You'll have noticed there are a lot of stinkingly rich people around at the moment. Like, proper cheddar. In London, there's a billionaire lurking round every corner.
It makes me sick - not because they're all buying huge houses and adding helipads, hair salons and Olympic-spec swimming pools, nor even because they own football clubs and possess walk-in wardrobes bigger than my entire house.

No. What really gets my goat is that they all own stables of fabulous, exotic cars - Ferraris, Bugattis, Lamborghinis, Porsches, you name it - none of which they ever drive, or love or understand the true value of. Such a waste.

And, as viewers of MTV Cribs can testify, every such stable will soon feature one of these - the new Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren roadster.
At £350,000 it is the most expensive - and also the fastest - convertible in the world. The 626bhp 5.4-litre supercharged V8 engine, built and signed off by one of AMG's engineers, powers this bad boy from 0-60mph in 3.8 seconds and all the way to 206mph - or 200mph with the roof down.
Just think about that - 206mph in a convertible. It's mad dog, it's unnecessary, it's slightly brilliant. Maybe it's the point at which the so-far slightly disappointing SLR finally finds its true meaning.

The degree of overstatement is the truly impressive thing. At 206mph, it's as quick as the coupe, yet it weighs 57kg more; they've lopped the roof off, and charged £35,000 more for the privilege; and they've achieved almost the same structural rigidity and torsional stiffness as in the coupe.
Of course, sheer pace and race-tight chassis development ought to be second nature to Ron Dennis and his team of mega-boffins at McLaren's lair in Woking, where the SLR and Lewis Hamilton's company car are both built.



The SLR gets much of the same cool technology, such as the Superman-strong carbon-fibre structure. It's easy to be a bit blasé about carbon fibre - which has become a staple of cutting-edge car design in recent times - but let's not forget that the SLR coupe was one of the first production cars to use it so extensively. And the technology has undergone further refinement for the Roadster.

Most of the body is made of a new type of carbon fibre, featuring an extra layer that runs at 45 degrees to the other two, which are at right angles. The Roadster is made from fewer but stronger sheets, hence thinner, lighter panels, capable of absorbing the kind of hairy impact from which Hamilton walked away after his recent crash when practising at the Nürburgring.

Recalling that impact, I also arrived in Germany to drive the SLR Roadster determined not to repeat the experiment by driving into any walls at 180mph.

The Roadster has been re-engineered to the extent that 500 components are said to be new or improved - which helps keep the weight down, whilst also ensuring that a decapitated car doesn't translate into a decapitated driver in the event of a rollover.

Along with the fixed rollover bars behind the seats (upholstered in black leather), the new A-pillars and the windscreen frame have got integral steel reinforcements. In fact, the windscreen structure is so strong that it stayed intact, even when dropped upside-down during Merc's own safety tests.

The soft roof itself is made of a new, high-quality woven material with different coloured threads, creating a bit of a mesh effect in keeping with the ongoing carbon-fibre theme. Rigid sections beneath the fabric prevent it from ballooning at high speed, and when folded it stows in its own compartment, without encroaching on the weedy 204-litre capacity of the boot.



The roof comes in three fabric colours - anthracite-black, red-black and beige-black and can be co-ordinated with the range of 13 paint finishes and the interior colour of your choice. If colour co-ordinating is your thing, you can get red or gold-painted calipers as an optional alternative to the silver brake calipers. Yuck.

There are two annoying things about the roof. The first is that you have to be stationary to operate it, which isn't very chic when it starts raining. Neither is it particularly stylish to be shrieking with pain when it nearly rips out your fingernails trying to close it. You have to clamp and unclamp the roof yourself before the low-powered electric system takes over, which my weedy arms found a bit of a struggle.

The problem, once again, comes down to weight - a fully automatic system would have been too much in a car that already weighs 57kg more than the 1,750kg coupe. For the same reason, the stowed roof doesn't live under a cover, which doesn't look great.

But enough about weight - I feel like Gillian McKeith. Let's talk about the fun stuff. Like how cool the SLR Roadster looks. I love the distinctive gills and that long, long bonnet which makes it look so aristocratic.

The swing-up doors, inspired by the legendary SLR racing car from 1955 - or the Uhlenhaut Coupe as it is affectionately known - now have a frameless design. Popped open, they look like erections.

And these bad boys are the money - the Roadster wouldn't be half as much of a sensation without them. They also make it easy to get in and out - normally in low-slung sportscars, you clamber out and have to adopt the recovery position, pretending to gaze at something down the road while you get your dignity back.

With the Roadster, you can perch daintily on the SLR embossed door sills as the second stage in a two-part exit strategy. Handy when your dress has ridden up to your ears, and you need to pull it down again.
So, this front-engined Roadster certainly looks like a supercar. It's got the price of a supercar. The remaining question is this: does it drive like a supercar?



Oh yes - but in the old-school supercar way. In this day and age, even my granny could drive a supercar. And she's dead. Think of the ultimate modern-day beast, the 1,000bhp Bugatti Veyron. It's as easy to drive as a Ford Fiesta. But the SLR Roadster requires balls. As with its hard-topped relations, it can be a right recalcitrant bugger. In a wonderfully British way.

Merely being inside it is an experience. Although the single-piece carbon-fibre seats, with braided leather specially developed for the Roadster, look supremely uncomfortable, they are actually rather snug (and 25kg lighter than standard seats, of course). Got a fat arse? No problem - the seat comes in five sizes, with a choice of four widths for the passenger.

Once you've cranked it up, you discover they've overcome the car's potential to turn someone with big hair, such as Arctic explorer Sir Jeremy, into Marge Simpson in a wind tunnel. The airflow rushes by you and not at you, and the Plexiglas, SLR-branded draught-stop between the two roll bars reduces airflow in the cockpit.

But despite the refinement, the SLR Roadster is still a Diablo-style supercar, because it is not easy to drive. It is, in fact, bloody intimidating.

To start with, there's the cost, which makes dinging it one-way-ticket-to-Australia scary; there's its sheer size - the wheelbase alone is 2,700mm, making it hard to judge length; and don't get me started on the blind spots which, although not so severe you're forced to stick your head out of the window when reversing, are still tank-like.

Then, there are the brakes. The carbon-fibre discs can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees, produce as much as 2,000hp of braking power and last for up to 300,000 kilometres, but at low speeds in traffic, they have a dead, 'not-quite-working' feel. You approach a car in traffic, prod and... eeeeek... are they working? Holy crap! Oh yes, phew. That was a bit close.

Sometimes the Roadster feels like a professional tool, prone to being nervous in the wrong hands. Like mine. The acclimatisation time is longer than in any other car I have ever driven. And it's a little bit stressful, because it can feel edgy and nervous and a really, really big handful.

Which is also what's so good about it - what makes it so rewarding if you can tame it. Clearly, I am not talking about myself here, but Fernando Alonso, who's taken time out from not talking to Lewis to buy an SLR coupe with his own money. I only scraped the surface in terms of what it can do. And you know what? As with the coupe, I love the Roadster - not in spite of its flaws, but because of them. It makes life interesting.

Of course, it's not all about flaws. There are plenty of things to love about the Roadster. The steering feels beautifully weighted and meaty - just how I like it.

Mercedes doesn't have a manual able to take 575lb ft of torque, so it drives through a five-speed automatic gearbox, which is really responsive. You can drive it in Russian playboy mode (automatic) or Lewis Hamilton mode (manual paddleshift - there is even a level III 'Race' shift-speed option).

And of course it is deeply, thickly, awesomely fast. It is speed and power with blood dripping out of it - raw and sexy and thrilling. It might have the arrow-shaped tip of the Formula One Silver Arrow, but when you squeeze the accelerator and it shoves you back in your seat, hard, you feel more like a Red Arrows pilot. It's brilliant.

And it sounds absolutely incredible - a growly, whistly, rumbling yowl like a gale-force wind through a chimney from the exhaust pipes at thigh level, just behind the front wheels.

Which is why I would have it over the Murcielago Roadster. Although the Lambo is clearly a better driver's car, for me, the delivery of speed is just too clinical. I am female, and I love a bit of drama and theatrics. This is precisely what you get from the SLR Roadster.

You also get to be a member of the SLR Club. Which means you get to go on track days, drive new models like the Roadster before anyone else, go and look at sad, fat people (the opera) and not only get VIP tickets to all the Grands Prix but high-five Hamilton and Alonso in the pit garage.

Disgusting, eh? Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't wrong - it's just that they don't know where to shop.

Emma Parker Bowles

- ONLY REGISTERED AND ACTIVATED USERS CAN SEE ALL LINKS - CLICK HERE TO REGISTER