MY FUNNY VALENTINE

THE LIDLESS LEXUS IMAGINED AS A PERSONAL LUXURY CONVEYANCE

- KIM REYNOLDS

Technology certainly can change in a half century. The process of erecting the convertible top of my 1959 Austin-Healey Bugeye Sprite starts with digging its folded steel tube frame out from behind the seats, spreading its fingerlike tubes, connecting all their ends together, and gingerly cantilevering it across the cockpit and then down into vertical slots on the left and right sides. Except everything is misaligned by an inch, so you have to climb up on top of the seats and wrestle it like an Everglades alligator.

This is just the quivering, hair-trigger frame. Any sudden movement will cause it to mousetrap off the car and violently disassemble. Which would be just as well, as I still don’t have the vinyl top that makes getting into the Healey like wiggling into a pup tent. Instead, I just snap the tonneau cover’s passenger side in place and, if it rains, stare straight ahead when stopped at a light.

You can only imagine, then, my reeling at raising the retracted top of the 2021 Lexus LC 500 Convertible. There’s a tiny, leather-covered lid on the center console that tilts up with the flick of one finger, whereupon the whole back of the car erupts in such an elaborate fan dance of swinging panels and pole-vaulting fabric that it’s worthy of musical accompaniment. May I suggest the last 16 seconds of the “1812 Overture,” as that’s exactly how long it takes. Even better, this function can be performed at up to 31 mph, which translates, after a 5-second delay, into myriad Instagram postings from your sidewalk audience. This, my friends, is what 61 years of relentless automotive progress since the Bugeye has brought us.