Going on a camping holiday. Even though we have an A6 there is way too much stuff to pack (borrowing loads of kit from a seasoned camper and my wife wants to take it all).

Anyway, I have a roof box but no rack (the rack I have won’t fit – its’s a gutter fix one for a Mazda).

Anyway, how do Thule etc roof racks work? Do you get the bars and feet separately? Will the bars only work with other roof-railed cars or could I get gutter mount feet and keep the same cross bars when I change my car? I don’t really want to spend £150+ on a roof rack if it is redundant when I change my car in just over a year.

Ta

Everything you need to know is here 😀
I’ve used the Thule ones for years with no complaints btw

Bars, feet and fixings are all sold entirely separately. You may find that you can use your existing bars (depending on width) with different feet and/or fixings.

Bars and feet are seperate so you can keep the bars and any of the astonishing range of thule add-ons and just get new feet when you chaneg car
Look on the Thule web site for details of part no’s

I’ve just put Whispbar bars and Thule ProTrack bike carriers on my A6 Avant. Bars (£195 incl. vehicle-specific fixings) are aero and designed to be quiet, carriers (£50 each, shop around) are dead simple to use. Highly recommended.

Oh, and you might find you need different bars. I made the mistake going from 1-series to A4 of just assuming I didn’t need new bars. But the ones I had were too narrow.

Roofbox.co.uk are pretty good, reliable and handy for spares. There are four sets of dimples on Audi rails btw, to tell you the ideal positioning for the clamps.

So if the next car doesn’t have rails, I should be able to just get gutter feet and keep the bars?

Aye, indeed, or get a good price on the bay if they’re the wrong size. The aluminium ones fetch excellent prices 2nd hand.

+1 for roofbox.co.uk – they are top.

They sell Whispbar which on the one hand are nothing like as chocolatey as they sound, sadly, but they are fantastic at making no noise at all when on your car.

As long as you don’t remove that rubber strip to make it easier to get the bike carriers on, like I did! They whistle like hell then.