At a glance Excellent roof-mounted cycle carrier that supports the bike for easy loading, takes all sizes and styles of cycles, and secures your bike to the rack and the rack to the car with a single lock
Tested by
Jon Adams, tester for The Bike List
Performance
At some stage, every cyclist needs to transport their pride and
joy by car, and finding the best solution can be quite a
head-scratcher. Other than dropping the back seats, whipping off
the front wheel and throwing it inside the vehicle, there are three
options: the strap-on rear carrier, the towbar carrier, or the roof
carrier. The first can be a pain to fit and means you can't use the
hatchback, the second also denies access to the hatchback and along
with the towbar itself, requires a lighting board, and the third
places the bikes directly in your car's airflow and will adversely
affect your MPG. That's the deal i
n a
nutshell, so you should be aware from the outset that carrying
bikes on a car requires an element of compromise.
On the cost side, the strap on rear carrier is the cheapest, and the towbar-mounted rack is the most expensive (assuming you need to get a towbar and electrics fitted as well as buying the rack), and that leaves the roof carrier as the middle ground option.
For any roof carrier, roof bars are required first, and we used the Mont Blanc ReadyFit RF20 aero bars (£100), which were very easy to fit, with no tools needed. The bars clamp on to the roof rails (or gutters, or fixing points, depending on your vehicle) and have a central channel to accept the cycle carriers or other accessories like roof racks or roof boxes. There's an online finder on the Mont Blanc website www.montblancuk.co.uk which will let you know the type of bars compatible with your car. The RF20 bars offered a very solid, neat and attractive-looking system that locks the bars to the car with a special tamper-proof plastic key.
The Discovery is Mont Blanc's top-of-the-range roof carrier and
it'll fit to any style of roof bar - square or aero - if you
already have a set. Once your bars are on, you then attach the
carrier, and because everything comes pre-assembled, this is an
absolute breeze. There are three, square-topped bolts that thread
through the carrier and into adjustable camming units, and the
square bolt top simply slides 
into
the roof bar's central channel. If you have square bars, there are
brackets supplied that allow you to do the same thing.
Once you've slid the carrier into the position you want, you move the downtube clamping arm to its forward position, and then lock the three quick-release cams by pushing them down. They work just like an enlarged version of a QR skewer on a bike wheel, and one of the front cams features a clever device that locks the carrier to the roof bars (that's why you have to move the clamping arm forward, as this engages the lock). The whole kit and caboodle doesn't take long to sort out, and I set up the roof bars and three carriers from scratch in about 45 minutes. That included deciphering the pictorial instructions supplied, but now I'm familiar with the system, repeating the whole exercise would take me no more than 20 minutes from a standing start.
It's worth noting that the idea is to buy ether left- or
right-armed Discovery racks, but provided you have a Torx T20
wrench, it's not difficult to reverse the clamp and turn left into
right. Instructions aren't supplied for this with the Discovery
model, but the design of the clamp and arm is very similar to the
Barracuda, and the left-to-right swap instructions are provided
with this model (and these can be downloaded in PDF f
ormat from the main website). With three left-arm
units, I had to swap one over, and this was easy to accomplish once
I'd checked the Barracuda's instructions (and found my Torx bits
and a ratchet).
I tried the carriers with a VW Touran MPV - a fairly high vehicle, but despite being on the short side at 5'6", I didn't find it too tricky to attach the bikes. Open the car door, hoist the bike over your head with one hand on the forks and the other on the seat stay, and then, with your arms straight, step up onto the sill, get your balance, and drop it into the wheel supports. Once the front wheel is in place, the sculpted front end of the Discovery holds the bike sufficiently well for you to let go of it, and you can then attach the clamp to the downtube using both hands. This adjusts to fit any downtube between 20mm and 80mm, and once it's in position, fold the locking clamp over, turn the supplied key, and your bike's locked to the carrier and the carrier is locked to the roof bars in one fell swoop. Brilliant!
That's all you need to secure your bikes, but to drive, you also
need to fasten the wheel straps, and these consist of a beefy
plastic ratchet system, not dissimilar to a large zip tie. The
grooved plastic strap threads over the wheel rim, and there are
ratchets on either side so you can quickly secure the wheels and
get the strap e
nds
the same length. The rack will take any tyre up to 2.5 inches, and
will support a bike weight of 17kg, so unless your bike is a
serious downhill rig or has an engine, you should be okay.
On a regular car, mounting the bikes can be done from ground level without any balancing acts on the sills, though a cheap set of steps can be stowed in the boot to assist if necessary. To assess the hardest reach factor, we tried three racks in our test, with one bang in the middle of the car. To get at the clamps and locks for this one, I needed to stand on the rear seat which was a bit of a faff, and you do need a reasonable amount of strength to do this unaided. A set of steps is pretty much a must if you need to haul anything heavier than a svelte road bike into the middle rack on a 4WD or MPV, but we used a kid's bike, which could be lifted one-handed, so it wasn't a problem.
When driving with laden racks, MPG was affected along with
speed, so with 3 carriers on, I drove at a top speed of around
70mph - I could actually feel the resistance if I went beyond this
- and the car's computer gave me an average mpg of 38mpg over a 540
mile round-trip to the Lake District. You have to pay for the
luxury and convenience of a roof carrier somewhere, and aside from
the initial investment, this is where it hits you, as I'd normally
get mid-forties MPG and be 
able
to go a bit quicker on this kind of run. It's no big deal though -
as a gentle right foot and some opportunist slipstreaming behind
the odd HGV will help out considerably. Noise is increased quite a
bit- roof bars alone do this, so add two or three bikes, and the
wind will howl through all the bits poking into your vehicle's
airstream.
The carriers were dead solid throughout my trip, and for security, it's as easy to throw the bikes back on top of the car as it is to mess about winding cable locks around them. The unhindered access to the hatchback made a huge difference to packing and unpacking, too. I normally use a towbar carrier, so the bikes always have to go on last and come off first, and if I'm taking three or four, the pedals usually have to come off, too, so they can stack together. My bikes have all suffered some damage as a result of stacking on rear carriers - despite using old tires and bits of pipe lagging between them - so it's great to have them separated in this way.
If you can cope with the decreased MPG, increased wind noise and are prepared to slow down a bit, then the Mont Blanc Discovery is a superb solution. It's very well engineered with a beautifully designed locking system, it's quick and easy to use, and it keeps your bike safe and secure without affecting the way you pack and unpack your car. The positives far outweigh the negatives, and of all the bike carrying methods I've tried, this is the clear winner. It's a luxury choice, but one worth making if you want to look after your bike and have an easy life loading the car. You can get roof carriers for a lot less than the Discovery, but the wheel support that holds the bike upright and the great one-point locking system makes this model worth the extra cash.
Buy from www.halfords.com
Mont Blanc says:
Our new roof mounted bicycle holder with a stylish aluminium profile combines unique features. Lift the bicycle onto Discovery, the wheels fit into a moulded profile which holds the bicycle upright leaving both hands free to secure the frame and wheels. Locking the bicycle into the frame holder also secures Discovery to the load carrier.
- Pre-assembled bike rack
- Secured in the frame holder and locks to both bicycle carrier and roof bars
- Black-painted frame holder tube in special steel
- Base unit made of aluminium and UV-resistant composite material
- Takes frame diameters from 20 up to 80 mm
- Manufactured in accordance with DIN75302
- Will fit both standard and aluminium aero bars
- No. of bikes per carrier - 1
- Weight - 4.2kg
- Maximum load - 17kg
- No. of bikes - 1
- Max tyre width - 2.5 inches
- Part no. 729805
For more info, visit: www.montblancuk.co.uk
