Mercedes SL400, motoring review: This will do nicely, as long as you're not cruising for a bruiser

Jamie Merrill found the "gentleman's cruiser" to be a little too refined

The SL400 is what the car magazines rather patronisingly call a 'gentleman's cruiser'

Price: £72,500
Engine capacity: V6, twin turbo
Power output: 328bhp @ 6,500rpm
Top speed: 155mph (limited)
Fuel economy: 36.7mpg
CO2 emissions: 178g/km

We Brits are suckers for anything with a retractable roof which we bring down at the slightest hint of sunshine. In fact, our love affair with wind-in-your-hair motoring is so great that we are among the biggest buyers of convertibles in Europe.

Enter the new SL400 from Mercedes. It's what the car magazines rather patronisingly call a "gentleman's cruiser". The SL400 isn't an unhinged bruiser of a convertible that will shake you to your core. Instead, the SL400 is designed to amble along in the sunshine. Of course it has a powerful V6 engine and the horsepower to compete with brasher Jaguars and Porsches, but it doesn't play those sorts of silly games. It's a more refined beast, for a more refined driver.

As you can probably tell, I've rather fallen in love with the SL's long lines and sharp angles, but I didn't have the best weather for my test. I foolishly tested the SL400 on a day of April showers and cold winds. The spray from lorries on the M2 meant that we felt more comfortable with the roof up, and once we hit the B-roads of wet Kent we didn't gain any more drop-top courage.

To many convertible purists this sort of closed-up motoring would be sacrilege regardless of the weather, but it's actually the best possible test for the new SL400. It rains a lot here at the best of times and even on mild days most convertibles go around with the roof up, so why rave on about what it's like to have wind in your hair? Most buyers of the SL400 won't have any hair left anyway.

Anyway the metal roof is so solid and the ride so refined that there are times you forget this car is a convertible anyway. Instead you focus on the superbly engineered cabin and the delightful V6 engine, which is somehow both smaller and faster than the V8 it replaces. One fellow reviewer recently moaned that this car was "fairly fast", which entirely misses the point. This isn't a bruiser, it's a cruiser, and that's something it does eminently well.

There is a problem, though. The SL400 is so refined, so comfortable, so tame, that within an hour of my journey my passenger was sound asleep, leaving me to trundle home in silence. It was all very pleasant, all very refined, but I'm not sure that's what all buyers of a "gentleman's cruiser" will be looking for from topless motoring.