Refinement - The Lexus ISC250C

Refinement, what does it feel like? Having high tea at the Ritz hotel, that’s refined. Having a beach side massage in the Caribbean, that too. Being chauffeured in the back of a Limo to go to a red carpet premiere, refined.

Car companies for years have tried to capture that feeling of refinement, some have it in their DNA without even trying - Mercedes, Jaguar, Rolls Royce. Others have to work at it - VW, Audi, BMW. With them it just doesn’t happen by chance, they spend billions on putting refinement in their cars.

Lexus come to the market later than the rest, so they could look at all the mistakes that others had made and perfect their own cars. The LS range of Lexus is sublime; indeed the original refined trophy holders like Mercedes and Jaguar even went so far as to copy some of the copier’s ideas.

Now Lexus have a brand new car to bring to the market - The IS250C. And this, unlike other Lexus saloons, has a steel roof which folds into the boot. Although they do have the SC430 (but that’s more of a Sports Grande tourer) here’s the problem - as soon as you whip the ceiling of any car you can chuck refinements out the window together with your sunglasses, baseball cap and toupee!

Having tested the new IS250C in the south of France I can only gush on how good convertible motoring can be. In its perfect environment, top down, glasses on, the IS is so refined that not a strand of my barnet moved in the wind. Even the Mark Levinson surround sound stereo automatically adjusts for when the roof's in the boot, along with the air conditioning.

I could rattle on and tell you all about the V6 engine and auto box or even the sharp styling, but for me the Lexus brand is all about the “R” word and the cracking IS250C is the only car I could pick Mrs B up FROM the hairdressers in.