Ford will introduce a glass roof option for the Mustang at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this coming month.  The option will be priced at $1,995.

Made of tinted “privacy glass,” the roof will be able to block many of the infrared rays which create heat and damage interiors, while providing a panaoramic vista upward.  There is also a blind which can be rolled into place to block the sun entirely.  Made of safety glass, the roof will not create sharp edges in the event it should be broken in an accident.  It measures 3.1 by 3.8 feet in size.
   
The roof is being installed by a subcontractor, Automotive Alliance International, rather than on the Mustang assembly line.
   
There has been a trend toward offering more options in roof design, with Cadillac introducing dual sunroofs in the SRX model and other manufacturers also offering large see-through roof panels.  But it was Ford which was perhaps the most innovative in roof design, introducing a folding and disappearing hard top in the 1957 Fairlane line-up, an alternative to the traditional soft top convertible.  The model remained in production through 1959 before being discontinued when a new body style was introduced.  That top had originally be intended for the Continental Mark II, but was shifted to the higher production Ford vehicle to spread the development costs over more vehicles.
   
The new glass-topped Mustang, however, will share one common attribute with the old Ford Skyliner – high expense that leads to low volume.  At almost $2,000, it seems likely that the new top will be ordered by only a few customers and seldom ordered by a dealer for vehicles maintained in dealer inventory.  Moreover, though it affords a wide view of the sky, the new glass top does not have the one attribute that has, over the years, made sunroofs so popular: the ability to open.