I’m not a roadster person, really. I drive them, enjoy them, and review them. That’s part of my job. But my lifestyle, even at a time when mid-life crisis can strike my age group, wouldn’t work with a roadster as my only car.

Still, if for some reason I was told that I MUST only drive a roadster, I think owning a BMW Z4 would be the least painful answer. Indeed, pain probably wouldn’t come into the equation.

That’s a view as I write 35,000 feet above the earth after a day in the back-heights of the Algarve in BMW’s latest sports car. My head and face are tingling from the last real sun I’ll probably see this side of St Patrick’s Day, and also from the wind that found its way around and over the screen.

That’s all part of the ‘good’ side, I guess. And in the winding mountain roads north of Faro, there’s another of the ‘goods’, because the views are breathtaking and the Z4 seems well made for the routes through and around them. More than once I wondered, though, what people in the high villages do for a living.

And I suppose they in turn have been wondering what the various processions of open cars for the past three weeks have been all about.

This car is the latest in a list of BMW roadsters. A list that started in 1928. And isn’t likely to end with the Z4.

They laid themselves some ground rules. Or followed the old ones, perhaps. The key one being that roadsters are traditionally soft-tops, so no folding metal roof was considered. But there’ll be a detachable hard-top from the autumn of next year, so in a climate like ours, it can become a proper winter car.

Another rule was a BMW one for all its cars - that it should be front engine and rear drive. and, of course, that it should be as neutral in balance as possible. It is, as close to 50:50 as you’re going to get.

Stylistically, though a completely new car, the Z4 follows another roadster tenet: of having a long bonnet up front, hardly any overhangs anywhere, and with the driver (and the passenger) virtually sitting over the rear axle.

The front end is aggressive in the kind of way that says ‘I KNOW I’m the best, so I don’t have to prove anything by being rough with you’. It also shows the way BMW styling is going, and you can see, too, reflections of the new 7-Series in it. A non-subtle sculpt begins across the bonnet front and matures along the side, adding visually a strength to the car.

The rear is segmented strongly, with a boot that makes its own fashion statement in a way that also adds to the boot space. That’s important in a roadster that wants to be a real car - we saw pictures of a golf bag, and other stuff besides, in the luggage area. But that spoiler lip which houses the high-level brake light also has a seriously important effect on the aerodynamics. The rear lights are distinctive, and won’t be mistaken for anything else once they become familiar in the motoring public’s consciousness.

A pair of U-hoops behind each seat aren’t simply decorative - if you manage the difficult feat of overturning one of these, they’ll keep your head more or less intact, even if you don’t deserve it for having been such an incompetent.

We saw the usual pictures of crash tests, and the Z4 seems to be fairly sound in that department. Designing a car as a roadster requires its own specific structural special elements, both from a stiffness during ordinary driving point of view, and from maintaining the integrity of the passenger cell when there’s no roof to help.

But - barring the inevitable ‘other driver at fault’ situation - the Z4 driver shouldn’t end up in the kind of position that will require a personal crash test. A dynamic stability control system supervises all the other electronic gizmos which, if I listed them, would switch you off completely. And really, it should only need to operate in a seriously over-the-top situation.

There are a number of tried and proven bits in this car, like the suspension system from the 3-Series, suitably tweaked to make the most of the near-perfect balance. The two engine options, 2.5- and a 3-litre V6s, have won their own awards over recent years and are familiar in other applications.

There are some new ideas. The electronic steering assist, for instance, doesn’t depend on hydraulics for its power, and is the first unit of its kind in a BMW. In short terms, it means the driver gets a really direct feedback, while the software in an electronic system decides when and how the power assist performs. It saves fuel too. It showed itself in motorway driving as a very strong feel with no wandering, and later in the hills the assist came in much less obtrusively than I’ve noticed with electric-assist steering in ‘ordinary’ cars.

Body stiffness is always an issue for this kind of car, and the Z4 is more than twice as good in this department as the outgoing Z3. In the run around the Algarve, which does have the advantage that many roads are quite similar to what we have in Ireland, particularly in the indifferent surfaces and potholes area, the work put into the structure here showed itself in virtually no trace of scuttle shake.

We were curious about the use of run-flat tyres, because they have a tendency to give a harder ride, and have been dropped from the specification of another luxury sports car in Ireland. We were assured that they’d been factored into the suspension building from the beginning, and this wouldn’t be a problem.

Well, the car felt firm enough, but I’m still not sure how much of this was to do with the tyres and how much it was deliberate suspension setting. It certainly wasn’t intrusive.

There's 'been a lot of interest' in the Z4 in Ireland, according to Motor Import Ltd, franchisees for the BMW brand in this country. That's despite the fact that the car won't see these shores until April of next year.

Around 100 Irish motorists a year will pay around E55,000 (no official Irish prices have yet been finalised) for what they believe will be the ultimate 'premium roadster' on the market.

There are going to be 2.5- and 3-litre cars, but no plans are in place for an 'entry-level' 2-litre, as the new car is so far more than the Z3 that 'it needs a 6-cylinder engine'. I drove the 3-litre, and it was plenty powerful, enough that gearshifting on even mountain roads was kept to a minimum.

Other things to keep in mind about the new car are a brand new 6-speed gearbox, a sequential clutchless manual available as an option, and the fact that the hardtop version will be available from autumn of 2003.

No 'coupe cabriolet' here with a metal folding roof: the BMW people say the new car was designed from the first as a soft-top, to be true to the tradition. Anyway, the roof itself can be put up in 8-10sec, and it has a metal cover which eliminates the need for an extra tonneau cover.

More about it when it comes here. And by the time you read this, the sun/wind tingling will be but a memory.