Over the years, I’ve owned a couple of different cars with mechanisms for opening up the top and catching a little fresh air, and I have to say it’s one of my favorite things you can get a car to do. I’ve had a Saab convertible for years, and I don’t even care that where I live, I can only open it about ten days a year. I gladly accept the reduced forward visibility (because of the heavy frame around the windshield) and the nearly nonexistent rearward visibility (because the back window is about the size of a comic book), the increased road noise, and having to do that little windows-open-a-bit-and-shut-again thing to make them fully seal against the weather strips just for that magical first day in late spring when the time has come to undo the latches and wind back the lid. There are even some facets of the top-up experience I actually like – the sound of a heavy rain, for instance. And, contrary to popular belief, it isn’t cold in winter or drafty anytime. The Swedes know how to build for foul weather.

When I was younger, I had a T-top Camaro. This was a whole different animal. The tops were heavy, taking them off and putting them on was a pain in the ass, they took up the whole damn trunk (not that a Camaro has much of one, admittedly) when stowed, they started leaking about half an hour after we took delivery, it was drafty and cold, and there was the ever-present terror that you’d manage to very expensively break one while putting them on or taking them off (though, fortunately, I never did). To add insult to injury, it didn’t really feel much different with them off. Oh, sure, you had the open space where the bit you’d normally hit your head on getting into the car should’ve been, and that was nice, but on the road it was just noisier. With the same view through the rearview mirror either way, there just wasn’t any particular feeling of… liberation.

Put simply, the convertible is worth it; the T-top wasn’t.
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