MY FUNNY VALENTINE

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