TOPLESS AT THE BEACH

The sun, the surf, the sand, and an E 53 Cabriolet make for a day to remember

- Rivan RS

As one grows older, there are fewer and fewer firsts — the first time I drove a car was over two decades ago, my first self-driven 500-km trip was about a decade ago, and my first supercar drive was just two years ago. On the other hand, the firsts have now become more special, because I’ve realised that there will be less of them moving forward. Which is why, the time I lost my ‘Conv-irginity’ is something I will savour for the rest of my life. And I have the Mercedes-AMG E 53 4Matic+ Cabriolet to thank for that.

In order to make this first even more of an occasion, I decided to take the E 53 Cabriolet to the beach. After all, being topless at a beach is almost a given, and there’s room aplenty (and a certain lack of traction) to really explore what this drop-top AMG has to offer. Of course, the beach we had chosen was well over an hour away, so that gave us a chance to experience what the convertible would be like on Mumbai’s regular roads, through chock-a-block traffic and on the open highway.

Typical of our shoot schedule, we started off early in the morning, and naturally, the first thing I did was hit the button on the centre console that would allow the cloth roof to go down into the boot — I could chug along at 50 kph while doing so, and it took about 20 seconds. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a typical winter morning, and the heat of the day began soon after the sun rose. Despite that, the cooled seats (they also get a heating function, but there was no point in that), and the superb three-zone automatic climate control kept Govind and I chill as we headed out of Mumbai on the unsuitably named Western Express Highway.