Ah, the traditional roadster, is there anything quite so magnificent as wending your way down some twisty, sun dappled canyon road, with the wind in your hair and the melodious note of a barely restrained exhaust in your ears? There is? What’s her name? Really?

Well I’ll be damned.

Okay, so there may be something better, but rolling in a roadster is still pretty far up there on the like-to-do-this scale. And for a couple of decades now the go-to choice for budget conscious roadster fun has been Mazda’s sweet little MX-5 Miata. Well, today screw that, we want to know what pre-Miata roadster most gets your motor running.

Now, we’re using the term roadster loosely here, as the standard definition of a roadster is an open-top car that lacks roll up windows. Usually they also come with a top that requires a troop of Boy Scouts and someone with an engineering degree to erect. That’s a far cry from the Miata’s reach-around top and power door glass, or even a car like Tesla’s targa-topped electric, which they oddly named the Roadster. But here we’re considering any two-place convertible with sporting pretensions, whether that be MGB, 280SL or even 968 944, cars that pre-date Mazda’s entry – and eventual dominance – of not only the class but the category. What’s your favorite pre-Miata roadster?

Image: [autopiaforums]