I have a 1/2 width roof box (for all carting all our family crap) but still want to keep the bikes on the roof. As a result there is not much space for bike carriers

So from STW users which are the narrowest bike carriers?

The Thule one that mounts bikes using the forks looks very slimline to me, mate has one, don’t know the model no.

they’re pretty much all narrower than the bike they’ll be holding I’d have thought?

I have a half width roof box and use the down-tube style Thule bike carrier. You may need to adjust them a bit to ensure you can open the box lid fully, but I had no problem doing this on my car (VW Passat).

+1 Thule

Other option is use wider roof bars. Usually the ones specced in the listings match the width of the roof, when the car doors etc bulge out another foot or so. You can usually go up one or two sizes and still not have the bars protrude beyond the width of the car.

One of these?

Thanks for the responses.

The problem seems to be the vw passat specific roof bars are narrower than (no overhang) , for example, thule ones with car specific adapters and as a result I can only fit 1 bike and the roof box…. The problem being we have two bikes… A temporary fix of a thule clip on jobby was bought very cheaply from decathlon but I prefer roof mounting.

The other problem is cost – i’ve already mistakenly purchased a second thule fork one only to find it doesn’t fit! The vw roof bars were not cheap and I don’t fancy forking out on thule roof bars.

So I was wondering if anyone had experience ofMont Blanc ones – are they narrower?

I am presuming you have tried the one facing forward, one facing backward trick?

[Edit] I have Mt. Blanc baracuda ones and i’d say they look wider than the Thule ones [/edit]

You could put the box in the middle and a bike rack either side – I realise that you couldn’t get into the box with the bikes on.