To a degree that story will be mirrored throughout the forum.
You buy a ragtop roadster to get the wind in what’s left of your hair. Then you find you’re being gassed by all the shite being pumped out of the (poorly serviced) vehicles of our fellow road users. The ragtop doesn’t do a great job of isolation you from pollutants, noise & pissing down of the rain. So you spend £300 notes, in Brian’s case, only to find you’ve not improved the situation that much & it’s now just a car, all be it lower & less practical or comfortable.
£300 could have bought you a performance exhaust & a remap but you’ve ended up toddling along, only less wet & with fewer pollutants in your system.
Having a hardtop is a bit like “completing the set” after collecting all the chrome bits, changing all the lights to LED’s, 16” wheels with red four pot callipers & glass rear windowed ragtop.
I guess the majority of us are men of a certain age & have a more change jingling about in our pockets than we’ve have seen since before kids.
And I, for one, derive a lot of pleasure from buggering about with the car, which is why with having one hardtop sat on the car, I was half heartedly looking for another (cheap) so I could experiment by cutting it in half.
M