Is it possible to crack that pano roof on the Coupe, and LEAVE the screen in the forward (covered) position?

In our VW Touareg we could do this. The roof would pop open in the back, and the screen would open about 2" and then stop. That allowed air to flow out, but still gave the car some protection from the sun.

I don't really see much purpose in cracking the roof, if you have to have the shade all the way open, at least while parking...

No, this is not possible. I've never had a need to do this, but I tried it out in response to your post. To "tilt-up" the sunroof to vent, the shade must first open completely. The sunroof then tilts up. When closing, it lowers the sunroof first, then closes the shade. You can't close the shade even partially without first lowering the sunroof.

Man, we did this all the time in our VW. It was a GREAT feature in the heat of the day...

Agreed!! My BMW and Audi are able to do this but not a deal breaker.

You gave me a great idea. I've never thought of doing this. Unfortunately, we can't.

My wife's previous C had the hard shade with vents built into it. You could tilt open and still keep sun out. Since they've moved to this cloth shade, it opens completely before venting.

Yeah, our E-Class was that way as well. That's actually a nice system as well. As I recall, the car would ding at you, if you left the roof open after turning off the ignition.

The one positive that I will say about the current system, is that it is a lot easier to tell when the roof is cracked. While that's true, I still think that it loses some effectiveness on a hot day with the shade open...