Cockpit Cover

A cockpit cover is the least glamorous accessory a roadster owner buys and probably the most useful. It is a fitted sheet that closes the whole opening — over the seats, the console and the rear shelf — so that a car parked outside keeps the sun off its interior and the dust and leaves out of it. Owners who do not have garage space use one instead of a full car cover because it can be fitted and removed in under a minute and never touches the paint.

What makes or breaks a cover is how it is anchored, and the arrangement described here is the one that works: loops or straps that fasten around the door handles, the mirrors and each wiper arm, plus a flap that is closed inside the boot lid so the trailing edge cannot lift. Fastened that way a cover stays put in strong wind, which is the usual complaint about cheaper ones that rely on an elastic hem alone.

The photographs and the note here come from an owner's own pages about keeping and restoring a small British sports car, published on this domain and kept as they were. Suppliers and prices from that time are historical; the fitting principles, and the test of a good cover, are not.