Mac’s Motor City Garage explores a popular Mercury feature in its day: the roll-down rear window on 1963 through 1968 models, known as the Breezeway.  

While the Mercury Breezeway was certainly a clever and useful feature, we can’t say it was particularly original. Early on in the auto industry, coupe body styles often included an opening rear window glass, both for ventilation and to allow communication with rumble seat passengers. There’s very little that’s truly new in the auto industry.  Mercury’s smart repurposing of the feature for Sixties car buyers has a short but interesting history, and it continues to fascinate car enthusiasts to this day.

It’s said that Mercury’s first in-period use of a functioning rear glass was on the 1955 D-528 concept, later known as the Beldone. In this shot, the fiberglass dream car’s opening backlight is just barely visible. The D-528/Beldone is still in existence today.

Breezeway Ventilation, as it was named originally, made a first brief appearance on a Mercury production model with the 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. But the Cruiser proved to be a slow seller and both the car and the feature were soon discontinued.

The operating rear glass next popped up at Ford’s Lincoln division, where it was standard on the 1958-1960 Continental in both the sedan and convertible body styles. Labeled here simply as a retractable rear window—we note the Breezeway term was not officially applied—the glass operated electrically via a control switch in the driver’s armrest.

The Breezeway feature was reintroduced at Mercury in 1963 in a major way, including a big marketing campaign. This ad from a national magazine illustrates the multiple benefits. The retracting glass, and the trendy reverse-slope Z-line roof that enabled the feature, were offered on both two-door and four-door styles, pillarless hardtop and post bodies, and in all three trim lines: Monterey, Montclair, and Park Lane. All told, there were eight different Breezeway models.

Here’s the signature Mercury Breezeway look in a 1964 Park Lane Sedan at a classic Detroit destination: the Park Shelton Hotel in the city’s elegant museum district.

While the Breezeway is generally associated with four-door body styles, two-doors were also available, including the ’63 Monterey hardtop shown here. For buyers who preferred a conventional sweeping roofline and fixed rear glass, there was a second complete line of Mercury two-doors and four-doors called Marauder.

When Mercury got all-new sheet metal for 1965, the Breezeway models were reduced to the four-door sedan only in three trim levels: Monterey, Montclair, and Park Lane, shown here. While Breezeway sales were promising at first with over 92,000 units sold in 1963, by 1965 the volume had slipped by half to 46,000 units as the demand was exhausted. The ventilation properties of Breezeway were a mixed bag, it seems: while it it efficiently evacuated cabin air through the open rear glass, under some conditions it could suction in road fumes to the rear seat passengers.

When the Mercury line was redesigned for 1967 with a conventional sloping roofline, the retracting rear glass was very nearly left behind. Shown here is the final gasp for Breezeway Ventilation on 1967 and 1968 four-door sedans, where the glass could be lowered a total of two inches to provide a little added air circulation. Fewer than 6,000 units with the option found buyers in 1968, and then it was discontinued for good. So what happened to Breezeway? What killed this once popular feature? The long and the short answer is air conditioning.