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Reminds me of the AMC Pacer my family had. Everyone compared it to a fish bowl
Did they have tempered glass back then?
trying to imagine what that would be like during 110°F weather …
Which is why these things never go into production. If you follow concept cars, you’ll see this sort of glass roof idea pop up all the time. Nobody will ever make one because it’s functionally a solar oven.
One exception that did make it to production is the Peel Trident. It’s still an oven, though.
Did cars even have air conditioning back then?
1930 – The “car cooler” uses the evaporation of water (rather than your own sweat) to cool air, which is then blown in through the open passenger-side window. Though it’s the first item to actually lower the air temperature, it only works in areas with very low humidity – and it looks like you have a vacuum cleaner strapped to the side of your car.
They were pretty innovative back then!
Nothing speeds innovation like having one’s balls stuck to one’s leg.
ok guys… Option “A” is castration. I don’t care how elaborate option “B” is, but we’re going with that!
They existed, but it took until the 1960s to become common in upper class models.
I’d expect this can to be above upper class models though LOL
It looks like everyone in that car is suffering already
65° on a clear day would be bad enough.
I’ve had cars with a sunroof, and on clear days it could be hot as hell even at lower temps.
Detroit car execs from the 1940s. Ribeye and six-martini lunches every day. Drunk and reckless driving galore, above-the-law behavior six days a week. Mindless corporate crony bores with no inner life. I have no reason to believe Mad Men was lying about any of that stuff.
Maybe a little exaggerated.
I’m sure it happened, just probably not as constantly as portrayed.
Perhaps only 4 days a week.
don’t forget every space being constantly flooded with cigarette smoke
Wow! I can’t see any way that that could possibly go wrong!
But when it does go wrong, you will see it.
How come?
People would fly down the highway, kids in the car, nobody in seatbelts. That was normal until the 90s.
Seatbelts at least existed, even if no one used them. I once rode I think it was a late 60’s car, maybe early 70s, with lap belts for front only. No shoulder belts. Nothing for back seat
Yup, available but nobody used until it was required by law.
Was it really glass, or perspex or something?
Can you imagine how quickly acrylic or plexiglass Am would haze over from erosion as you drive, and how it’d yellow in the sun after a few years (did they have UV blocking additives back then?). You be replacing the clear parts every year or two
Way cool, daddio!
Rode in a car with a full tinted glass roof once. Everybody’s brains were boiling.
Looking at that picture, all I see is sunburn, heatstroke, and headache.
dont a bunch of teslas have full glass roofs? what do they do?
It’s very tinted. No worries about the sun. I suppose there must still be at least some greenhouse effect but from living in the Northeast, I’ve never noticed any heat from the sun through the roof.
Compared to my Subaru’s sun roof, which has dark tinting but lets in a lot of heat, the Tesla glass roof tinting is much darker and doesn’t
Get hot, enjoy extra cancer in the future maybe?
My car has an acrylic roof and never had an issue other than it gets hot in there. I put ceramic tint on all the windows this year and a cover for the top, helps so much when it’s 100+ outside with no clouds anywhere!
Not only Teslas, it’s an industry wide trend, specially for EVs, but combustion card also have it.
Heavy tint, optionally a shade and A/C. It’s pretty comfortable even in full July sun.
Pretty sure you can’t get a sunburn through glass. Cancer, yes, but not a sunburn.
It depends on the type of glass. “Normal” glass blocks UVB, which is the major cause of cancer from sunlight. I don’t know what type of glass they were using in 40’s era cars though.
Never heard of lighting a fire with a magnifying glass?
You get sunburns from UV light, not heat alone
Article states, accurately; “you can still get burned with long enough exposure”.
Some, but not all glass has a coating that blocks ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. The technology was introduced in the 1980’s.
Yeah. My ginger wife definitely got a bad sunburn during a car ride.
Your link disagrees with you. Hoping nobody pays attention? Hoping for up votes?
False fact post, bad faith actor, or llm. All 3?
From your link: “You can still get burned with long enough exposure.”
Lazy me, best I can find is with typical automotive glass a sunburn starts in several hours versus about 15 minutes with no sunscreen.
So for the most part no. But it’s possible.
The lazy part was your statement being at odds with your source, while discounting other folk’s experience or skin.
I know of more than one person who has experienced sunburn from closed windowed (newer)vehicle rides in full sunlight.
That’s what I mean by me being lazy.
Right on. Thanks for that. Appreciate you responding.
Funny you should mention that. The dapper gentleman in the front passenger seat was my grandfather. Back in the 40s, buying a new car was a very big deal, so he brought his friend from work and each of their mistresses. My grandmother didn’t find out about her until about a year later after all four of them had developed melanoma and naw I’m just fuckin’ with ya I dunno who they are.
Lol you had me!
Depends on the glass. Normal glass has zero UV protection. In cars the front window usually has it, while the side windows don’t. Although I read that years ago, no idea what the current status is.
Yes. The answer is yes, glass doesn’t prevent sunburns.
It will delay them.
I bet that would be fun in a rollover.
Current nRollover standards allow metal roofs to deform 6”. As a taller person, that is a nightmare, so I’ll take the roof that doesn’t deform and crush my skull
For modern cars like Tesla All the strength is in the pillars. The glass roof is for stiffness and to keep the weather out.
head removal machine.
Not much worse than a cabriolet or convertible i guess
They typically have roll over protections in the seat and windshield to save the people inside.
This doesn’t.
Modern ones do. In this era they didn’t, the windshield just folded flat and there was usually nothing in the back as well.
Sometimes your kids were in the back.
True, but they didn’t offer much of a shielding from the impact with their short, weak necks.
Today. Back in the day cabriolets didn’t necessarily have those.
Hell, even today manufacturers will have warnings that the rollover bars aren’t for passenger protection.
Crazy stuff.
Interesting. I think maybe try aren’t sufficient for professional use as a race-car, but protect sufficiently according to crash standards.
Yeah modern cars do. Back then though, they didn’t even have seat belts. The glass roof, was the least of their problems if they crashed
But the glass roof would pop the airbags, reducing their effectiveness.
Can’t tell if you think old cars had airbags or if I’m interpreting your comment incorrectly.
From my own memory, air bags didn’t really become a common thing until the late 90s. A lot of my cars from the 90s didn’t have airbags at all.
Why would they have airbags if they had glass roofs?
Airbags were first patented in 1952. They couldn’t even become common place until the patent expired.
Airbags were introduced in the 60’s as an option, no one wanted the extra expense.
It took regulation to make airbags commonplace, not really much to do with patents, more to do with airbag manufacturers, auto manufacturers and insurance underwriters working together to lobby for the regulation…since it benefitted them.
Not that I’m against airbags in cars - this is just how it came about - vested interests.
Anybody have any stats on how many people were decapitated by these before we stopped making them?
I wonder if it’s more or less than how many people were baked inside them.
Its like a covered cooking pot. Can’t imagine how hot it would be in there
