Asking when Opera will "improve" itself back to the 12v is like asking when some car company will "improve" their current models to some point in the dim past... and it's just as likely to occur.
It isn't. Well, I do admit there is more emotionality in the formulated question than was required, still I don't agree that asking for the multiple good useful features the Presto Opera had equals asking for NEEDLESS features or asking for the past to be brought back. The Bleep engine seems to bypass such options as menu editing, keyboard navigation and (sic!) a browsable bookmarks manager in it's ethos. Just think about this: now to open a torrent link in a certain client, you have to store it/open a file manager/then first locate the dl'ed file and only then choose the destined application via a context menu. In your ill-suited analogy of car models that would constitute to switching to a "new" five wheels/three doors standard model line with a pretentious marketing campaign mentoring it's justified by 'modernity'.
The whole new Opera browser stinks enormously though - I'll give it to it - beating the old in displaying now few but soon to be more new web-sites. And my intuition suggests this is some irreversible resolute decision by the Opera people who, regrettably, with the large sums of cash infused by Google just follow their orders and plans, having totally abandoned, no - ruined - the unique, brilliant, highly and cognitively human-adjusted vision of the browser. Truthfully, RIP Opera.
All this frustration resulted in my impatient rude threads pleading for a silver-lining to the dreadful calamity. But generally, putting the wailing over this callous murder aside, what plans does the developer team have about Opera? Will the menu customization be ever brought back, for example?