Once around the block #1:- 2011 Mercedes SLK

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Manufacturers have an accursed time developing their small sports cars to suit everybody's taste, and Mercedes have had it worse than many with their junior sportster, the SLK.

The first issue, launched in 1996, was criticised for being too overtly effeminate, more at home outside a wine bar than slicing through an alpine pass. As if to counter that, the 2004 replacement took styling cues from the McLaren SLR and had a rear suspension that seemed to be directly connected to my spine.

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Driven #37:- '07 BMW Z4 2.0 SE

Having driven the Z4M reasonably recently, having heaped superlatives on it and gushed nauseatingly about it ever since, it was time to put it into context. Here was an opportunity to reacquaint myself with the Z4 in its most basic (some would say purest… but let’s stick with basic) form. The four-cylinder, manual, 2.0SE. 

The predecessor to the Z4, the Z3, had a similarly broad range. The M and M Roadster sat atop the pile, while the 1.9 was at the bottom, and was universally panned for its almost total lack of power and branded pathetic, hopeless and a hairdressers car. Does this criticism apply to the next (and now previous) Z4? And, now the new Z4 is out, does it really matter?

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Driven #32:- Honda S2000

Note: I have also published the content below on Hooniverse.com

I'm not easily embarrassed. I can't afford to be, really; my height, Sideshow Bob feet, stupid hair and laughable fashion sense combined with my propensity for making stupid jokes make being thick skinned an essential defence mechanism. As a result, I can do things that are quite phenomenally idiotic because I don't fear looking a complete fool.

Usually.

On this beautiful sunny June day, I am in the company of a svelte, trim Honda S2000 roadster on a Sainsbury's fuel forecourt, but instead of enjoying all the envious glances, I wish the ground would swallow me up. For all my experience driving the good, bad and ugly, never before have I so comprehensively failed to open a fuel filler cap.

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Driven #5;- BMW Z4 sDrive35i

This article has since been republished in an updated form on www.hooniverse.com

Once upon a time, BMW was very good at preserving its principles. The famously stubborn brand said it "would never sell a front wheel drive car", a promise first rescinded by using the MINI brand as a workaround, and the more brazenly with the MINI-base 2 Series Active Tourer. For a long while, there "would never be a turbocharged M car", owing to the fear of corrupting throttle response sharpness - though that fear, it turn out, was later quashed by twin-blown engines in the most recent M3 and M5.

BMW also once strenuously denied they’d ever put a folding hard-top on a Z4. A sports car didn’t need one, they said. With the 3-Series they had held off from folding hardtops until they found a way of packaging one effectively without it ruining the weight distribution. 
 They finally managed, but you have to assume that they worked some kind of witchcraft to fit one on the E89 Z4 without exchanging the original's no-frills premium for no-thrills tedium.

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