GranCabrio Trofeo

Some roads exist for open-top cars, and the Alghero–Bosa coast road is one of them: kilometre after kilometre carved into the cliffside, the sea always off your right shoulder, griffon vultures gliding above Capo Marargiu and almost nothing built between the tarmac and the horizon. Driven in a GranCabrio Trofeo with the hood down, it becomes a total experience — wild helichrysum and salt on the air, the V6 filling the silence, the west-coast light turning amber towards evening. In our guide to the perfect convertibles for the Sardinian coast we explain why a car like this counts double here.

Then there is the ritual of the return: the hood closing in seconds, an aperitivo on the old ramparts as the sun drops behind Capo Caccia, the evening beginning where the driving ends. With delivery in Alghero you set off straight from the old town, and the next day you can point north towards Stintino and the white sand of La Pelosa.

In the open air the 550 hp three-litre twin-turbo loses every filter: the full-bodied exhaust note reaches your ears unmediated, the turbos adding a thin whistle on pick-up and the overrun burbling back off the rock walls of the coast road. The drive modes change the car's voice — composed in Comfort, burnished in GT, openly brazen once you select Sport or Corsa with the valves wide open.

Wind management is better than you would expect: with the deflector fitted and the windows up, you can hold a conversation at normal volume even at main-road pace. All-wheel drive brings calm to hairpins still damp from the morning, the eight-speed automatic swaps gears without unsettling the body, and the 3.6-second sprint to 100 km/h sits there, on call, for the first open straight. An open four-seater capable of 316 km/h that you drive with a relaxed elbow: that is its particular brand of luxury.

Among high-performance convertibles, genuine four-seaters can be counted on one hand. The GranCabrio Trofeo is one of them: behind the front seats you find not a padded parcel shelf but two places where people really travel, and the idea of arriving four-up, top down, on a seafront promenade at sunset stops being a compromise and becomes the plan for the evening.

Our car, finished in Grigio Maratea with a dark fabric hood, carries the understated elegance that works better in Sardinia than any excess. It belongs to LSM Car Luxury's selection of convertibles for rent in Sardinia; if you want the same soul with a fixed roof, look to the GranTurismo Trofeo, its closed twin.