Heat in parked cars

I was wondering if anybody could point me to accurate information about how hot the interior of a car, left in the sun, can get in 110-120 degree weather. The best info I’ve been able to find is over 140.



Thanks for any info!

Get a thermometer and lay in on the seat , out of direct sunlight, for your personal measurement.
I’ve never done that with my two black trucks. ( maybe I don’t really want to know ? )

I’m not sure of what the temp gets to but I here in AZ I once left my car parked in the sun while at work less then 4 hrs and my rear passenger window blew out from the heat. Now I make a point of leaving the window open a crack when I park in the sun

I keep a thermometer stuck in the A/C vent in one of my cars all of the time and while the temp will vary based on a number of things, the hottest I’ve seen it is around 145-150 degrees with 120-130 being very common.

That’s with the windows up on a sunny 105ish+ degree Oklahoma day.

(As to why I keep a thermometer in the vent all of the time, that’s just me. I prefer to have a running tab of heater/A/C performance.)

After printing a story three weeks ago about two young children rescued from a parked car in a shopping center parking lot, our local newspaper put a household thermometer in a closed vehicle and parked it in the same parking lot on a sunny day.

When they returned a few hours later the top of the thermometer was blown off. The max reading on the thermometer was 120 degrees fahrenheit, so the temperature inside the car had to exceed that to break the thermometer.

I live in the tropics and in my truck and the company cars that I used the temperature would go up to 130+ in the summer.

I also have a thermometer in the AC duct and another on the visor just to see how everything is being cooled.