Bicycle carriers for cars carry the bikes in one of two places – either on the roof of the car or on the rear of the car. This article takes a look at the advantages and disadvantages of bike racks which fit to the roof of cars or other vehicles.
Roof mounted bicycle carriers are an extremely popular type of bicycle carrier because many people already own roof bars for their vehicles. Already owning the roof bars means that you need only by the attachments to mount your bike to the roof of your car or truck.
Advantages of Carrying Bikes on the Roof of Your Car
Better Visibility: The main advantage of bike racks for cars that fit on the roof are that they do not obstruct the view out of the rear window of your vehicle. Pulling on to roads and overtaking if you do not have and unrestricted view out of the rear window of your vehicle. With your bikes on the roof your will not see your bikes when you are in the car at all.
Better Access: Boot mounted bike carriers for cars can restrict the access to your boot significantly – in many cases you will not be able to get in to the boot of your car when the rack is fixed in place. A bicycle carrier which fits on the roof of your vehicle is not at all restrictive so if you need to get access to your boot on your journey there is no problem. Yakima bike racks have gone some way to try and alleviative this problem though by having bike racks which fit to the hitch of your car but can still swing out of the way to allow access to the boot of your car. This solution also relies on your having a tow bar or hitch fitted.
No Need for a Lighting Board: If you live in the UK and the bicycle carrier obstructs your numberplate or rear lights then you will need to get a lighting board that fixes on to the bike rack so that it is clearly visible. Unless you already have a tow bar or hitch with electrics installed it is a very expensive modification and item to purchase. Roof mounted bicycle carriers for cars do not have this problem though – your numberplate and lights are still clearly visible. Many bike racks for SUVS will suffer this problem as they tend to have flat backs and the rack cannot be mounted high up.
Better fuel consumption: In theory mounting you bicycle on the roof of your car means that you bicycle is in line with the direction that the car is travelling in and this means that its surface area is less. With a smaller front on surface area your bike will have less air resistance and therefore the fuel consumption of your car should be affected less. Rear mounted bike racks mount the bike perpendicular to the direction that the car will be travelling in and therefore have a much bigger surface area, creating more drag and consequently your fuel consumption increases significantly.
Almost universal fit: Providing your vehicle has the ability to have roof bars fitted to it you can have a roof mounted bicycle carrier. It doesn’t matter if you have a SUV, saloon, hatchback or estate you will be able to mount bicycle to the roof of it.
Expandable: The final advantage to of bicycle carriers for cars which mount on the roof are that they are expandable in terms of the number of bikes that they will carry. For example you may just by one bike fixing kit – see how often you use it and how you get on with using a roof mounted system and then buy one for every bike in your family.
Disadvantages of Carrying Bikes on the Roof of Your Car
Securing the Bikes: The big disadvantage of carrying bikes on the roof of your car is access. If you have an SUV safely reaching the top of your roof is almost impossible and this makes it very difficult to lift a bike an locate it on to a roof rack. If you are tall and have a low car your in luck because you won’t suffer from this problem! The Saris bike rack does alleviate this problem by mounting on to the boot of your car meaning that you do not need to lift the bike so high.
Can be Expensive: If you do not already own roof bars for your car then you will need to buy a set and these can be rather expensive. The upside to this is that you usually but the feet and bars separately – so if you sell your car you will only need to get a new set of feet as the bars should still be compatible. Thule bike racks work in this way and once you have the feet and bars there are numerous accessories that you can buy to carry different loads on your rood.
Uses Roof Space: If you currently use your roof to carry a roof box or sports equipment then carrying bikes on the roof will limit the amount that you can carry. You can get narrow roof boxes so that you can get two bikes on the roof and a roof box.
The Conclusion
So there you have it; the advantages and disadvantage of bicycle carriers for cars that fit on the roof. In summary if you can easily reach the top of your car and your already have roof bars putting your bikes on top of your car may well be the most cost effective and unobtrusive way for you to carry bicycles.
