Although my last four cars (MX-5, Porsche 968, Porsche 911 and now Mercedes SLK 230) have been quite different in character, there is no mistaking the common theme: an open-topped sportscar.

Open-top sportscars are great fun to drive 95% of the time, but can be rather less so in driving rain at midnight on the M1 when you have another two hours to go before you're home. Which was the main reason I opted this time for the SLK. Press one button, and 25 seconds later you are in a coupé.

It really is two cars in one. With the roof retracted, it has far cleaner lines than any soft-top car.

With the roof up, it is as quiet (and dry!) inside as a saloon.

The roof mechanism has now been imitated by other manufacturers, but still attracts spectators every time it is operated.

First, the boot opens backwards ...

Next, the roof unfolds itself from the boot ...

The roof locks itself into place ....

And finally, the boot closes and the windows close:

The SLK was Mercedes returning to its roots as a sportscar manufacturer. While it made a lot of powerful cars, Mercedes didn't apply the sportscar label even to its 390bhp 6-litre SL600: the cars were simply too large and too heavy to be deserving of the name.

The SLK was smaller, lighter and more nimble, and Mercedes wasn't embarrassed to call it a sportscar. Its closest competitors were the BMW Z3 and the Porsche Boxster. Instead of trying to compete head-to-head, Mercedes decided to focus on overcoming the main disadvantage of a convertible: the fabric roof. With the roof up, softtop cars suffer from wind-noise and tend to leak in the rain. The then-unique folding metal roof was the solution.

Of course, TANSTAAFL, and the roof takes up more than half of the boot space, reducing the capacity from 12.3 to 5.1 cubic feet. However, there's still room for a full-size carry-on roller-bag plus a small camera backpack and a few other bits & pieces:

If you need to carry more luggage, then you could, I suppose, commit the ultimate crime and drive it with the roof up:

(To guard against luggage-roof interfaces, there is a sliding divider that must be in place before the roof will open. Usually, you would leave this in place, only retracting it when the extra luggage space is required.)

At 197bhp (up from the 192bhp of the pre-facelift model), the 2.3-litre 4-cylinder aluminium-head engine has a reasonable amount of power, and the supercharger (producing 7lbs of boost) works well, giving a solid flow of power through most of the rev range.

0-60 is 7.1 seconds, with a top speed of 153mph. In a test-run on a German autobahn, I got up to an indicated 155mph which was logged by the GPS as a true 149mph:

The car is, of course, RWD. The handling is surprisingly nimble, thanks to a relatively lightweight construction, stiff chassis, independent suspension, anti-roll bars at both ends and wider tyres at the rear.

The only real weakness in the handling is the short wheelbase, which can make it feel a bit skittish through tighter S-bends.

The brakes work well, though they do get warm on a spirited drive down the lanes.

Most SLKs are automatics, which is an odd choice for a roadster, but I guess Mercedes had to bear in mind its main customer-base. It claims to be a tiptronic, allowing the driver to manually select gears, but this is a lie: in fact all the driver can do is indicate a preference for an up-change or down-change and then leave the SLK's software to decide whether or not to oblige. As I wrote in my Ring trip report when I first drove one:

When you tried to change down for a bend, the car would email Mercedes HQ for permission, wait for a committee to convene to discuss it, arrange the necessary paperwork and then let you know that, unfortunately, on this occasion, your request has been denied.

So a manual it had to be:

It does, though, still have cruise-control, which is very handy through SPECS sections.

Manual SLKs are comparatively rare, so it took a while to find a really good example. The dealer described it as 'absolutely mint', and in a really pleasant change, he wasn't exaggerating. It really did look and drive like a brand new car:

This is a mid-2000 car, which was the first of the face-lifted models. To be honest, there's not much difference at the front, but the wing mirror indicators do make a big difference to how modern the car looks:

Some of the colour combinations Mercedes offers are truly offensive. For my tastes, it had to be silver (preferably) or black. Either way, a plain black leather interior was a must:

As a pure road car, I have no plans to significantly modify it, but I do have to confess to one small indulgence (first half obscured):

Personalised plates are not the extravagance you might think: provided you research prices carefully in the first place (and especially check whether the plate is available direct from the DVLA), you will either be able to get your money back, or make a profit, when you sell.

My other modification is EasyRoof, a black box that modifies the way the roof works. As supplied, the car has to be stationary for the roof to operate, and you have to hold your finger on the roof button for the full 25 seconds it takes to open and close. With EasyRoof, it becomes a one-touch operation that you can carry out at low speeds - very handy when it starts raining and there's nowhere convenient to pull over.

Finally, while this is strictly a road car, we have a tradition on the Ringers forum that any car has to earn a Ring sticker by doing a lap, so I took mine over for a gentle tour round:

It was then fitted with a discreet sticker: