I've been complaining to anyone who'd listen about the crummy rack
mounting options on most cars and I freely opined about having cars
built with rack attachment points built-in. In particular, I suggested
a threaded recess on the roof in the pseudo-raingutter that is built
into many modern cars.

Well, I was walking through town the other day and saw exactly that!
A fairly new BMW sedan was equipped with a neat roof rack that looked
like it attached in a manner similar to the VW cars - Golf in particular.
The Golf uses an "almost great" system where a short gutter and a couple
of bolthead-like bits are hidden under the door seal. The only problem
with that, according to a friend who has a Golf, is that with the rack
prying the seal up a teensy bit, a few drops of water get in when it
rains heavily. Anyway, I wandered over to the BMW to see what it looked
like up close and behold:

There is are four little doors in the rain recess (two each side, one
front, one rear). Each opens to show a threaded, sealed hole in the
roof frame. The tower of the rack sits on the roof over this point and
a bolt drops down into the threaded hole and tightens up to hold the tower
in place. Neat, tight, no openings into the passenger compartment, solid
and easy to attach/remove. Kudoes to BMW, a car company I usually don't
have much respect for.

Now that someone has done it, perhaps other car manufacturers can provide
a similar system and we can use _one_ roof rack system with lots of
vehicles without major compatibility problems.

Mike