Top-down touring

My summer home office uniform of shorts and shirt has been swapped for jeans and jumper. But I’ve made the most of the last warm days when they’ve coincided with longish work journeys by taking the BMW and going top-down.

You might recognise the destination pictured here. I had a date with an Abarth 595 on the Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb, more of which you can learn about in in the next issue. I wasn’t about to go for a ‘time’ in my E30; it’s not really the car for that type of thing, favouring a more languid (yet beautifully balanced) approach to corners, though I couldn’t resist rolling it up to the startline once the frantic stuff was done.

Shelsley is 100 miles or so from my base in Northamptonshire, and the quickest way there is a mainly motorway schlep. Dull, but comfortable enough, and surprisingly free from buffeting with the roof down and the windows up. Plus, it’s great when the marshals remark ‘nice car’ as you pull up at journey’s end. I was in less of a hurry on the way home, so ran a parallel route crosscountry, taking in some of my favourite curves and sweeps out of Oxfordshire back into Northants.

Elsewhere in this issue you can read about the latest Porsche Panamera, which I tested in the north Pennines. A gentle 150 miles or so up the A1 beckoned, but a local road closure forced a diversion onto the less hospitable M1, then across on the M18 to make the most of the last stretch into North Yorkshire. I made the most of my old-fashioned cassette adapter, so I could listen to music streamed from a tablet.

The weather was less enjoyable for most of the way home, necessitating the first scarf of the season, and I was thankful for my heated seat. Filling the tank and doing some maths suggested 32.5mpg: not bad, and something else to be thankful for.