Side by Side Comparison of: Thule vs Allen Sports

On a nearly 7000 mile round-trip vacation from Texas to Pennsylvania, it worked beautifully on my Prius! Durable and solid function with 2 standard weight adult mountain bikes. Minimal movement, despite bumps, hills and unpredictable freeway traffic. I highly recommend this product.

Fist rack I've ever owned so I was a little apprehensive and intimidated with the installation and the security of my 35-year-old 10-speed road bike being damaged. Easier to install than I thought it would be and it was very secure on the rack as I was on the highway doing 65-70 mph going to my favorite path on the lake. Even carried my 21-speed hybrid along with it (for a friend) and both bikes were very snug with no problem at all. I would just recommend bungee cords to keep tires and peddles from moving during transport. Can't beat it for the money. Works great on my Mercury Milan. No scratches,,,no problems. Strongly recommend

Great rack and ease of assembly and mounting makes this bike rack the best I've ever had! I replaced my Thule roof rack with the trunk rack. It's easier to mount, takes minutes, and no damaging the roof trying to put on the roof rack. The quality of this rack is outstanding. Why would someone put on a cheap rack with expensive bikes on it? Great seller; fair price, wide selection & fast shipping. Highly recommend this seller and enjoy your Summer!

Fits a 2011 Buick Regal excellent and I haven't had any issues to date. I've put over 400 miles on my bike these last few months just to give you an estimate of how many trips I've been on. (Granted many of those were around the house). The bike locks into place and has an anti sway bar. You will need to buy a locking mechanism to keep the mount from being stolen / and lock your bike to the mount if you plan on leaving it mounted out of sight. Bikes can sway a little bit but are pretty much stable. I've token two bikes with me a few times, but as the second bike is steel frame I'm trying to avoid over weighing it.

I bought this carrier to take two bikes to Burning Man and found it to be very easy to mount to my PT Cruiser and easy to hang my bikes on. I have two women's beach cruisers and had bought a bar that most carriers had told me that I would need to mount the girls bikes. As it turned out, I didn't need the support bar, we just mounted the bikes at an angle and they rode fine. Our bikes are quite heavy as they were not built to be light and we have loaded them up with racks, baskets, carrying boxes and decorations. The carrier handled the job very well. A 1200 mile round trip mile and some VERY BUMPY dirt roads. The carrier was very good to my vehicle, no marks or damage and though I did remove the bikes to open the hatch, I did not have to remove the carrier. Our bikes are very WIDE due to all the baskets etc. but they were able to fit on the three bike carrier just fine. I highly recommend this carrier. I would have been in it pretty deep if it had failed.Many have asked if this carrier will fit their vehicle - Just go to Thule's web site and their FIT GUIDE will tell you. If this rack won't fit - They have one that will! I have had this rack for three years now and it is still holding up great and is supper easy to work with - LOVE IT!

I really wanted a trailer mounted model but I couldn't find one I liked and didn't stick out too far. I also have a trailer hitch carrier, so this allows me to carry both bikes and coolers/beach gear instead of choosing one or the other. It is well-designed and strong. No complaints.I read another reviewer who has a Tahoe and couldn't make this work due to the shape of the tailgate door... This is true and it wouldn't attach there. But the Tahoe does have a very strong and perfectly shaped roof rack bar that you can attach the top straps to. NOTE: THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY NOT TO DO THIS. But I found it worked well for me and was quite strong. When you open the tailgate the straps loosen, so as long as you have the bikes off the rack before opening we found it ok. I am not sure you can open the tailgate with the bikes on anyway. Your call.

On time and undamaged, but the buttons to release the bike support arms to the folded position work off and on and do not reset to the outward position. It takes some fiddling to fold and unfold the arms.

Sturdy and the rack fit my car very well, but it would not accept either of my bikes.One was a adult 26" bike , but it did have a double cross bar.The other was a standard boys 24" bike.Neither one could fit as the bars on the mount were too far apart , or too thick.

Easy on and off, the only thing that I don't like is it's too easy to remove, I can envision someone just stealing it with or without bicycles on it. I would buy it again in a heart beat, keep it in the back seat, it's that easy to put on or off.My car is a 2012 Toyota Prius V

I don't have anything to compare this product to but it works very well for me. I got it since it would work on my GMC Acadia as well as my wife's Lexus SUV. Some of the straps were a little too long so I have cut these so that I don't have to roll them up each time I mount the rack. I don't leave it on the vehicle so every time I use the bikes I have to mount it. But it mounts rather quickly since I only loosen one strap so the others don't need adjusted every time. The bikes sit close to each other but I use foam pipe insulators, cut to fit, on a few of the bike frame areas to protect them from rubbing. I also added some foam strips to the brace that fits against the vertical frame going down from the seat so that it would not scratch the bikes. This brace holds the bike from moving laterally.My wife's bike is a woman's bike. What a pain that is! If you're thinking about buying a bike for a woman, don't bother thinking she needs a woman's bike. It's not like they wear long skirts to bike like they did years ago! Save yourself the trouble of needing a Swagman Bar Adapter and get her the men's bike. You will be glad you did. Plus the woman's bike doesn't have the screw insert provisions for a water bottle or other accessories like a man's bike. Just saying.

I bought this bike rack for my wife's Toyota Sienna minivan. She does triathlons so any given day she's running and biking, or swimming and biking, sometimes all 3. We really wanted a rack that was easy to install and capable of folding down when not in use since it needs to stay on the van most of the time.This Thule rack was super easy to install. The instruction manual is very good, the graphics combined with word instructions made it very easy. I had it up and loaded with three bikes within 15 minutes.The only flaw this rack has, hence the 4 star rating and the reason we decided to return it to Amazon, is that the rear windshield wipe is trapped underneath the upper rack arm. You can not operate the rear windshield wiper on the Toyota Sienna (our model is a 2004) with this bike rack. We're going to bite the bullet and install a hitch and buy a hitch mounted bike rack. The fact that my wife needs the rack to stay on the van throughout the week as she trains means we need a rack that doesn't obstruct the rear wiper.Other than that, the product is excellent. The rubber straps feel sturdy and have the right amount of friction on them when you're trying to pull on them for strapping or unstrapping your bike. The arms fold down out of the way when you don't need them. And my wife says "it has too many straps" but that's the nature of the design.

I bought this bike rack for a camping trip in early August, based on reviews and somewhat on the Thule name. Unfortunately, when I received the bike rack, one of the wing nuts that adjust the arms was missing (the box itself was pretty banged up, but UPS is to blame on that one). Although the part was missing, I called up Thule from the number in the manual, and after a short, very painless process, I had the part in the mail with no questions asked.Checking the "fit guide" that came with the rack, it was not recommended to fit on my 1996 Ford Tarus. I was able to fit it no problem after a few test fits. The straps that generally hook to the top of the trunk, can be configured to fit inside the trunk, and are held in place when the trunk is closed. This seemed more secure to me, and it held up great with two adult bikes on a 300 mile drive.Overall, bikes are easy to load, are well secured by the rubber straps better than other racks I've used, and is very stable over bumps. I had a strap fall off from the tow hook when going over a very jolting bump, but the rack didn't shift at all with only three points tied down.

The design is simple and once you do the first install, it's easy to use after that. How steady is it in holding a bike? Fairly steady but not steady enough to give me complete peace of mind. On 4 legs of a 1000 mile trip, I noticed my bike was "jumpy" back there and I held my breath on many occasions. Am i too nervous in general? Probably. But considering how important it is to secure your cargo, and how disastrous it would be to have a bike let go on the highway, I think this bike rack did only a fair job of holding on to it. The straps are narrow, and they don't seem to have a very confidence encouraging method of tightening up. Also they used a fairly friendly metal fastener on the top two straps but then a plastic buckle fastener on the other ones. I would have felt better of the straps were wider and the fasteners were uniform; preferably metal.

Don't feel that the bikes are on that secure with my Prius V, but they have stayed secure on city streets so far the few times we used it.

Must recheck straps frequently, particularly after crossing bumps in road.

This was okay, it just wasn't tall enough to get my 26" Raleigh wheels off the ground. I had one of the fellows at the bike shop help me with it and he couldn't do it either. I had to go home and get another vehicle with a trailer on it to get my bike home from the bike shop. Not too handy!!!

Bought this for a 2011 Jetta Sport Wagon, after first trying a Saris carrier. This was much better by far! The side clips on the tie down straps have marred my paint..not too thrilled about that. We have put on maybe 500 miles of driving thus far. One of the rack mount anti sway lugs where it mounts has broken, another on the way. They are just not robust enough to prevent the bikes from swaying. These are not reliable!My pedals have dented the rear door on the car and one bike has had some spoke damage. Not happy about any of that, but that was how it worked out. I will have to contact Thule about replacing a couple of the parts. What I did like was the mount is really solid on the car. There is no way I could transport three bikes on this rack. Nonetheless, this was the best I have used so far and my search will continue.UPDATE: This item from another Thule rack will solve the problem with the anti sway system!Thule 955 No-Sway Cage Accessory For Hitch Cradle, $20 on Ebay.Update: Unbelievably, the rear of one of the bikes actually came off the carrier while we were driving yesterday. The bike was securely mounted and it still managed to end up being dragged behind the car...thankfully for a very short distance. I would guess a combination of bumps in the road, a downhill turn and possibly the tire hitting was enough for one strap to come off and leave the bike hanging. I will have to use additional cam lock straps to make sure this can not happen again. Seeing how well the bikes were mounted on the carrier I would never have guessed this was even possible.

I guess this falls under the you get what you pay for file. I bought the cheapest Thule rack that would fit our cars for hauling 1 adult bike and 2 child's bikes 2 1/2 hours to the ocean boardwalk for a few days.I found assembling the rack to be difficult (I'm a Engineer by trade and restore antique cars so I can read instructions and am mechanically inclinded) due to lack luster directions and struggling to get the arms into the sockets the first time. The directions and Thule's website also fail to show the proper positioning of the bottom bar support. Should it rest vertically on the bumper cover? Or should the bottom support have a gap to the bumper and be resting horizontally against the rear hatch. I checked online, on Thule's website, and asked around and 50% said one way and 50% said the other way. I thought it would be more stable with the bottom support resting on the bumper so that is what I went with.The next problem was that I barely could get the adult mountain bike's frame around the arms, the 8 year old's bike had to have one are through the frame and one in the gap between the fork and the frame, and the 5 year old's bike would not fit at all and had to stay home. That did not make for a happy child.Once on, the rack was pretty stable over the rough PA roads and the smoother ones in NJ. We got there with no problem and offloaded the first time. The anti sway bar did a nice job keeping the mountain bike from moving. Don't use the loose strap supplied for a tie down, use quality rubber bungee cords. They will keep everything from rocking and keep the wheels from spinning.The next issue was that every time we opened the hatch, the rack would come loose and need to completely be reinstalled and readjusted. This was a problem as the bikes were going off and on the rack 2 times a day for a 20 minute car drive.I repositioned the rack for the drive home. I loaded the two bikes securely for the drive home, but the rack shifted during transit and rubbed the paint off my car down to the primer where a tube was making contact. The car lease is up in 2 months so I don't care, but would have been really mad if it was on the car that I own and it caused this kind of damage.

Seemed like a decent bike rack, and supposedly fit my car, however in reality it didn't work. Two star rating because it fit both mountain bikes pretty comfortably, but it didn't work for my vehicle. I have a 2004 Subaru Legacy 4 door sedan with the factory installed spoiler, and that spoiler was a real issue with putting on a bike rack. I managed to wedge the rack onto the car and load 2 mountain bikes onto it, but it really didn't fit properly and I did not feel comfortable taking it out onto the road. Disappointed by the results and returned this pretty quickly.

Used on a Volvo XC90. On 600 mile trip had to stop numerous times to tighten rack. The side straps never fit correctly in trunk creases. It is also a pain to install. Bikes made it there and back but not without unneeded stress.

I found this bike rack to be more difficult to install than expected, but not overly complicated. It is tricky simply because adjustments need to be made after each bike is mounted on as the weight causes loosening of the straps and it's tricky for one person to do alone. Occasionally lower straps would unhook off my cross-over vehicle on the road, causing some inconvenient stops and adjustments along the way, but easily corrected. My biggest complaint, however, is that although it claims to hold children's bicycles, it really does not. It was extremely difficult to to mount my son's bike, and often, I would just give up and throw his bike in the back. Adult bikes seems to go on no problem though. I suggest the Allen rack if you have kids bikes. It worked much better.

Advertised to fit a Honda Insight, but reading the installation instructions I discovered it is not recommended to be used on that car. Luckily the return was no problem with Amazon.

Maneuvering a child's bike and a small woman's bike onto this rack is, frankly, a huge pain. The height of the clips prevent us from sliding the bike frames over the rack as intended so, until we decide to spring for a better rack, we have settled on putting the child's bike on the rack crooked and the woman's bike as intended with the aid of a huge amount of swearing and shoving. The rack would be perfectly fine for larger bikes though.

I have an Infiniti G37 Coupe (2010). The Thule "fit guide" indicates that the 910xt supports my vehicle, however, the instructions are designed around the assumption that the trunk edge lines are straight. The G37 Coupe trunk lines are curved on the side edges, and the hooks will not tighten -- they slide and eventually pop off. Not sure how I can make the rack secure, at least with the side to side straps. The side straps extend to the bottom, and are also connected to the bottom hooks, so they MUST be secure to ensure the bottom hooks are tight. I really doubt if Thule tested this product on the G37 Coupe, even though they list it explicitly as supported on their website and in their fit guide. Very disappointing.

I purchased A 2017 1/2 Nissan rogue and went shopping for the bike rack before I leased the car with the understanding that this bike rack could hold my two race bikes. Now out of the box, watching several videos, and going to my local bike store I realized that the clips on the side are too narrow to fit on the door and when the bike store owner looked it up in his manual it says it does not fit! Thanks a lot for misrepresenting your product!!!!

I thought this was good bike rack but after few months of owning it the back pin that holds bike support in place popped off and I have to fill with a nail.

I recently used this to mount two bikes for a charity race. While I followed the instructions, and the bike rack seemed very secure, the rack shifted and drove the inner most bike into my car as well as the outer most bike. One of the bike grips had shifted while driving, causing damage to my car. What makes me even more upset is the fact that the warranty doesn't even cover the damages to my car, even though it was entirely the faulty design in the rack itself. I will never use this rack again, and I wouldn't even try to give it to someone, as it would more than likely damage their vehicle as well.

Very unstable when loaded. Difficult to get the arms to line up properly to screw in the wing nut. Returned item and bought an Allen Premier rack. It is 100% better.

This product is a disappointment. I expected more because it was a Thule product. I cannot get my bike to sit properly and securely in the mounts. While driving, the bike shifted and came further out of the mount on one side, but luckily since I secured the bike with extra bungee cords and rope, I didn't lose it. It was nerve wracking though. I bought it to bring my daughter's bike home from college, and had to drive 400 miles worried that I would lose the bike. I tried calling customer service for instruction, read the instruction manual again and again, and just can't figure out how to make this thing work. Sad face!

Do not buy for a Honda Fit. Although it says it can be used on this car in the manual, the side clips do not stay in place, regardless of how tight it is pulled. They just fall down due to the design of the hatchback, greatly destabilizing the rack.After several minutes of wrestling and frustration, I finally got them to stay for a minute. I put my bike on, but not 10 feet from my house they fell off again. I do not know if it is just hatchbacks it has this problem with, but it definitely does not fit with my car. The manual should not say this one will work if it does not.