QUICK LINKS
Click on these links to
jump to parts of the roof boxes product range...
Short Wide roofboxes
Medium Long Medium Wide boxes
Long Medium Wide roof boxes Long Thin roof boxes
Long Wide roofboxes
For maximum capacity - 2 boxes!
Going camping?
We believe our Family roofboxes will suit your needs.
.jpg "Autoform Denver 650 Roof Box")
We need to mention roof bars first! Roof boxes need to be fitted to a set of roof bars, a set of steel or aluminium bars going across the car, from one side to the other. Cars with factory fitted longitudinal roof rails will still need a set of roof bars going from rail to rail.
Any brand of roof box can be fitted to any brand of roof bars, whether these roof bars are supplied by us or by a car dealer. You shouldn't persuade yourself that you need to buy your roof bars from your car dealer's accessory catalogue, not least because 'Original Equipment' bars are often own-badged Atera or Thule bars. It's also fair to tell you that dealer supplied bars are often "neat but impractical", being either too short to allow you to carry all you want to carry, or too weirdly shaped to accommodate anything except for a roof box, e.g. you won't find bike carriers to fit them. If you like the look of roof bars with closed ends, i.e. no bar ends sticking out beyond the mountings, then check out the Prorack Whispbar bars if they are available for your vehicle.
Roof bars are either plastic-coated steel, or aluminium. 'Standard' steel bars are rectangular in section, not more than 40mm wide and 30mm deep. Aluminium bars ("aerobars") usually have a slot in the top of them, often called a "T-track", designed to accommodate special adapters, and to allow you to use the full length of the roof bars for carrying a roof box and other accessories. The potential problem with steel bars is this: if you’re aiming to carry both a roof box and bike carriers, the feet that hold the bars onto the vehicle are likely to be in just the wrong place for the roof box and bike carrier fixings, which go around the bar. In other words, you can usually carry a wider load on aerobars than you can carry on steel bars.
If you already have aluminium bars, or decide to order them from our site, please also order the appropriate T-track roof box adapters! These are listed as options on the roof box order pages.
Thule is the world's largest car rack systems brand, with an excellent roof bar system and fittings for almost all vehicles. We also supply Atera bars - best of the German car rack system brands - as well as much cheaper CRUZ bars. CRUZ is a top notch Spanish manufacturer which specialises in mid-market roof bars. Prorack’s S-wing bars incorporate “Whispbar” wing-shaped bars that create up to 70% less drag and noise than other aerobar brands – so they’re definitely worth a look! Click here to link to our roof bars pages, or there's also a "Roof Bars" link in the left hand menu, or you can click on any "What fits my car?" link - these rectangular yellow signposts appear throughout the site.
Autoform is Sweden’s specialist box manufacturer, a top quality manufacturer whose range includes ‘Explorer’ (they call it ‘Nova’) and ‘Denver’, the biggest boxes available. They make boxes for a large number of car manufacturers, many of which are just re-badged versions of the boxes we stock.
KAMEI is Germany’s roof box specialist. They make the best quality boxes on the worldwide market, no doubt at all, using specialist plastics and taking a 'no compromise' attitude to design that sets the engineering aspects of their boxes above the demands of the marketing people. There are three ranges: top quality ('Corvara'), mid to top ('Delphin'), and mid market (‘Husky’), a new box for 2009 which meets all the same safety criteria as the rest of the range. KAMEI supply many car manufacturers with own branded top boxes, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen. The weakness of sterling, together with rising freight and raw material costs now necessitates that most of the KAMEI boxes sold in the UK are distributed by us via the internet, but you can check out www.kamei.de for further information on the history and philosophy of this brand.
The brands we stock
Karrite, owned by Thule, is the UK's box manufacturer. Their boxes are very sensible, being made from the same components and to the same quality as the Thule 'Pacific' range. Thule is the world's dominant car rack systems manufacturer; their boxes are widely sold in the UK so you'll see plenty of them about. They have 3 main box ranges - economy ('Pacific'), mid to top ('Atlantis'), and top quality ('Spirit' and ‘Excellence’). The Spirits and Excellence are by some way the best looking and best engineered boxes that Thule have produced, although they're expensive compared to the competition. The Atlantis boxes are good value and of very good quality. We aren't stocking the Pacific range because we think there's much better value elsewhere in this sector of the market. (You'll find that Pacifics have similar fittings to all the Thule boxes; it's really just the plastic and packaging which are thinner. This stands to reason; Thule 360 litre boxes range from £150 to £425, so if it's not fundamentally the thickness of plastic and build quality that accounts for this difference, what is it?)
Atera boxes are made by Hapro (Holland) – Hapro are one of the three major manufacturers in this market, together with KAMEI and Thule. We stock the Atera-badged versions of both Hapro’s mid market range (‘Carver II’) and their top quality boxes (‘Zenith’); we also have a very good Hapro-branded “Roady” box.
Quality overview:
Atera (Zenith), Autoform (all boxes), KAMEI (Delphin and Corvara) and Thule (Spirit and Excellence) all use essentially the same quality of plastic and are of similar overall quality. The Karrite Odysseys (and the Thule Pacific, which we aren't stocking) use thinner material. The other boxes fall somewhere in between, the Atera Carvers being very similar to the Thule Atlantis range. As a rule of thumb, "The heavier the box, the better the quality".
The
biggest area of confusion is capacity
Don't take too much notice of manufacturers' estimates of capacity (litres). A few extra centimetres of height can make a huge difference to the nominal capacity of a roof box, but will probably make no difference to its real world usefulness, particularly if the box lid has pronounced styling. Anyway, the lower the box the less the wind resistance. You are likely to put one layer of soft bags along the base of the box, and then coats and flatter objects on top of them; no box on the market will be deep enough for two layers of soft bags. Length and width are therefore the most important measures of usefulness. Unless indicated otherwise, all the boxes we sell will accommodate several sets of golf clubs, or a decent sized tent and sleeping bags etc. Many customers ask whether their child's buggy will fit in the roof box. The answer is that "It depends" - the size of the wheels being the usual problem. Don't forget that it may be easier to put the buggy in the back of the car, and use the roof box for other items. Hard suitcases, especially large ones, are not usually suitable for use in roof boxes; soft bags are always more appropriate.
There is also doubt about the reliability of declared box capacities. KAMEI have a reputation for being conservative about capacity, Thule and Karrite swing the other way. Look at these pictures that show (L to R) a Thule Atlantis 780 (480 litres), a KAMEI Husky (330 litres), a Kar Rite Odyssey 320. In each case the roof box is the full size of its carton. Seeing is believing.
But even if you don't have particularly long things to carry, it’s likely that a Long box will suit you best if it's for family use. Long Medium Wide boxes are by far and away our most popular 'family flexible' boxes. Their particular advantages are that they can be moved around by one person, have a very good capacity (usually 460 to 475 litres), are easy to get things out of, are much easier than Long Wide boxes to store, and are very flexible, e.g. there'll often be room on the roof bars for two bike carriers as well, especially if you use aerobars (which allow the full length of the bar to be used for load carrying gear).
There is of course a potential problem when Long boxes are fitted to hatchbacks, because the rear of the box and the glass in the tailgate tend to meet. This isn't an issue if you're careful - we've never heard of a rear window being damaged. (It’s a matter of fact that we sell many more Long boxes in the summer than in the winter, and that most of these are for use on hatchbacks!)
To get around the Long box / hatchback problem, yet still leave roof space for a bike carrier, most manufacturers have now produced a 'Medium-Long Medium Wide' box - see the Atera Carver II (except 550), Autoform Explorer 380, KAMEI Husky, KAMEI Delphin 340K, KAMEI Corvara 390K, Thule Atlantis (except 900). These boxes will also accommodate the majority of carving skis.
Here are some other 'Rules of thumb' where boxes are fitted to 120cm roof bars: A family of 5 will probably buy a Long Medium Wide box, leaving space for 2 bike carriers on the roof either now or in due course (or perhaps a second roof box). A family of 4 will probably buy a Medium-Long Medium Wide box, leaving room for 1 bike carrier. 3 bikes can usually be fitted on the back of the car, or 4 on a tow bar carrier.
Some of the KAMEI Delphin and Husky boxes open from the left hand side; other boxes open on the right hand side. Atera (some), KAMEI (Corvara DuoLift) and Thule (most Atlantis, all Spirit and Excellence) have a dual side opening system; this is very useful on full width boxes, particularly when used on tall vehicles, but is of less benefit on narrower boxes as for ease of access these boxes really need to be on one side of the car or the other, and cannot then be reached from the other side. KAMEI's 300 / 400 / 450 series is entirely symmetrical so you just need to turn the box around to open it from the other side of the car. Placing a box in the middle of the car might look tidier but unless it's a wide box you'll end up having to stretch, balancing on the door sill and at risk of straining your back.
Quite a few people choose the opening format on the basis of where the car is parked at home, e.g. there may be a fence or a wall or a flowerbed, a hazard that makes loading much easier from a particular side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Customers tend to ask the same sort of questions if they haven't used a roof box before. Here are some frequently asked questions, and answers:
Do I need anything else apart from roof bars and a roof box?
No. A set of box to standard bar fittings is included with every roof box we sell, as is a set of straps to keep luggage in place. When a box is locked it can't be removed from the bars because the fittings that go around the roof bars are secured inside the box, and the box will be locked.
What are boxes made from?
Unless stated, all the boxes we sell are made from various types of UV protected ABS plastic, and they are fully recyclable. None of the serious manufacturers uses fibreglass nowadays.
It's mostly just marketing hype; all boxes are almost as quick and easy to fit to roof bars, whether or not they have 'quick fit' systems. As a rule of thumb, the quicker the box is to fit, the more space the fitting system takes in the box, i.e. the less space there is for the luggage, although the KAMEI system is relatively low profile. Bear in mind also that many people leave their box permanently fixed to the roof bars, so fitting time is irrelevant. And also ask yourself the question, "If I take my box on holiday 3 times a year, and the slower but low profile U bolt fittings take an extra 2 minutes to fit each time, does this really make any difference?"
