CLASSICAL BRITS WITH REMOVABLE “HOODS” PART 2

YESTERDAY, WE BEGAN CHERRY-PICKING from Classic & Sports Car‘s “35 Brilliant British Classic Convertible Cars.” Today in Part 2, we continue—and even add a car inexplicably missing from the C&SC list. As in Part 1, all quoted comments are from C≻ the rest, mine.

Bentley 3 Litre.  “Bentley’s first car, the 3 Litre, was a twice Le Mans 24 Hours-winning sports model with an advanced, 2996cc, four-cylinder engine (featuring an overhead camshaft and four valves per cylinder), and was best suited to a relatively light convertible body, such as the Vanden Plas one pictured here.”

By the way, the convertible top got exercised in the early Le Mans: After sprinting across the track (the “Le Mans start,” lasting through 1969), drivers had to erect any weather protection and prove it would withstand 20 laps of racing.

Ford Consul. “Powered by a new, overhead-valve, 1508cc engine, it was sold mostly as a four-door saloon from 1951, but a two-door convertible was added to the range two years later. Work on the structure was farmed out to Carbodies of Coventry, and the car—whose roof could be raised and lowered manually or, as an option, electro-hydraulically—was produced from 1953 to 1956 (the car pictured dating from approximately the middle of this period).”

“The Consul entered its second generation in the latter year, now with a 1702cc engine, and once again Carbodies was given the job of creating a convertible version.” 

This 1961 rhd Ford Consul is the same color as mine: ivory with red trim.

I knew the Consul Mk II convertible well; it was my first car. My dad, a steel worker, was appeased by the fact that this was, after all, a Ford and reminded him of his ’55 convertible. It was the only one I knew, however, with a three-position drophead. 

Morgan Plus 8. “Almost every car Morgan has produced in its long history has been a convertible, so picking a representative model requires making an arbitrary choice. We’re going with performance here, and that immediately brings us to the Plus 8, so named because it was always powered by a V8 engine.”

The era was a complex era: Pal Bill Fink, R.I.P., legalized Morgans in the U.S. with propane fuel and fitting dodgem bumpers using VW Rabbit hydraulic pistons. 

And the car ran “as clean as Joan Claybrook escaping a Detroit steam bath.”

Austin Mini Moke. Inexplicably overlooked by C&SC (ha!) as a brilliant Brit convertible, the Austin Mini Moke is, in a sense, one reason I write SimanaitisSays today. See “From Sea to Shining Sea,” September 9, 2012; “Recalling the Austin Mini Moke,” March 30, 2020; and “Yet Another Moke,” October 21, 2023.

And, actually, only a week ago I encountered a Moke in Newport Beach, California. I waved. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026