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It’s not even May, and we’ve already had ambient temps near 90 degrees Fahrenheit in woodsy New York this year. Get yourself a sunshade for your windshield. They’re mildly annoying to use, but immensely helpful in protecting your interior from the sun’s relentless rays.
Where To Find High-Quality Sunshades
☀️ HeatShield sunshades are nice and thick, and the roll-up instead of folding up. One of my favorite aftermarket sunshades.
☀️ RealTruck carries Covercraft, Coverking, Husky Liners (all brands I’ve had great luck with), and more for sunshades. Some even have nice automaker logos on them.
☀️ Dash Designs (also sold through RealTruck) is the company that makes the retractable shade I use in my Montero. I’ve had it for at least six years, and it still works perfectly.
Nobody likes getting into a hot car on a hot day—those minutes of waiting for the A/C to spool up while sweat’s coming off your nose are the worst. But the real benefit of a sunshade is how it can extend the life of your dashboard and interior materials. The plastics, vinyl, and leather inside your car don’t like being heat-cycled, especially through extremes. And the older your car is, the closer its dash is to degrading.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, dealing with a floppy windshield cover is a whole lot less miserable than replacing a cracked dash or leather seating upholstery.
See, a car windshield turns your cabin into a greenhouse. Short-wave solar radiation comes through the glass, which is absorbed by dark interior surfaces. That degrades them. Those surfaces then emit long-wave infrared heat (thermal radiation). Since glass is opaque to this long-wave radiation, the heat becomes trapped, creating a feedback loop of heat that gives the interior plastics of an E46 BMW the consistency of crayons.
Cracking windows helps a little, but reducing heat is only part of the battle. Modern car glass blocks a lot of ultraviolet (UV) rays from sunbeams, but not all of them. And if you don’t have a garage or carport, a smaller solid barrier (like a sunshade) is your best defense. It can block the visible light and infrared (heat) that bypass the glass’s internal filters to cook cabin materials.
A research paper in the International Journal of Automobile Engineering out of Aswan University in Egypt found that covering front and rear car glass cuts dashboard temps dramatically. Stateside, the Florida Solar Energy Center had the same conclusion with its own study—it found dash temps were reduced by 40 degrees when using a sunshade. Popular Mechanics also ran its own experiment and found that the cabin temperature in an old Mazda RX-7 was up to 20 degrees cooler after half an hour of sun parking with a shade versus without.
Don’t rely on a sunshade to keep car temperatures acceptable for anything alive or made of chocolate—you still absolutely should not leave a dog, kid, plant, or candy bar in a vehicle in the sun without the engine and A/C running, even for a few minutes.
But when it comes to protecting your interior, a little low-tech reflective equipment goes a long way.
I personally like to get different styles for specific vehicles. Both my BMW F31 wagon and E46 coupe have OE BMW sunshades—I love the stark, simple “BMW” design. They look old-school in a way I really like. When I had a Z31 300ZX, I had a cute synthwave-looking ’80s one. My old FG2 Honda Civic had an absolutely immense windshield, and I had a Heatshield brand sun visor in it that I absolutely loved. It was very thick and gold-colored, which looked great with my black paint.
But the pinnacle of sunshades is the type that permanently mounts to the glass and retracts, like this accordion system I have in my Montero. I simply pull the “curtains” together when I park in the sun, and they Velcro together where they kiss in the middle. Fair warning, I get razzed about having these all the time—people think it looks rednecky—but my 25-year-old dash doesn’t have a crack on it!
There are so many different brands making these that I’m sure you’ll be able to find one for your car. I do strongly recommend ponying up for a tailor-made one that matches your windshield, though. These things are annoying to keep track of in your cabin, regardless, but at least the form-fitted models are both more satisfying and less frustrating than the cheapo universal options you’ll see on racks at your local auto parts store.
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