Top Gear's Top 9: Nineties car crazes that need a comeback

Remember the days when you had to put in some effort if you wanted to feel the wind in your hair? This was before every family car had a giant glass roof, and sunroofs were opened by unplugging a little handle from the ceiling and winding it round and round. Easy to operate, easy to fix.

The obvious choice for a 1990s comeback. Pop-up headlights are very cool. Many assume they’re now banned, but although proper eyelids were technically driven to extinction by safety regs, it was only because it didn’t make financial sense for manufacturers to try to make them squishy.

Something that was actually banned outright was the fitment of rigid bull bars. First introduced in Australia to protect cars in the outback that collided with cows, kangaroos and wallabies, they weren’t all that necessary on a LR Discovery in Surrey.

We need an estate car comeback first, but once that happens we really hope rear-facing jump seats also make it back. Remember seeing the faces of 1990s kids in the back of W124s (OK, technically S124 estates) as they gave following drivers the middle finger on motorways? Iconic.

The Skoda Felicia Fun, the Rover 200 BRM, the Volkswagen Polo Harlequin, the Fiat Panda Italia 90 – we could go on. The 1990s were a time where manufacturers weren’t afraid to go all out with special editions. Now we just get boring Black Packs and a special plaque if we’re lucky.

Much like the estate car, the two-door coupe has seen a downturn in popularity. In the 1990s though they were everywhere. When was the last time you saw a Fiat Coupe, a Volvo C70, an Alfa GTV or a Peugeot 406 Coupe? We’re worse off without them.

Remember when it wasn’t just buses with wacky fabric seats? Perhaps best encapsulated by the original Renault Twingo, we all used to love a colourful and quirky set of fabric chairs. The MkI Twingo’s could even be flattened fully to make a double bed.

Having a full-size spare wheel on the back of your SUV was much more commonplace in the 1990s, and having that much real estate on the back of your car meant you had a decent canvas to play with. Why do we remember so many lions and horses?

Whether it was advertising a local radio station, warnings of aftermarket security systems, random surfing shops in Cornwall or brilliantly bright decals, drivers in the 1990s weren’t afraid to slap a sticker onto the side of their pride and joy.