Many of us car freaks tend to focus on very specific elements of auto culture. In my case, I love old-school Thule roof racks. Yes, after my Saab article from earlier today, we are revisiting our Swedish friends. Those folks know how to kick out the greatest of automotive bricks, affordable furniture, meatballs, and cargo carriers.
I’m sure you are all familiar with the average cargo roof box. Many different companies make them, including Thule, Yakima, Sears, and certain automobile manufacturers. They come in black or grey. They’re super convenient for hauling skis, duffel bags, or giant blue Ikea bags to move your kids into college (Hi Mom and Dad!).
But what about the real heroes in rooftop cargo carrying: the cross bars? We need to recognize these troopers. They come in so many different shapes and sizes and have funky names like “jet stream aerodynamic efficient 1000+HP.” That was a joke, but close enough. My personal favorites are, and I quote from Thule’s website, the “Thule Rapid Gutter Super 11″ Clearance.” Here they are:
Look at all that space underneath! I don’t know why it calls out to me so much. Perhaps it’s the simplicity. I, of course, have a pair for my Land Rover Discovery. They’re a perfect, inexpensive, alternative to a Safety Devices full-size roof rack that most (wealthier) Disco owners have. They’re even more perfect for my Rover due to it’s raised roof over the second and third rows, which includes the awesome alpine windows that in some ways define the looks of the Disco 1 and 2.
I’ve seen many of these crossbars on other old-school SUVs, hatchbacks, and wagons. Modern cars don’t use this design of rain gutter anymore, deeming these to be useless for anything made after, well, probably 2003.
So, how do gutter-mounted crossbars work? Throughout the 80s and into the late 90s, it was fairly common for cars, especially large SUVs, vans, and commercial vehicles to have “drip rails” or “rain gutters.” This would help water to freely flow off the roof and down the exterior of the vehicle, eliminating the possibility of buildup. Rain gutters were ditched in the early 2000s in favor of more aerodynamic and efficient designs, hidden rather than exposed. It’s important to clean your gutters to prevent leakage, a common plague found on us Land Rover owners. More modern boxy SUVs, like my Discovery (2001), continued to use exterior gutters as they began to fade away from existence.
Each gutter-mounted set of cross bars comes with four “feet” (two on each side of the car) that physically insert themselves into the rain gutter, pressing up against the vehicle’s body. A simple threaded bolt with a locking knob inserts itself into the foot and can tighten until it can no longer twist. Most, if not all, “feet” have a keyhole on them, whether it be an actual cut-key or a simple Allen wrench to lock it in place. Take a look at my setup:
See how it rests in between the body and the gutter? The “claw” of the foot wraps around under the outside part of the gutter, above the rear window. As you twist the knob, the entire foot tightens and clamps down comfortably within the gutter.
Obviously, follow the instructions carefully and adhere to all payload requirements. All automotive manufacturers implement a “payload rating” that states the maximum weight that the vehicle is capable of withstanding on the roof. Be sure to follow not only the vehicle’s ratings but also the crossbar’s capacity to prevent damage or warping, which can break and become a hazard on the road. My Discovery’s “on-road” capacity is 110lbs and drops to 66lbs for “off-road” according to the owner’s manual technical data. The crossbars themselves have a capacity of 220lbs, as per Thule.
Back to the Thule crossbars. Click this link and check out how well they work on this 80-series Toyota Land Cruiser, installed by the owner who runs an Instagram page called “The Common Gear.” Those crossbars, per a post from the owner, were stripped off an old Range Rover Classic that was scrapped at a junkyard. Recycling!
Speaking of the Range Rover Classic, Thule cross bars on them are just so heavenly. Look at this one that sold on Bring A Trailer in February 2020. It looks ready to tackle the snowy roads of Aspen, Colorado.
Also, kudos to the seller for taking great pictures. Folks, that’s how you sell a car!
60-Series Land Cruiser
They also work well on the FJ60-series Land Cruiser. Check them out on this 1989 I saw for sale a few years ago while searching for my first car:
Also, wow, $4,000 for a Land Cruiser. It would be triple that now, if not more. Take me back to 2019 car prices, please! I’d have so many old Land Rovers. Maybe don’t take me back then…
Isuzu Trooper
The Thules also look fantastic on this Isuzu Trooper, currently for sale in Sacramento. Is it crazy that I’d buy an old Trooper just because I like the way it looks with the cross bars on top?
Jeep Cherokee
How could I talk about “old” SUVs and fail to mention the XJ Cherokee? Once the most popular family SUV in America, I’m sure hundreds were roaming around National Parks with a pair of Thules on top. Rack Attack, an online retailer for, well, racks, outfitted a Cherokee with a pair of gutter-mounted crossbars. A nice, simple, and clean look that provides more flexibility and width than the stock bars.
Saab 900 and Volvo 240
Finally, heading back to the Swedes, I have to mention Thule’s iteration on Saab and Volvo. For heaven’s sake, they were designed specifically for them. Thule has long upheld a partnership with Volvo, as per their official webpage. Thelanjampod on Twitter posted a picture back in April 2020 of two infamous Swedish rivals: the Volvo 240 and Saab 900. Naturally, they are both outfitted with fantastic-looking Thule gutter-mounted crossbars and look ready to tackle the cobblestoned streets of Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts.
I spotted the same 900 back in November 2019:
It was a heavenly sight in a heavenly city touring colleges I didn’t end up going to!
Anyway, those were a few of my favorite iterations of the Thule gutter-mounted crossbars. I love crossbars too much-I have a pair on my 4Runner and Discovery, as you saw. I use them to carry my kayak, SUP boards, surfboards, and fishing poles. Even better if they’re super high! Tell me if you have or have had these Thules and what car have you used them on. Do you also dwell on rooftops carrying cargo accessories as I do?
i still have a ski rack from our 1980’s VW Dasher that was built this way. Man I miss that car for our ski trips.
Ikea used to rent these out in the 80s $25 and you got it back when you returned them, my 240 wagon had six of them on at once for some reason I cannot remember
Wow, that’s a picture I want to see
Having worked in the bicycle industry for decades, I’ve installed racks on tons of vehicles for both customers and myself. I’ve got a stockpile of racks and parts in my basement and with the simple swap of some fit-kits or bases can put them onto the next vehicle we own. The fun one last night was fabricating a new mount on our 1999 Amigo 5spd 4×4 since I forgot it was tall and ripped off the rear crossbar with the garage door not fully raised. It ripped right out of the fiberglass. Fun stuff with lifted vehicles, racks and garages. Good thing I’m handy and I fixed the banged up garage door so my wife isn’t upset.
I started carrying my bike on a Thule mounted to the gutters of my SAAB 900. Then I got married and bought a bike (and another bike carrier) for my wife. Then I bought a different car, but fortunately the Thule systems are pretty modular so I could adapt my crossbars to a gutter-less car with new feet. Then I realized I had more money tied up in Thule than I did in bicycles…
I still have my Yakima gutter-mounts, originally used to carry canoes on a 1980 Ford Escort and an 82 Econoline. The same racks fitted both cars. I was very sad when roof gutters went away so every new car needs custom fitting to get a rack on it, with a custom price tag.
When I got my latest used car it was going to cost over $1k to put Yakima racks on it. So I found a way to make the gutter-mounts fit.. Bolted and fiberglassed a couple pieces of c-channel to the roof of the camper shell, and the gutter mount drops right in. That’s the back rack sorted. The front rack needed some fancy bits to clamp onto the rails, new would have been $250 which is ridiculous. Instead found some old ones on ebay for $40 which also fit my old round bars, much better.
Once upon a time I had to choose between roof bars or roof ski holders for my AX… I went ski holders, I could carry 4 pair of ski when going skiing on thursday afternoon while a student, and saturdays ( obviously with 4 in the car )…
And they could be used as roof bars ( I did use them that way when I moved for my first job )
But it was a time before the roof boxes had been invented, and you carried on the roof lots of things ( I went in vacation with my parents, camping in a Renault 20 ( 4 + a dog ) with 4 bikes on the roof and everything else inside ( including 3 tents and stuff )
But it was a time when you had several roof options :
roof barsroof bike carrierroof ski carrierreinforced roof bars ( we called that a *galerie*, yuo could just load thing on it and tie them up )
Edit : note that hte AX didn’t have gutter, and being a two door car, it had specially designed holes ( that could be filled by a plug, and came iniaially filled by said plug ) for the back bar, the front one being held in the door opening.
People are used to the Subaru built-in crossbar system, but not many know that the Pacifica/Voyager have a similar system in which the crossbars can be stowed into the rails. It’s super convenient and also means I don’t have to store crossbars in my garage when I’m not using them. Instead of Stow N’ Go it’s called Stow N’ Place. Chrysler does a pretty bad job marketing this feature in my opinion; I had no idea that it was a thing until I bought the van.
The ones on my Outback are great for about 90% of my roof-stowage needs. The other 10%, I find them too close together, even when you go through the slight hassle of moving them to the more spread apart distance. But yeah, the 90% of the time, they are fantastic. Takes like 1 minute to get them into place or to put them away so you don’t have to listen to the whistle of a rack.
I just watched the video on the Stow N’ Place, and it’s pretty good. Not quite as fast as Subaru’s, but you get added vertical rise which would be nice for certain attachments.