Of course you do. These aren’t questions you should even be asking yourself. We highly recommend that everyone have a car rack. These systems allow you to carry almost anything you don’t want or can’t fit inside your vehicle – why would you give it up? Besides, it’s your car that wants it! Some vehicles come with factory-installed rack systems, others don’t but already have a provision on the roof. If you have factory crossbars, you may not need an aftermarket rack system and can only purchase accessories (such as kayak racks) with universal mounting mechanisms that fit those factory bars perfectly.

If you don’t have factory crossbars, you’ll have to buy a rack system for your car rack instead, but it’s not a crazy expense that you’ll give too much thought to. At most, you’ll have to weigh in on the type of rack that’s right for you.

What is a Car Rack System

A basic car rack or rack system is a simple but durable system consisting of crossbars and supports. You need two cross bars that cover the length of the vehicle’s roof and a way to attach them to it. The components you’ll hear us talking about are:

• Load bars (the two crossbars).
• Feet or towers – which are used to support the crossbars.
• Mounting kits (or clips) – these are vehicle-specific platforms and/or brackets to help attach the roof rack.

Cargo bars come in various lengths depending on the size of your vehicle and what you want to carry. The basic bars are square or round, but you can still choose to upgrade to flatter, wider bars with an airplane wing aerodynamic profile that are often quieter.

What type of roof rack is right for me?

There are four main types of basic car racks, depending on what your car’s roof has (or doesn’t have)

The first is the raised-rail type. If you have rails along the sides of your car’s roof that are raised (there’s a space between the rail and the roof), you can get a set of towers that attach directly to them. You don’t have to buy a vehicle-specific mounting kit, so this cuts costs by no small amount.

Then there are the solid rail car roof racks. If the rails along the sides of the roof don’t have a gap in them, they’re called solid, continuous or flush rails. Of course, you’ll need specific towers and mounting kits for this as well.

Then there are the fixed point racks. In fact, some vehicles have points designed for mounting a rack. These are often covered by some sort of plastic tab and are sometimes hard to see but worth checking out.

Then there are the bare roof car racks. If there’s nothing on the roof of your car, you’ll need a package of feet and a mounting kit designed to attach to the doorjamb.

There’s usually a car roof rack that fits your vehicle, even if you’re looking to buy a model that’s just come out on the market you may want to first research existing and already tested roof rack options, but more importantly you may want to take away doubts you didn’t know you had and consider other details by reading reviews from those who have already made the purchase.

Car roof racks: what are the accessories to consider

Once you have purchased a Withcar car roof rack system, you can buy all kinds of accessories for transportation and more. You might consider getting padlocks to better secure the system to the vehicle. They are usually sold in a pack of four for less than 80 euros.

You can buy 2, 4, 6 and 8 blocks of padlocks so that a single key can better protect your roof rack and loaded equipment. As we said before, an accessory to consider could be wing-shaped bars, definitely quieter than cylindrical or square ones and much more aerodynamic.

Then, as we said before, you can always see what other users like you have done and take a cue!

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