In 1962 my brother bought a Kombi with split seats and built
a camper into the back.  A year later, with a baby, he popped
the top.  This was in Denver.

Here's what it looked like:
http://jones.colorado.edu/VW/originalpoptop/Splitties.jpg
[The 15-window bus is mine; I'm the tall guy in the center with
my back to the camera, age 22.]

Here's a better view of the poptop.  You can see the bed level
in the rear hatch, raised up so there was storage below it.
Westfalia never did catch on to that.
http://jones.colorado.edu/VW/originalpoptop/DPJpoptop.jpg

The best view:
http://jones.colorado.edu/VW/originalpoptop/DPJpoptop2.jpg
The front roof folded down and then the rear, which rested on
the front upright part, so there was a slope from that top
to the rear.  The pieces were made of corrugated fiberglass.

He drove it until about 1971, when with a second kid, he got
an F-150 and an Okie box.

Anyway, Douglas Payne Jones (1936-2011) built a poptop in 1963.
It took Westfalia five more years to figure it out.

Richard