I finally broke down and bought an Arii Beetle for the Carrera Panamericana. Fun little kit.
I decided to go with car number 262 in the Beetle caravan.
The main difference between car 261 and 262 is the fold-up open top roof. Both cars were apparently red. The kit was molded in red. Why fight gravity?
I studied the removable top in more detail. It did not look like someone stuck a matress on the roof of the car as pictured in the example of the model above. It might look more like the thickness of a sheet of paper on a 1/32 model. Like the example of the real car below.