Re: Bike Rack for A6

[Jeff.McMeekin@Corp.Sun.COM (Jeff McMeekin - WWFO Technical Office)]

> I would like to get a bike rack that fits my '95 A6.  Any
> recommendations?  Cost?  Phone #?
 
I believe that both THule and Yakima have racks for the A6.  Yakima
sells attachments to allow using their racks with the Thule rails
so you can mix and match with ease (although if you want one set of
keys to operate everything you should stick with one brand).

For our A6 wagon (which comes with a roof rack) we had to go with
Thule, because Yakima didn't have the factory roof rack attachments.
However we have two Yakima tandem racks that mounted very nicely
(with the conversion attachments) to the Thule rails.

Regarding Bike racks, the feedback I got from our local Racks-R-Us
store ("Sportsracks USA" or something like that) is that if you
like the bike racks where you leave the front wheel on, then
the Thule rack is a better design (you need a foot ladder to reach
the mechanism on the Yakima).  For the  racks where you remove
the front wheel, there isn't much difference.

I sure couldn't see buying the Audi racks.  Very expensive.

We also bought a Thule baggage box (a long slim version that is roughly
half the width of the roof).  That plus two tandem bikes took up
a lot of roof real estate.  We got (ouch) 14 mpg driving across
Nevada at 70 mph into a pretty stiff headwind.  Most of the time
we got about 18-20mpg though.

The Audi is quite good regarding roof rack capability (100kg).
That's pretty much the max capacity of any vehicle (since the
racks themselves are rated at 100kg, while individual cars can
be considerably less).

Jeff