Swiss and cheesy

FORGET the Ferrari 458 Spider, the BMW 650i Convertible and even the new MINI Roadster. Next year's ultimate open top car will be made in Switzerland from bits of bamboo.

Chances are you're too busy scraping the ice off your windscreen to contemplate going anywhere near a convertible, but even in the middle of deepest winter a slightly bonkers concept car from a company based about 20 minutes' drive, from Zurich, is being hailed as one of next year's unlikely motorshow stars.

Switzerland as a nation has never really taken the car to its heart - motorsport, for instance, is banned altogether - and I've already reckoned Rinspeed, this new car's creator, is the result of all the latent enthusiasm left to boil over among the country's few petrolhead residents.

In previous years they've given us the Splash, the world's first and as far as I know only hydrofoil car, the Presto, which can stretch in size at the touch of a button, and the X-Trem, which is what a Mercedes M Class would look like if you asked a small child to redesign it as a yellow pickup truck with a hovercraft on the back. As a car company, they're ingenious and insane in equal measure.

So it's not at all surprising to discover the Rinspeed Bamboo has an interior lined with - you guessed it - bamboo - and an exterior painted in gold and topped off with some poles and a bit of black fabric. Apparently, it's meant to remind you of St Tropez at some point in the Seventies, with Brigitte Bardot behind the wheel with playboy Gunther Sachs at her side. That's the company's description, not mine!

It is, particularly from the viewpoint of a frosty British person, possibly about the most pointless vehicle I've ever seen, unless you're actually convinced you're a character from the Roger Moore era of James Bond films and have Boney M's greatest hits on standby. Even if Seventies fashion makes a comeback next spring you've still got remember what it is; a beach buggy lined with bamboo and crafted by lunatics in a shed in Switzerland.

I still want one though.