Very Interesting. I've been aware of the sunroof cars, but to see so many now popping up is pretty cool!
It's like the 1970 Coronet/Super Bee front end - seems everyone either loves it or hates it. From what I have read in the various forums, it's the same thing with the sunroof option. They are great until the seals get worn or brittle, then they leak and are a pain. The metal gear and cables would malfunction after a lot of use because the cable guides are made of softer metal and would eventually wear enough that the gear and cables would start to slip. The moving parts had to be well lubricated and taken care of. Another minus is that the sunroof is not a performance enhancer - it actually hindered performance in that it added a lot of weight to the car. Chrysler actually recommended that sunroof car owners add an extra 1 psi to the tire pressure for the added weight.
Another hindrance to popularity is the fact that there is little information out there about the power sunroof option - and also how many were produced. Over the last 20 years or so, Chrysler's internal Options and Accessories reports have surfaced in hobbyist's hands to give us a better idea of how many of a particular option was produced. The numbers for early E-bodies and early Chargers are out there on the web now, but later A, B, C, and E bodies numbers have been tough to obtain. Now that some of those production numbers are getting better established, some collectors are taking note and actively searching for some of the higher end sunroof cars. There is a couple of collectors in Canada that have at least a dozen sunroof cars between the 2 of them!
When I noticed a power sunroof car in a salvage yard north of town in 2012, I went digging for info and found very little. I found just enough to realize that I was looking at a fairly rare option - so I saved the car from an inevitable death, and started researching this little known option. In the past 4 years, I have scoured the web and have been documenting all the sunroof cars that I could find. I have also been saving any info and part numbers associated with this option for future reference. I hope to be able to establish some decent guesstimates for sunroof production on less popular models, and assist owners when they have sunroof questions.
I have added a few more cars to the 70&71 Challenger, and the 72 Barracuda sunroof pamphlets that I posted on the first page of this thread. Enjoy!
Scott.
