S's are faster than lightening.

Just drop it down a cog and drive it like you tortured it

 

Ideally, it's dispersal of the massive voltage through the steel, which you need. It goes around the car, not through it, which is nice.

It'd probably find the frame rail more attractive than the driver, since you're well insulated by the interior surfaces and steel conducts better than water.

Best to wear rubber underwear, just in case. Wouldn't wanna soil the upholstery!

 

One of the safest places to be in a storm is your car! The tyres are rubber - don't conduct at all well - so the lightning will hit a tree/building instead.

Also as mentioned, the metal bodywork will act as a Faraday Cage and conduct the electricity around the shell of the car, leaving the inside of the cage uneffected

(chemistry degree )

 

Lightening will seek the lowest resistance path to earth. The soft top material is perhaps 3 mm thick, which presents NO challenge for a few tens of Kilo volts! It has beneath it a metal frame which could tend to attract a bolt. In any case there is far more rubber between the wheels and the road.

However, lightening can jump big air gaps. Once a strike starts the physics of the air changes and forms a conducting 'tube' - the very core of a lightening zap that we see. Jumping 100mm from the bottom of a car to the ground is no big deal.

Electricity tries to flow in the outer layer of a conductor where that conductor is a closed volume - or a nearly closed volume - which is why you can sit in a tin tip and be quite safe.

An S roof down has metal in the screen frame and in the roll hoops - both higher than your head - so they should give protection (but I ain't going to test this!). Roof up you have the added pair of roof bars giving extra protection. However, your head could be very close to the point of 'impact'. You may not get electrocuted - just covered in vaporised steel and burning vinyl.

In reality is it not often that an S will be the most 'tempting' place for a strike - unless you are the only car in a huge flat area with no trees, hedges, houses nearby. Picture a lone S in a big field in East Anglia. That might be an issue.



Hang on. I live in East Anglia .... and more thunder is possible today.



I am staying in today.

 

Just to put this all in perspective. Wood is not a good conductor. Yet a strike on the top of a 30metre tree can cause sufficient current to flow in the trunk of the tree to boil the water (wood is always holding some water) in the wood causing the water to convert to high pressure steam which then causes the wood to explode, splitting the tree sometimes from top to bottom.

3mm of vinyl - No problem!

1mm of rubber underpants - !!

 

Ah, you'd probably be ok anyway :

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Sullivan bas the dubious distinction of being the most lightning-struck person ever recorded. Between 1942 and his death in 1983, Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times. The first lightning strike shot through Sullivan's leg and knocked his big toenail off. In 1969, a second strike burned off his eyebrows and knocked him unconscious. Another strike just a year later, left his shoulder seared. In 1972 his hair was set on fire and Roy had to dump a bucket of water over his head to cool off. In 1973, another bolt ripped through his hat and hit him on the head, set his hair on fire again, threw him out of his truck and knocked his left shoe off. A sixth strike in 1976 left him with an injured ankle. The last lightning bolt to hit Roy Sullivan sent him to the hospital with chest and stomach burns in 1977. Sullivan could never offer any explanation for this strange and unwelcome electrical attraction.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weather/weather.html

 

doesn't lightning start at the ground first and try to make a connection with the positive ions in the clouds.

also the most likely point of impact on an s would be the aerial.perhaps??