Over the summer the benefits of my first ever convertible really hit home as I bounced back from the Rodina for a few weeks' holiday in the UK and France, and was able to drag the Z1 blinking out into the sunlight for a spot of light thrashing. Having only bought it last November, this is really the first time I've been able to take it out in weather where having the roof and doors open does not involve muffling up like you're contemplating a night out with your sherpas on the summit of Everest.

Normally the two hour drive from London to my mother's place in Suffolk, up that farm track laughably referred to by the Highways Agency as the A12, is a fairly tedious affair, especially since the accursed safety weenies have imposed a 40mph limit on large sections of the Ipswich-Lowestoft part. However, the first drive back on a warm afternoon with the roof off and the doors down was a revelation! It was extremely agreeable to be whizzing along with a warm breeze filling the cabin. About 50-60mph is about the fastest I'd really comfortably want to go without closing the doors since the blustery draft gets a bit much after that and you need to make damn sure all loose objects in the cabin, such as maps and smaller passengers, are tightly jammed down to prevent them making a sudden unplanned bid for freedom. Most female passengers will complain long before 50mph though, unless they have particularly well-knotted headscarves and a penchant for Marilyn Monroe-esque skirt antics. A wind-deflector might help but I haven't got around to finding one yet.

It is worth noting that the combination of black leather upholstery, no air-conditioning and 30 degree heat added up to one extremely damp shirt when I was driving around London at the start of July - I resorted to driving with the hood up and doors down to try and avoid broiling myself. I can see now why some owners chose the lemon yellow leather option - it must surely be cooler to sit on. Since retro-fitting air-con is, I imagine, prohibitively costly and problematic, a retrim in a lighter shade of leather (albeit not lemon) might be called for one day when I feel suitably flush.

Much has been made of how the Z1 is woefully underpowered compared to the ability of its chassis, however, if you catch the sweet spot around 4,000rpm, I find my example has ample urge and is capable of dispatching whole lines of slow-moving East Anglian grockles without undue bother. It's also over 4,000rpm that the engine/exhaust note hardens into a banshee shriek which is really very loud and very addictive, and you have to be careful not to bounce off the rev-limiter (just shy of 7,000rpm) which announces itself with a noticeable machine gun stutter from the engine. It's embarrassing enough to ensure you only do it once.

The car has a fairly slick gearshift with a nice short action but it does have two minor irritants to catch the unwary. The first is that it can be remarkably easy to put the car in reverse rather than first. Again, one minor scare, when I nearly reversed with gusto into the car behind me at some traffic lights, was enough to teach me to always check I've selected first rather than reverse (using a light touch with the lever helps). The other is that if you are really going for it, as happened on the track day, the gearbox can baulk going from third to second if you try and snatch the change. Since this happened to an experienced racer who tried the car as well as me, I feel safe in accusing the box rather than my own incompetence! However, whether either of these things is an attribute of my particular car, or of Z1s in general, I have no clue.

I'm still convinced that the car really needs some new shocks and springs to tighten up the handling and reduce the dive and squat it demonstrates on hard braking and acceleration. Nonetheless, the handling is still pretty exemplary and it remains a darty, agile little car with a tail that happily wiggles upon demand. I admit to being more circumspect about this on wet roads, where the rear can be very skittish, but this could I suspect be improved by a set of new boots as the current Yokos have only 3-4mm left. The brakes are excellent, especially now some new pads have been fitted. For me they have a nicely judged amount of travel and responsiveness.

I'm mildly annoyed because a rogue loose screw got caught between the layers of the hood above the rear window and made a small rip in the external fabric. It will just have to be lived with though as the rest of the hood is in very good condition and, having cast a surreptitious glance at the price of a new one, replacing it would be an unwarranted extravagance at this stage. Getting caught in a sudden thundery cloudburst proved it doesn't seem to have caused a leak at any rate.

The car has just been back to Munich Legends for its first scheduled service in my tenure (they are due every 6k miles); an oil and filter one, since it was treated to an Inspection II when I bought it. In addition to that, I had the tracking checked (it was pulling very slightly to the left - turned out to be uneven left/right tyre wear blamed on the track day so they were swapped around to even it out), the malfunctioning electric mirrors attended (new switch - inexpensive as it is common to the E30) and new rear brake pads - all in all it cost around 280 quid which seemed reasonable. I wanted them to fit a battery cut-out switch in the boot since the car spends long periods of time in the garage unused, however they did not have time so that's a job for another day.

It strikes me as an insane act of the part of BMW to design a car with electrically operated doors and to then fit the battery in the cabin behind the driver's seat! It is possible to open the doors with a dead battery by performing some complicated routine with the key (and possibly a sacrificed cockerel), but this is not ideal. The boot lid, however, unlocks normally so the boot seems the ideal location for the cut-out. For some odd reason though, the central-locking does not include the boot lid, which is a tad annoying.

Anyhow, in summary, the car still delights me. I get a huge grin every time I get in and I really cannot recall another car which has felt like so much all-round fun. Even my usually sceptical mother is smitten - "that really is such a pretty car" she sighed to me the other day as I arrived at her house. She's right, you know.