My experience has been that a properly functioning top is actually a nicely engineered feature. There's definitely a specific procedure to which you have to adhere when raising and lowering it -- and it's certainly a tight fit -- but I never felt it was a poor design. You've got to factor in a lot of issues when you sit here 40 years later like worn, or even bent, top frames, ill-fitted or poorly made aftermarket canvas, missing springs.....
A fairly common failure that is attributable to driver error is to drive at speed with the soft top up but not properly fastened in the rear. At highway speeds, the top can work itself free on either rear corner of the tonneau cover and twist itself up pretty badly. I've seen it happen on more than one SL. My point is that probably more than a few of us are driving cars with frames with this kind of incident in their past. I'm sure Gernold will confirm this.
One thing Gernold will tell you is that aftermarket tops are skimpy on the fabric. I remember he mentioned to me that he recently helped GAHH develop a better-fitting skin for the Pagoda SL.
Douglas Kim
New York
USA
