Not Very Close In The Upper Room

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 09:36

You can never have enough cargo space. Especially when you go on vacation with your family. The ADAC has now tested different roof boxes.

By Martin Woldt No matter

how big a car you can choose, when you go on vacation, even talented load masters quickly reach their capacity limits. Beyond that, only trailers or roof boxes help. The latter is usually the first choice, because driving in a trailer is not for everyone.

Easily manageable

A roof box, on the other hand, appears easy to manage. You have to consider, however, that such a gain of 300 to 500 liters of storage space appears to be quite generous at first glance, but should not tempt you to exceed the permissible weight range at the second.

Most roofs allow additional loads of 70 to 75 kilograms. The dead weight of the box and any support beams must be deducted from this. That leaves about 50 kilograms that you can pack on top. But they also have an effect on vehicle behavior. The vehicle's center of gravity shifts, which may reduce cornering stability. So be careful with jerky maneuvers, especially on slippery surfaces.

Eight makes in the test

This year, the ADAC took a close look at eight makes between 165 and 360 euros and found that none of them passed the test without faults or faults. There were no total failures, but when it came to load security, for example, neither cheaper nor more expensive models were completely convincing. The main shortcoming are the mostly inadequate lashing straps, which are supposed to prevent the load from slipping, but do so inadequately.

And even if the straps seem usable, as with the Neumann Whale, easily breakable plastic eyelets ensure that in the end there is no hold. So you don't have to be surprised that the roof luggage, which has slipped, can even break through the plastic cover of the box in some cases during the crash test at just 30 km / h. This was the case with the Mont Blanc Vista, for example, in which all of the internal tensioning straps tore in the test and the base shell burst, so that the contents ended up on the street. Nevertheless, the testers were able to determine progress on earlier product tests, as, unlike in the past, none of the boxes came off their roof racks during the collision.

Three out of eight

Only three out of eight boxes, from Atera, Kamei and Thule Pacific, withstood the sprinkler system at the ADAC test center in Landshut. The rest revealed more or less large leaks, which were less with the ATU box, but quite annoying with the Thule Ranger. Since a roof box sometimes transports some objects of value, the ADAC recommends not to underestimate the theft protection. “In any case, it is important that metal locks secure the opening. As soon as a roof box can be opened with a light tool, for example a screwdriver, it is not correct from our point of view to describe it as safe,”says spokesman Christian Buric.

In the test spectrum, this was only the case with the models from Neumann, Hapro and MontBlanc, which, in terms of price, are even somewhat cheaper. In addition to improvements in load securing, the ADAC is therefore also demanding stable metal locks on the roof boxes from manufacturers in order to protect them more effectively against unauthorized access. In view of the shortcomings in the test, renting a box may be preferable to buying a box.