There are good convertibles, and then there's this lot: here are five of the worst

It didn’t take long for the initial hype around the Chrysler PT Cruiser’s design to wear off and for us to realise that at its heart, it was a pretty hateful thing. Shockingly enough, beheading it did little to improve things, especially not when it eliminated what little stiffness there was in the chassis to begin with. And don’t even get us started on that afterthought of a roll bar.

In the olden days, a landaulet was a kind of car that saw only the rear passengers covered by a convertible roof, so they could be sheltered from or exposed to the elements as they wished. Even back then, it was a fairly ridiculous concept, but not as ridiculous as when Mercedes brought it back in 2009 as an even more ill-advised part of its already misjudged experiment with bringing back Maybach as a standalone brand.

Is it a hatch with a rollback fabric roof? A fully open-topped roadster? A weird, tiny roofless pickup truck? The answer is yes. Is it also a hideously complicated, finger-trapping process to switch between these different forms? Also yes. If you decide to leave the roof rails at home and end up getting caught in the rain, are you getting soaked? Yep. Even if you leave the roof on, will it leak? Yeah, probably.

While there are plenty of fine convertibles out there, it’s always worth remembering that not every drop-top is so successful. Just look at the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet for proof. Actually, please don’t look at the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet under any circumstances. Medical science suggests that your retinas may never fully recover.

The misery of the drop-top Mk5 Ford Escort didn’t necessarily stem from it being a convertible, but from the fact that the Mk5 Escort as a whole was such a dismal, phoned-in excuse for a car to begin with. Once again, though, chopping the roof off did little to improve things. People might try to tell you that now that these things are old and rare, they’re now classics. We disagree.