Get ready for spring with these 17 convertible used classics for under £30k

Buying an affordable cabriolet used to be simple. Point yourself at any mainstream car dealer and they’d have several dinky drop-tops for sale. Remember the Megane CC, Micra C+C or Cascada? All banished by the rise of the crossover, with only the Mazda MX-5 and Mini Convertible left with a list price below £30,000 and a roof ready that’s for all seasons. 

Your choice is opened wide second-hand, though. One recent retiree from the roadster circuit is this, the BMW Z4. The nameplate has been with us for over 20 years and through three generations, with this latest one perhaps the greatest of all – even if it ended up overshadowed by its Toyota Supra cousin. We adored ours and you can have a neatly kept example with the raucous 6cyl B58 engine for well within our thirty grand budget.

Bentley in ‘car of the people’ shock! There’s a lot to like about the Crewe carmaker right now. It continues to manufacture in Britain in a factory that’s long been carbon neutral. The prices, though – starting at around £170,000 for a base Bentayga, rising towards £2m for a Batur or Blower – probably keep a few of us at arm’s length from ownership.

But used? There are Continental GTs galore for very tempting sums, including this one-owner, 4,000-mile GTC drop-top in gloriously tasteful navy on tan, going to auction with the estimate of a modestly specced new Corsa. There can be few comfier ways to waft around in the spring sun… or shield yourself successfully from the inevitable rain thanks to its luxe fabric roof.

The DB7 is the car that saved Aston Martin, launched in 1994 to immediately become its bestseller. Sketched by Ian Callum (whatever happened to him?), its influence on the Vanquish, DB9 and countless other Astons that followed its design path is clear.

Alright, the Volante cabrio version isn’t as pure to look at and that pram-fold hood looks positively ancient now. But with the fabric folded and the 420bhp, 5.9-litre nat-asp V12 of this Vantage spec in full song, you’re unlikely to be fretting about anything. Save, perhaps, its next service bill…

Twenty grand (or less) allows you to take your pick from the unmistakably 1990s E36, the classically proportioned E46, or the thrills (and bills!) of a V8-engined E93. You might have to justify choosing a drop-top M3 at your next cars ‘n’ coffee, but we all know M Division’s commitment to engineering – these aren’t going to be wobbly old cabrios that shake their door trim clean from its fixings at the first roundabout.

We’ve also done you the duty of choosing a manual example of each, just to better fend off any derision from your petrolhead pals. As should a brisk run around the block in any of our trio – the saw-toothed edge of those earlier straight-six cars or the booming burble of the E93’s 4.0-litre engine, with no annoying roof to swallow the sound, should hush even the most vociferous critics.

Oh, you want glorious roof-down sound, do you? There’s surely nothing better for our thirty grand budget. The Maserati 4200 GT and its racier GranSport spin-off called upon a sonorous, 4.2-litre, naturally aspirated V8 engine for motive power. Its 400bhp peak is delivered at 7,000rpm, and never mind the clunky, semi-automatic Cambiocorsa gearchanges that’ll get you there. 

Better to avoid too many paddle pulls and just keep those revs high – an experience all the more memorable with its soft-top stowed away and those antiquated old rollover hoops proudly pointing at the sky. When even they can’t besmirch a car’s beauty, you know it’s a keeper.

Our ears already detect the angry tapping of keys. Few cars in the 21st century attracted quite as much, ahem, discourse as the Evoque Convertible. But for a certain period of the late 2010s, you couldn’t move for these things in suburban London, most of them painted in cheery launch orange. But where did they all go?

Despite its open-top schtick – something of a USP until the Volkswagen T-Roc followed its lead – every example we’ve uncovered for sale uses a diesel engine. This one is from the autumn of the car’s scant, two-year production run, and thus comes in more powerful, 236bhp ‘SD4’ form. Decent performance, then. And at the price of a top-spec Dacia Spring, who cares about cool points.

Convertible cars come in all shapes and forms: agile sportsters, hardcore track tools, rorty muscle cars, plush four-seat capsules and ostentatious style statements.

Somehow this Merc C63 Cabriolet manages to resemble all those things at once, combining deft handling, a hooligan soundtrack and premium design in one, indomitable package. On those terms, the £29,995 demanded by this 2017 example (with a sensible mileage) feels like an outright bargain. It’s five cars for the price of one!

The Mazda MX-5 has been the undisputed leader of the cheap cabrio market for years. Which does bring its own ubiquity and – in a roll call full of Porsches, Bentleys and Astons like this – the potential for buyers to shrug their shoulders.

Unless, that is, BBR has had its wicked way. The long-time tuner of MX-5s can craft yours into whatever sharpened tool you crave, whether it’s a slightly gnarlier road car or an athletic trackday whippet. This Super 225 certainly falls into the latter category – all cages ‘n’ harnesses – and at a whisker over £12k, offers a shortcut into amateur motorsport that we’re finding devilishly hard to resist. No ubiquity here, folks.

Audi used to lead the way on posh, stylish cabrios. A3, A5, TT and R8 convertibles were all offered at the same time and now, nada. Sportbacks have usurped sports cars, and while 14 models currently populate Audi’s online configurator, they’re all decidedly fixed of roof. Perhaps its new design revolution – led by the Concept C – will bring a bit of diversity back.

The design study does appear to have an open roof (of sorts), so let’s cross all our fingers that a new TT Roadster is coming. At least in spirit. Because the last one, across all three of its generations, was a svelte-looking, decent driving thing and a joyous form of transport with the sun shining. And when the weather was drearier in the 3.2-litre V6-powered quattro form we’ve handpicked here.

Comfortably under £10k gives you the option of an original Mk1 TT, and one the first appearances of a DSG twin-clutch ‘box, or its sleeker Mk2 replacement, with the classifieds demanding very similar money for either iteration. The older car has a more obvious ‘future classic’ skew, however.

TT not hardcore enough? Walk this way. Our thirty grand budget can snare various flavours of Lotus Elise, surely the sweetest handling of all the lightweight roadsters. Among those ‘various flavours’ is one wearing Vauxhall badges on its extremities and a turbocharger upon its engine.

Developed alongside the Series 2 Elise, the VX220 launched in 2000 in stock, 144bhp 2.2-litre form. But it’s the 197bhp 2.0-litre Turbo of 2003 that you really want. These engines weren’t shared with Lotus and the VX even got ABS and an airbag to help lure Vectra and Omega owners to the dark side of the showroom. It’s a deft thing to drive, though its boosted, mid-engined swagger caught some buyers out early doors. Hardcore indeed.

Another chapter in ‘unexpectedly turbocharging a nat-asp icon’, the pairing of Fiat and Abarth 124 Spider took all the most rigid bits of the ND-gen Mazda MX-5 and trotted them in another direction entirely. Likeable things they were, too, if always a mite less satisfying than their Japanese base car.

The racier of the duo was given away via some tempting lease deals new, and so plenty occupy the classifieds now. It’s Abarth by numbers: uncouth damping, rorty soundtrack and vibrant colours and decal packs. For those precise reasons it now appears a bit of a charmer at just half its original price tag.

Though if it’s rorty soundtracks and colours you seek, you’d better head to Blackpool. The long-awaited TVR comeback has ground to a halt, though the chance of buying a shiny new Griffith remains almost within grasp.

Can’t handle the anticipation? Then calm your nerves (or more likely, fray them further) by spending a piffling £25k on its Nineties namesake. Five litres and 320 horsepower hustling along a tonne of fibreglass and leather should furnish you with much more immediate concerns than if we’ll ever see Griffiths sold new again.

Plenty of classics fall neatly below £30,000, but we suspect the world of MGBs and Spitfires holds a bit less appeal to you than one of these. The Spider name spans numerous decades and body styles, but surely this classic shape – produced in one form or another between 1966 and ’93 – is the most alluring of all and remains one of the most romanticised on Planet Car.

Performance will be modest and spare parts wilfully difficult to come by; you’ll probably love it regardless.

Or how about one of these? Pretty cars have been a running theme across (most of) Peugeot’s history, and the Pininfarina-penned 504 Coupe is perhaps the coolest, most insouciant Lion of all. Enough to warrant a latter-day electric rebirth, in fact.

Lopping the roof from a 504 barely affects its swagger and we can think of few better things to roll onto LeShuttle and explore the swishing plains of Northern France in. Just get good breakdown cover, yeah?

The 997 generation of Porsche 911 is widely considered one of the most appealing of all. It’s a neat bridge between the old and new, balancing classic 911 proportions and dimensions with a ‘just right’ amount of modernity and tech to make it useable every single day.

Which also means prices remain robust unless – it seems – you seek the less cool Cabriolet. A whisker over £20k gets you this 100,000-mile example with a strong spec and service history. Not unlike the C63 further up the page, this is a car that ticks almost every possible facet of modern convertible ownership.

TopGear.com couldn’t in good faith talk ‘attainable soft-tops’ without extolling the virtues of the Seven. Everything else on this list can claim some semblance of daily useability; a Caterham demands copious imagination and gumption for everyday use, but it’s certainly not impossible. So long as you don’t mind giving lorries a wide berth and driving with the white-knuckled attentiveness of a biker, anyhow.

We’ll not bore you senseless with a complete dive into the intricate world of Seven specs, but trust that this 310R SV is a thoroughly appealing blend of frenzied performance and vague liveability.

Yep, the internet’s favourite hot hatch was briefly sold in convertible form. Attempting to combine so many trades ensured this Mk6 Golf spin-off mastered absolutely none of them, but a car that was easy to criticise new – its price north of a Porsche Boxster at £39k – is now a thoroughly appealing diversion used.

Just ten grand procures a car wearing modest miles, though be mindful that, in a shocking deviation from Golf R lore, it’s front-wheel drive only.