim Reaper?
Well, there is nothing quite as wonderful, I have discovered, as putting the roof down, feeling the sun on your skin and actually feeling part of your surroundings.
Driving ceases to be a chore and becomes fun; a pleasure.
Is there also an element of vanity? A fellow convertible driver asked me if I check out my reflection in shop windows at traffic lights. No, actually, but I confess I do like putting on my sunglasses and getting the occasional second look from a scaffolder.
There is also the romance of a sports car. Have you listened to The Ballad of Lucy Jordan — about a woman who, at the age of 37, realises she’ll never drive through Paris in a sports car, with the warm wind in her hair — and ends up jumping off a building? Well, that ain’t going to be me!
But, most importantly, it’s about financial independence. Things have changed a lot for women, and I can afford to buy it myself.
I’m not one for Prada handbags or Burberry outfits, but now and then I like to splurge. Because I can. Because I’ve made the money myself. When I went to look at the car in the showroom, the salesman actually asked me if I needed to discuss buying it with my husband!
I was so livid, I got out my cheque book on the spot.
When it comes to the technical aspect,aspect I can only repeat what a friend of mine once said: ‘I love cars but have no interest in what happens under the bonnet.’
There is one exception. I adore the sound of my car. When you put your foot down, it has this fantastic throaty roar which would even impress Jeremy Clarkson.
‘I didn’t know your mum was a boy racer,’ said my daughter’s boyfriend when I gave them a lift.
I have to put up with a lot of ribbing from my children. They don’t entirely approve of this transformation from invisible mum into sunglass-wearing sports car driver. My son wouldn’t even let me pick him up from sixth form if I had the roof down.
Another complaint is that there isn’t enough room in the back.back My reply is, at least I bought a fourseater. A man in the grip of a midlife crisis would have opted for a two-seater.
What about the environment, they demand (mainly because the car is too fast to be insured for them to drive). My main defence is that it has a petrol engine — and besides, I argue, I do sometimes travel by Tube.
Women don’t tend to go for the silly cars, the Maseratis and Ferraris. More the convertible Renaults and Saabs, or maybe BMWs or Audis for the more daring.
Hilariously, recent research has shown that men driving fast cars get a testosterone surge, especially in towns when other men might be looking at them. I just get to Sainsbury’s more quickly.
I think it’s great that older women are rewarding themselves with cars they always wanted. But the writing may be on the wall for some silver speedsters.
CARmanufacturers, it seems, are worried about the ageing profile of sports car drivers. Baby boomer males, who have been the mainstay of the fast car market, are now getting too old to climb into low-slung vehicles.
One car website even warned: ‘the Sports Car Market Will Be Atrocious After the Baby Boomers Die’. But that is ignoring the fact that baby boomer women are in much better health than their male counterparts.
Finally all that yoga will pay off and we can go on climbing into sports cars until we’re 80.
And, everyone knows women are safer on the roads. Sensible, financially savvy, looking for a dignified good time, we older women are the perfect market. We don’t even break the speed limits.
But one factor may put the brake on: grandchildren. I don’t have any yet, but I worry that if I did, I might have to get myself a nice, sensible hatchback instead.
But then I remember the role model of my friend’s mum, Anne, who used to bowl about in an
open-topped Vauxhall, the back stuffedt ff d with ith grandchildren.d hild AsA farf as I know, they all survived.
Life, after all, should be about fun. And after all those years of responsibility, that’s exactly what we deserve.
ANNABEL
AnnABEl norwell Davis, 66, a retired police officer, model and actor from Somerset, is married to Adrian, also a retired police officer. She bought a secondhand Maxda MX5 convertible in May 2017, which cost £13,500. RETIRINg to the Somerset countryside may have been blissfully peaceful but it also has an exciting side. Because far from pootling along in the slow lane, I’m embracing life in my dreamy convertible.
I adore it — it zips along the single-lane roads, hugging the corners, and is so nippy and lowslung that when I’m driving it I feel as though I’m going faster than I really am.
Until now I’ve been solid, steady Volvo woman. No more, though. People see Mazda drivers as fun- loving, a little bit more adventurous, perhaps — and that’s just what I want to be at this time of my life.
It makes me feel young again, as if I was cruising around in the powder-blue Mini I bought at the age of 17. And it’s not blokey. In fact, I think it’s rather pretty. I was seduced by a coppery red colour with a cream interior. My husband loves it and thinks I look good in it.
I feel a pleasurable sense of freedom. At may age, it’s immensely liberating!
Obviously it’s completely impractical. It’s a low car to get into and there is scant boot space.
No matter, though. Even if my knees start creaking with old age, this gorgeous car is a keeper. I love the racy feeling of my convertible.
SUE
SUE BARTER, 61, a semiretired hospital consultant fr from Bedfordshire, is married with three grown-up children. She first bought a Mercedes Cabriolet C class when she was 55. She picked up her third a week ago, which cost £41,000. My AIM is to grow old disgracefully — and with that in mind, I decided to buy my first convertible in 2010. I’d had a difficult year. My mum had died, I’d suffered a health scare and one of my best friends had died of a cardiac arrest.
Such major life events happening in swift succession were a reminder that you can’t take your money with you. So I decided I’d put myself first for a change.
At the time I was enduring a daily three-hour commute to work at Addenbrooke’s hospital. A really nice car would make life much more pleasurable. So I bought my first Mercedes Cabriolet. A sleek black number, it cost £ 41,000. The third and most recent one also cost £41k when I traded in my last one too.
I still remember the thrill of lowering the roof for the first time, and the wind zipping through my hair… it was nothing short of electrifying. My children thought I was suddenly rather cool with a fast, smart sports car.
Today, I’m the proud owner of a rather racy, sporty silver Mercedes Cabriolet C class, with a cream leather interior. There’s a windshield which helps to stop your hair whipping round your face, and warm air circulates from the headrest when the roof is down, so there’s never chilly air around my neck.
The minute the sun comes out, the roof goes down. And yes, I do get tooted at when I’m on the motorway with the top down. At 61, it’s still nice to attract such attention — but whether it’s me or the car they are admiring, I’m not quite sure. I hope it’s both.
And despite the expense of my cars, I don’t feel the least guilty for indulging myself. After all, for all those years when I was ferrying the kids around, I had a clunky old Mercedes estate, before swapping to an extremely unglamorous Seat Alhambra people carrier, which the kids dubbed the ‘playbus’. Both were the very definition of ‘mum taxis’.
Some habits die hard. Even though the slightest touch on the accelerator would send my sports car whizzing up the road, I don’t speed, to my family’s disdain. They think it’s a waste of all that high-tech machinery.
But I get all the kicks I need from the very fact I’m driving a convertible. Because it makes me feel sexier, somehow. I feel more youthful. More alive.
YVONNE
YvonnE BoloURi, 63, a semiretired writer from Glasgow, is married to Harry, 69, a retired scientist and teacher. They have two daughters and one granddaughter. Yvonne bought a second-hand Saab 93 convertible in 2015 when she was 61, for £8,000. NO MAN has ever seduced me like my Saab sports car did. It was silver, sleek and classy, and from the moment I laid eyes on it I was smitten. Until that moment, I would never have described myself as a confident driver. My husband always does the long journeys, and I stick to the short drives.
When I was ferrying my children about, small practical cars were good enough for me. Each and every one ended up filled to the brim with mum stuff — snacks, car seats, wet wipes.
Then, a couple of years ago when we were looking for a new car for me, my husband asked if I fancied anything in the showroom. On impulse, I pointed to the Saab and said: ‘I fancy that one. But it’s not exactly practical, is it?’
But having been ‘practical’ all my life, I thought, what the heck. I even went one step further, treating myself to personalised number plates. It was so out of character.
But that’s just what I needed at the time — to break out from being Mrs Average. When I get behind the wheel now, I feel as if I’m starring in my very own Bond film: hood down, shades on, Carly Simon blaring from the speakers.
When the Saab first arrived, I did worry that I’d look daft in it. One of my daughters was shocked. She called it ‘flashy’. And a neighbour wondered aloud if I was having a ‘late-life’ crisis!
But I got over that soon enough, and today you’ll see me whizzing around with all my girlfriends in the back. We’ve loaded the CD player with the songs from our youth — James Taylor, The Beatles — and we sing at the top of our lungs. I’m never giving this car up. I’ll be driving it until it gives up the ghost.