The 2013 Hyundai Veloster serves up a good mix of sportiness, practicality, and fuel-efficiency, and it’s already a pretty great car for those who live in the city, don’t yet have kids, and stay active. But as we found a few times with the Six Month Road Test Hyundai Veloster we had earlier this year, the Veloster’s low roofline isn’t always as good as you might hope for stowing gear.

The thought definitely crossed our minds: Why not open up the glass top completely, as some kind of convertible, while keeping the attractive roofline and unique three-side-door layout?

It appears that some of Hyundai’s U.S. designers had the same thought; conceived at Hyundai Design North America, the Veloster C3 Roll Top Concept has a canvas roof that can be opened toward the windshield or toward the rear of the vehicle, depending on the needs. And those needs might be so varied as to provide convertible-like open-top operation around town, or (with the top rolled-forward and the rear seatbacks folded) a ‘recreation mode’ that would provide more height for bikes, surfboards, or even kayaks.

For this Portland-based correspondent, it’s easy to see the inspiration from ‘fixies’ (fixed-gear bikes), which Hyundai points out are no longer the domain of hipsters but moving into the bicycling mainstream. Within fixie culture, a teal or other bright-colored rear wheel is a typical way of singling out fixies (with pride, as they take a lot more more skill to ride safely)—and the sometimes extreme-sport mentality that goes with them.

Furthermore, Hyundai found its inspiration for the bright-red color of the fabric top itself from the billboard advertising on rolling soft-side trailers.

All the modifications on the Veloster C3 were made with cost in mind, and the driver can change the color of the rear wheels easily, while a high-gloss white paint, combined with the flat-red and flat-black details and smoked taillights amount to a look that looks urban, but not in a street-racer sense.

Inside, the cargo floor is tiled with a mosaic of old skateboard decks. Other details in the concept include a larger, hexagonal grille, sculpted side skirts, LED accents, free-flowing circular exhaust pipes, and a more robust intake manifold sound. Power is unchanged from the Veloster Turbo, at 201 hp.

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