@Autojunkie: Seriously, making it Wrangler-based would be easiest. Even if they just built a Scrambler with the regular or H2-SUT-style four-door Wrangler shell, it'd be awesome - the four-door would sell to suburbia, while the two-door would sell to folks who want a tough yet compact four-wheel-drive pickup.

@Schaefft: Nope, that's an Elegant. Good car, though.

@Maxichamp: "The frugal, democratically elected, and Socialist president, Salvador Allende, needed a nice car for Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Chile. So he picked out a used, four-year old convertible."

@willyolio: An interesting approach. Do you see $500 in parts? Maybe...

@KAR120C: I'd venture to say that America needs a modern version of this today - usably long bed, car-based but with some ability in the snow and mud, simple, cheap and durable. They are out there, they just aren't here.

@Elhigh: Said lever, as I recall, had a tendency to kill headlight bulbs because of the forceful ker-chunking up and down that the pop-ups tended to suffer. (Or is that just a legend?) Other than that, a simple, well-executed design.

@gman1023: Long before me, said grandfather had a couple Type 1s (orange hardtop and light blue convertible, though being an older Jew he's since grown a lot more conscious about owning a German car, even one that isn't really German anymore), and one of his first few cars was a '63 Impala convertible, so yeah, he's…

@necoro47: "Dad, I thought you were going to buy a Subaru."

My basically-absent father had an Escort, sorry, Lynx before I was born, and it lasted long enough to hand down to my mother's younger brother (greatest uncle ever, by the way), so it couldn't have been that bad.

@87CapriceEstate: Boy style? Well, I guess most women wouldn't be interested.

Somehow, a New Jersey license plate doesn't quite suit it, so it's good that the original plates - from East Germany, presumably? - are still there.

@LuciferV8: It's been done, and the remains made for an excellent, well, cruel penalty.

@900pilot: Well, ah, thanks! I suppose the car doesn't really hurt my appearance in that sense, either.

@calzonegolem: Get some cheap smokes, too, while you're here. I tend to suggest that Massachusetts folks pick up some pepper spray while they're at it, but Maine and Vermont, like New Hampshire, are more rational than Massachusetts as far as that's concerned.

@Novaload: Yeah, they really are best served by a glossy, freshly-waxed robin's-egg blue, if'n you ask me.

@heel_toe: The back seats fold down, and you can more easily fit bulky items inside without the frame under the rear window getting in the way. As for lockable concealed storage, I like the way the above Skoda's designed, and more simply, the New Beetle (for one example) - the parcel shelf in the latter flips up and…

@CraigSu: She is a 244, aye - I have no idea what she weighs, but I know it's slightly more than 3,000.

@krutil: You could fold the rear seats flat in a '90s Escort sedan; I'd expect that to be standard in a new E-class. Hell, I don't see why we don't have European-style sort-of-hatchbacks with sedan-shaped bodies and rear windows that rise up, or (better yet) the option to open the boot either way, as can the new Skoda…

@modisch: Interesting... I took Driver's Ed when I was in high school, but I didn't get my license for over a year afterward because I didn't really need it. Honestly, the classes didn't teach me much anyway, and I've learned a lot more just from driving around - as should be expected.

@dealchicago: Yeah, I only use it to confirm how far I am from the curb once I have parked, not to get between cars.