These Are Some Of The Coolest Automotive Glass Roof Designs

Before wide-opening, panoramic glass roofs took over the automotive world, designers and engineers took a lot of fun risks to give car interiors more light and sun. Want a skylight that runs down the middle of the roof? Nissan would give you one on the sixth-gen Maxima. Want a skylight for every passenger? Ford did it on the Flex. Want the engineering brilliance of a glass roof built into a metal convertible top? Volkswagen did it on the Eos.

Since automakers don't do as much cool stuff like this anymore when it comes to glass roofs, lets take a look back at when they did with a few models that offered unique sunroofs and skylights.

Back when Pontiac was still around, the brand offered the midsize G6 in three body styles: Sedan, coupe and hardtop convertible. The sedan could be had with a trick four-pane panoramic roof. When opened, the rear three panes would slide back and sit atop one other while the front pane flipped up. It looked cool, but it wasn't all great. Despite the panes stowing outside, it cut into rear seat headroom, and apparently over time the roof was prone to squeaks, rattles and other quality issues.

Jeep's attempt at a full-size SUV in the 2000s was the Commander, a boxy SUV that could be had with Hemi power and a number of four-wheel-drive systems. A lesser known option were the pair of middle-row skylights on the top-line Limited trim. The fixed panels didn't open and had retractable shades, adding a lot of light when combined with the front opening sunroof.

By the early to mid 2000s, Chevy's Malibu morphed into an Americanized clone of the Opel Vectra C, and we got a weird but unique wagon variant of it called the Malibu Maxx. In addition to cool options like an SS version and a rear-seat DVD entertainment system, the Maxx had a wider skylight above the rear seats in addition to the separate, smaller front sunroof. From the outside it appeared to be one panel, but inside it was split into two, each side having their own sunshade when things got too warm.

The third-generation Nissan Quest is one of the most unique looking vans ever made. From it's table-like dash to it's avantgarde exterior design, it looked like nothing else on the road at the time. Buyers could option the Quest with four large portrait-oriented skylights, one for each passenger in the second and third rows, in addition to a regular landscape-oriented sunroof for the front passengers. It made for an airy looking interior and a chill place to sit with its dual-screen DVD setup.

Jeep saw the second-gen Liberty as a successor the Cherokee, and its boxy design certainly looked the part. To keep customers interested, Jeep gave the Liberty the option of a sliding cloth roof called Sky Slider. Motors pulled a fabric cover back, stowing in folds right above the rear seat. It looked cool, but as the years went on the Sky Slider proved to be a headache for owners, so much so that the NHTSA is full of complaints about the roof from owners.

Ford's beloved SUV-wagon-minivan-thing, the Flex, had a unique approach to skylights. Called the Vista Roof, it was an option on higher trims. It got you a front opening sunroof, two fixed skylights for each second-row passenger and an even larger skylight for third-row passengers. From the outside, it looked as if the Flex had two center skylights in-between two sunroofs. The Vista Roof option wasn't cheap, adding $1,750 onto the price.

The Land Rover Discovery Series II had a unique skylight setup, with what appears to be a dual sunroof setup, but only the front panel opens. Above the rearmost side windows were what was known as "Alpine" windows, which curved into the edges of the rear roof. Their purpose was to let rear passengers look up and view things that were high up, hence the Alpine name. This design would continue with the Discovery's successor, the LR3, as well as the new Defender

The U.S. briefly received this generation of the Astra as a Saturn, but we didn't get this cool-ass option the Europeans received. Called a panoramic windscreen, the windshield literally extended into the roof where it stopped right above the passengers heads. Rear passengers got their own tinted glass roof panel, too. The result was a cabin that had massive amounts of light and an unparalleled view of the road ahead.

The sixth-gen Nissan Maxima was a shocking departure in design from the pervious generation. Here was this sports sedan that looked like nothing else at the time — you could even have it in orange if you wanted! One of the more unique and memorable features of this generation was the SkyView fixed glass panel in the roof. Looking like a toaster slot, the narrow glass panel ran directly down the center of the roof. If you didn't want that, you could still option it with a regular sunroof.

Available on the fifth-generation Mustang was a full glass roof. Ford offered it on the V6, GT and Shelby models for $2,000. It's said that just over 4,000 Mustangs came with this option from the factory.

Volkswagen was one of the first automakers to incorporate a fixed glass roof into a folding metal hardtop with the Eos, which required complex engineering. The roof was built for VW by a company in Germany called OASys. Made up of two folding panels, the glass roof stowed in the trunk when the top was let down and surprisingly didn't intrude into trunk space much.

Only available for 1999, Mercedes gave the first-generation ML SUV the option of a paneled roof called Sky View. It was different in that the panels don't appear to be glass; the roof is just made out of black panels. At the push of a button, the panels would retract, giving passengers a roof opening of just over three and a half feet long. Down the road the roof proved to be a headache for owners and was a pricey fix — one owner says they were quoted $6,000 by the dealer to fix the Sky View roof on their ML after it stopped working.

In 2018, Bugatti debuted a brilliant roof option for the Chiron called Sky View. The two fixed panels each measured 25.6 inches long and were made of wafer-thin glass layers. Bugatti says the SkyView option also increased interior headroom and, because of its wafer layers, increased roof stiffness.

Available as an option on the Mercedes-Benz SL and SLC, the Magic Sky roof gave owners the ability to tint the glass roof on their convertibles at the push of a button. When the control was pressed, an electric charge in the glass panel passed through particles in the glass, allowing light to either stop or shine through them, making the glass go from clear to opaque almost instantaneously.