Last year, having reached 40 years of age, I bought a convertible. It was a great decision. This may seem like a standard midlife crisis purchase, and maybe it was. In my defense, I bought the car more for the manual transmission than the ability to make the roof go away. Also, it is a 20-year-old Saab, which did not exactly break the bank, in part because the roof had become like the transmission: manual. Still, nostalgia was part of it.