CRUISING DOWN Shek O Road in a brand new Mercedes-Benz CLK 320 was nice enough. But this was a Cabriolet, the top was down and the sun was shining. Motoring writer paradise, in other words.
Added to that, I had not been to this part of the island for 10 years, so there was an air of discovery about the drive. We'd set off from the Lee Gardens showroom through congested traffic, inching along Electric Road and onto the East Island Corridor, the tyres thumping across the concrete sections just as they would on an autobahn. At at steady 60km/h, we escaped Chai Wan and went zooming up the mountain road towards Tai Tam. Here we could relax and enjoy the car.
This was the Avantgarde version, which means dark grey leather and a kind of brushed metal trim instead of the maple wood found on the Elegance line. Frankly, I prefer the latter, but in view of all this luxury and style - not to mention the weather - I decided not to be choosy.
The exterior is all grace and refinement, from the three-pointed star on the low nose to the sharply raked windscreen, the side-strakes and the seven-spoke alloy wheels. It looks even better with the top down, when there's only the merest line around the upper boot to suggest where it's been hidden.
We stopped at the earliest opportunity and I pressed and held a single button. Electric motors hummed, clicked and whirred as the boot lid went up, the top detached from the windscreen and folded into the boot, and the rear deck dropped back down - and all in just 20 seconds.
We soon reached the narrow Shek O Road, a run that demands acceleration where it's least appropriate. Going fast here means trusting to luck on the curves, so we opted for discretion.
We swooped down the lethal curves to Shek O, the tight bends cambered to fling the unwary down the shotcrete slopes, then cruised past the impossibly green golf links and into Shek O village, now replete with modern bathing facilities, lots of shops and a huge parking lot. Here we stopped to deactivate the sensitive front parking sensors.