The current Honda Prelude has been around for a few years but it has plenty of power, excellent road manners, and gets reasonable fuel economy. If Prelude is a little too expensive, take a look at our other Best Buy the Volkswagen New Beetle. It offers interesting styling and a nice mix of comfort, performance, and economy.

If raw performance is what you are after we Recommend the Chevrolet Camaro, Ford Mustang, and Pontiac Firebird. Not as pleasant to live with on a daily basis, these cars offer a lot of bang for your buck. New last year, the fun-to-drive Toyota Celica also earns the Recommended nod with its reputation for reliability.

VW's only convertible--at least for now--improved its calendar-year sales by 22.4 percent in 2000, reaching just over 14,000. That almost erased the previous year's drop of 24 percent.

The Cabrio should be redesigned for model-year 2003, but some sources suggest it may part company with the Golf/Jetta line, which is slated to be redone for 2004. However it turns out, the next Cabrio will reportedly lose the familiar over-the-cockpit "hoop" in favor of a folding hard top a la Mercedes-Benz SLK. This may be manually operated on the base-trim model.

Although a factory-built New Beetle convertible is slated to arrive in early 2002, VW is still said to be working on a 2-seat roadster derived from its next-generation Polo, a smaller front-drive economy subcompact not sold in the U.S. Intended to capitalize on the success of sister division Audi's TT, it's reportedly a targa-type coupe with lift-off center roof panel and an exaggerated Jetta-style nose. The 4-cyl power source would be either a highly tuned 1.6-liter or perhaps a 170-horsepower turbocharged 1.8. Timing is unclear for this on-again, off-again project, but we wouldn't expect it before 2004. That assumes it gets the green light and is engineered from the get-go to meet U.S. standards.