Most Americans remember the Honda Civic Del Sol as a dinky little Honda Civic coupe with a sweet, sweet Targa top. Which you had to remove by hand. Like a peasant. But in Japan and Europe, it came with this neat automatic mechanism called the TransTop. And it’s as close to a robot butler as you’re going to get on a car.
Okay, so it only has one function, which is to take the roof off. But still, it’s got arms! Like a person! A human person! That only has arms and then recedes with its white helmet back into your trunk!
It’s needlessly, enormously complicated, which in my book makes it perfect. So what if it’s “prone to expensive motor failure?” So what if you have to find and ship an older model over from somewhere far away? So what if parts are nearly impossible to find in America?
WORTH IT.