At Home Mechanic

A sunroof has none of the appeal of a true convertible roof; you do not get the great view outside your car and spectators do not get any better look at you and your passengers. You are not fooling anyone; a car with a sunroof is not a true open-topped automobile. And I challenge anyone with a sunroof-equipped car to tell me the last time you turned off the Air Conditioning and opened the sunroof on a day that did not fall into the temperature range of 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit. Any cooler and it is uncomfortably cold. Any warmer and the burning rays of the sun fry you in your seat.

It could be argued that I could just ignore a sunroof and keep it closed 100% of the time. But a sunroof comes with two costs that I am not willing to pay. A sunroof and its complicated mechanism for opening, closing and sealing the opening panel(s) is bulky and heavy. The bulk translates into 2-3 inches of lost headroom that tall people or those who wish to wear hats will miss instantly upon climbing into a sunroof-equipped car. And the weight of all that stuff riding above your head raises the car's center of gravity by an appreciable amount. In effect, a sunroof and its tracks, motors and the such make your car top heavy. Your car is more inclined to swaying in a turn and possibly overturning in an extreme situation.

Sadly for those of us who do not like sunroofs, we seem to be stuck with them. Most manufacturers will include a sunroof as part of a greater option package for their cars that require you take sunroof in order to get a nicer interior, a more powerful motor or other features. I wish that it were possible to pick and choose freely from the dealer's option menu, but today most cars come in a only a couple of "flavors" and that is it.

But at least a sunroof does not compromise the structural integrity and rigidity of the car it is built into. That square hole in the roof is rimmed by extra metal to support the weight of the sunroof and its associated bits and pieces. The sunroof-equipped car can claim some extra strength through the roof that a sheet of thin metal can not. Far worse that that single square hole in the center of the roof is the horrible abomination of the Targa-Top and its cousin the T-Top.

The Targa-Top and T-Top are the result of manufacturer's response in the 1970's to declining sales of convertible cars and the possibility that the US Federal government was going to impose standards for roof strength to protect car occupants in the event of a roll over. Rather than continue to engineer expensive convertible top mechanisms for the then-disappearing drop top market and include roll bar-type structure in the windshield frame, it was discovered that cutting out the middle section of the roof from left to right would result in a open topped structure that consumers would accept. The section of remaining bulkhead and roof behind the front seats would be strong enough for rollover protection and the windshield frame was sufficiently strong enough to not need special reinforcement. The open section was usually covered by clear or opaque plastic sections, but some shade tree Targa installers would stretch a piece of canvas attached by hooks. The T-top variation on this theme would be a thin section of roof metal running for and aft connecting the rear bulkhead with the windshield frame.

Why are the Targa and the T-Top, those fashion disasters from the 1980's even worse than a sunroof? Because the removal of all that sheet metal required for a Targa or T-top robs the car frame of vital bracing. Literally, the front and rear of the car would lose most of their connection to one another with this hack surgery. At the very worst, the Targa and T-Tops would leak in the rain (and car wash) and rattle on even the smoothest roads. At very worst, the car's structure would shake apart with extended usage. Unless great care was made by the manufacturer to add structural strength (and extra weight) to a car that was destined to have a Targa or T-Top, the unfortunate automotive victim was sure to end up on the scrap heap in less than a full service lifetime. Thankfully, Targa and T-Tops seems to have fallen out of fashion with the consuming public and you do not see any manufacturers eager to revive that trend.