April 14, 2009
Rack Attack Team
Today we had to do a great install on the Smart Car, the customer wanted to carry a bike and kayak and also have some extra room for cargo. We have done a number of different types of racks for this vehicle as there are few roof combination's. This Smart Car had the glass roof so we had to use a hybrid of Yakima's Control Towers and Q-Towers in order to spread the bars as far apart as possible to handle the longer loads.
The Q-Towers are able to grab hold of the door jamb's at the front and the Control Towers mount directly to the roof using landing pads. The whole system can be removed except for the landing pads.
Obviously this car is not designed to take heavy loads on the roof so this was a non warrantied fit and we recommended the customer not carry and bike/kayak and cargo all at once but used them individually and kept his speed below 70km/hr.
We used the Yakima Copperhead bike rack with locks, the Thule Set-to-Go Kayak saddles and Thule Sidekick box. We chose the box due to it being so small and light. The whole thing looked great and the customer was thrilled he could still go kayaking in such a small eco-friendly car.
