Convertible hire on the French Riviera

A convertible is the easiest car to drive on this coast and the hardest to put down. Cannes settles it first. The order that installed the two permanent cycle lanes removed vehicle circulation from the seaward lane of the Croisette's south carriageway between place de Gaulle and the Roseraie garden, and stopping or parking there is banned and enforced by impound. So a Croisette handover happens on the north carriageway or on a hotel forecourt. Kerbside on the sea side is not available to us, and it is not available to anyone else either.

Saint-Tropez closes its old town with retractable bollards on the rue Allard, the rue Gambetta and the place Forbin, 16:00 to 03:00 from 1 July, and entry is by prior registration filed at the port parking office or by email with supporting documents. There is no talking your way through it at the bollard. Monaco goes further: under article 9 of the municipal order of 2007, Monaco-Ville is closed to every vehicle not registered in the Principality or in the Alpes-Maritimes. And in Nice the bollards come back up immediately behind each vehicle, so you never follow the car in front through and you never reverse.

None of that is a reason to take a different car. It is a reason to settle the meeting point before you book rather than at 19:00 with the bags in the boot.

Every card on this page carries one luggage figure. What the data does not say is whether that figure holds with the roof stowed, and on a folding-roof car those are rarely the same number. Ask us and we will get the answer for the specific car from the operator rather than estimate it. An estimate that turns out low is discovered at the kerb, which is the worst possible place.

The second half is simpler. We hand the car over with the roof closed and we take it back the same way. Between those two moments a convertible left in a public car park is a car with a fabric roof, and that is worth thirty seconds of thought before a two-day stay in the open at Pampelonne.

Météo-France describes the mistral as a regional wind, turbulent and generally dry, blowing at an average of 50 km/h and reaching 80 to 100 km/h in gusts, sometimes more. It comes out of the north in the Rhône valley, turns north-west around Marseille, and arrives as a westerly on the Var coast. It is often stronger in winter and spring. An episode can last several days, occasionally more than a week. When the low sits north of the Gulf of Genoa it reaches the Côte d'Azur as well.

Read the season against that. Our Riviera calendar opens in April, and April and May are spring. The car does not change between one week and the next; the week does. We are not going to tell you which of your seven days will be still, because nobody can, and an operator who promises you that is selling a forecast he does not have.

This is the first disappointment at handover, every time. A Rolls-Royce Dawn seats four adults and means it. A Morgan Plus Four seats two, and no amount of goodwill produces a third. Between those two there is a whole run of cars whose rear bench is a rear bench in the specification sheet and a place to put a coat in practice.

So we ask how many people are travelling before we agree the car, not after. If the answer is four adults plus luggage for a week, the honest recommendation is often two cars, or this car and a transfer for the airport leg. We arrange both, and often both on the same booking.

The reason to come to us rather than to a rental platform is not the car. It is where the car is standing when you reach it. We work to named points: the quai Max Laubeuf and Port Canto in Cannes, the seven drop-off spaces on the avenue Foch at place Carnot in Saint-Tropez usable 20:00 to 03:00, La Môle at 20 km and twenty-five minutes from Saint-Tropez, the business aviation terminal beside Terminal 2 at Nice, the heliport at Fontvieille in Monaco, and villa and hotel addresses in all four cities.

One place we never use: Nice's Car Rental Center, behind P5 at Terminal 2, seven desks, the earliest opening at 06:30 and all of them closed by midnight. Nothing arranged through our network is handed over there. The address is worth knowing for the opposite reason — if your booking is with one of those seven and your flight lands at 01:20, there is no counter waiting for you.

The Mini Moke is delivered in Saint-Tropez and nowhere else. The Mini Cooper S Cabriolet is not delivered in Monaco. Everything else on this page reaches all four cities, and the city links below show what each one actually has rather than what we would like it to have.

Nothing in this category reaches an alpine resort, and that is a decision rather than a gap in the network. Savoie applies the winter equipment obligation to the whole department from 1 November to 31 March, and a rear-driven convertible on summer tyres cannot take chains. The same applies closer to home than people expect: Isola 2000 and Auron are 90 to 95 km up the Var and the Tinée from Nice, and Isola, Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée and Valdeblore are on the Alpes-Maritimes list for the same months.

Three more cases where we would rather talk you out of it. Four adults with a week of luggage, because the rated figure is two bags. A Nice-to-Saint-Tropez airport run on 15 August, which is 120 km and 180 minutes on a bad day with the roof up the whole way. And any address inside a bollarded old town where the car will spend six days parked and one hour moving.

If one of those describes your week, tell us and we will point you at the SUV page instead. Losing the booking costs us less than watching you meet the car and discover it.