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Ultimate Roof Rack?
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 |
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