7th October 2009

Engine screaming, exhaust bellowing, Black Sabbath on the stereo - and convincing your car insurance broker that going deaf is a personal-injury accident.

That, according to latest research from California, is what can happen to top-down motorists who enjoy taking their Pontiac Firebrands to the limit.

Researchers have measured noise levels experienced while driving with the roof down at 50, 60 and 70mph - and they’re having to shout to make themselves heard.

It seems that wind-in-the-hair motorists are consistently exposing themselves to between 88 and 90 decibels of noise, peaking at 99 decibels when things really hot up.

Which is not good news. "Long or repeated exposure to sounds over 85 decibels is widely recognised as leading to permanent hearing loss," say doctors at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton.

But all is not lost. According to the research, the simple expedient of winding the windows up will bring sound levels back down to 82 decibels while keeping the smile on your face.

Except, perhaps, if you’re driving the 200mph Bentley Continental GTC convertible, in which case the smile my well be ripped completely off your face by the slipstream.

According to The German Car Blog, someone asked Dr Ulrich Eichhorn, head of engineering at Bentley, what would happen at 200mph.

"I’m not sure," he said. "Why don’t you come along and find out? There could be some fun to be had." And there was.

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