What is the Difference between a Moon Roof and a Sun Roof
There is one simple difference between a sun roof and a moon roof. It's the little shade that you pull closed over the opening inside the car. While this seems like a trivial addition, it was actually a few years for it to gain in popularity.
When the first sun roofs appeared on the market there was a flurry of activity to add these to you vehicle. A prolific market sprang up literally overnight with these custom add on for almost every hard top vehicle made. These first sun roofs were prone to leaking, difficult to install, and had one other problem that convertible owners knew from day one. The sun! While having a hole in your roof seemed very cool at the time, the owners who purchased these sun roofs hadn't counted on the blinding sunlight or the heat that they produced. The sun roofs rapidly adjusted to this problem by offering tinted glass and the ability to just pop the back of the roof open for allowing ventilation. Neither of these ideas helped very much with the added brightness and heat.
Manufacturers of automobiles quickly capitalized on the popularity and started adding electrically operated sun roofs. The first ones offered, only opened and closed, but soon engineers devised a way to have the roof pop up from the back just like the add on sun roofs. However, the sun was still a problem. This was solved by Mercedes by adding a plastic orange colored cowling over the front part of the sun roof. These look much like today's modern vent coverings for allowing you to crack your windows without getting rain in. The effect of this add on was to allow you to crack the sun roof open a few inches and the orange plastic visor would keep the sun from shining directly in.
The moon roof was added as the final piece of the puzzle to allow a driver to totally close the sun roof when it was not in use. Now a driver could have the best of both worlds. The driver had the sun roof when he or she wanted that open air feeling or a little extra ventilation or a totally closed roof without any added heat or sun light streaming in. Thus the moon roof became the ultimate addition to automobiles.
