The sun, the sky, and the moonroof

Time was when "sunroof" generally meant one thing: a small piece of a car's metal roof cut out and opened up for fresh air. Things got fancy when the "moonroof" came along, with that panel made of glass. Some were cheap-o pop-up roofs that flipped open to a vent position and could, with some fiddling, be removed entirely. Big spenders got sun/moonroofs that retracted into the roof--but still almost always with a manual crank.

The same effect as a convertible? Hardly. But some sun is better than none.

How times have changed. Today, automakers see the rooftop window as an unexplored frontier of creativity, and they've begun to show us some truly enlightening ways to let the light and/or air in from above. Even back-seat passengers have been liberated from the cave in which they dwelt, with carmakers finding ways to light up their lives, too.

There's no longer a conventional answer to the sunroof or skylight question. Anything goes, and it'll be up to consumers to decide which windows raise the bar for competitors and which are simply gimmicks destined to go the way of 1970s van portholes. Credit vehicle designers and engineers for working overtime to find new methods, materials, and technology to make more interesting sunroofs a production reality. Here are a few of our favorite sources of light from above.