by James Hamel

Created on: January 19, 2010

Picking a luxury roadster as your new daily driver is a very personal and often times very rewarding experience. Although they have their drawbacks and impracticalities no one can deny that the luxury sport roadster is the pinnacle of sexiness in the automotive world. These cars are sexy so they make you feel sexy driving them.

Does anyone remember the Jaguar E-Type? That roadster pretty much set the style blueprint for every luxury automaker to follow (except for the part about it being horribly unreliable). Style before space, form before function. And although the E-Type came out in the 1960’s these same foibles are still somewhat true of roadsters.

So if you are in the market for a luxury roadster nowadays you have two options: folding soft-top or folding hard-top. Hard-tops offer more security (no one can cut open the top and steal your phone) but leave you with near zero cargo space with the top down. And that is a bummer because we all know that retail therapy (i.e. shopping) and roadsters go hand in hand. And folding soft tops? Thanks to recent multi-layered designs and modern materials most soft tops are just as quiet even at freeway speeds (that is at least the case with Audi soft-tops).

Mercedes SLK

(Starting at $46,900)

This is the roadster that doesn’t quite know who it wants to appeal to or what it wants to be. Available with either a 228 horsepower V6 with 6 speed manual (in a Mercedes?), the SLK also offers a 300 horsepower 3.5 liter V6 and the inevitable AMG with a 355 horsepower V8. Why on Earth would any sane person spend all that extra money on the AMG version for an extra measly 55 horses? The best choice here is the 3.5 liter V6 with one of those creamy smooth Mercedes automatics.

The interior is really where this cookie starts to crumble, however. The styling and build quality reminds me of the bad old days at Mercedes a few years back when their consumer ratings nose-dived. It is not only uninspired (the C-Class interior has more heart) but it also feels cheap. And we all know cheap is the last thing you want to feel when tooling around in a brand new roadster. (Note to Mercedes: gratuitous use of wood trim on door handles, center consoles, steering wheels, shift knobs and parking brakes does not equal quality.)

BMW Z4

(Starting at $46,000)

Time for total honesty now. I usually hate folding hardtops in convertibles. I think they are overly complex, unnecessary, and inconvenient. I also believe that as a side effect of their

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