I frequently enjoy Fatty’s, a.k.a. The Fat Cyclist, blog and occasional farcical news stories on Cycling News, but I have to disagree with his entry claiming that hitch racks are the only way to transport a bike on a car.
In a perfect world, my car would be big enough to accomodate my bicycles inside the cargo area, while still achieving excellent gas milage and sporting other environmentally-friendly stats. Unfortunately, this is not possible, so after a lot of thought and trying friends racks, I went with a roof rack with a fork clamp.
I do realize there is the danger of pulling the car in to my garage, or as may seem more likely, a drive-through or public parking garage, but I have so far manged to avoid that calamity. My car is relatively low to the ground, and it takes me only about half a minute to detach my front wheel, put the bike on the rack, clamp it securely, lock the bike to the rack, and drop the wheel in the trunk. Of course, the rack is also locked to the car, and is well-secured to the car.
Please note there is no contact between the showy parts of the bike’s paint job and the bike rack, thus neatly avoiding Fatty’s issue with gouging his friends paint job due to placing the bike on the hitch rack but failing to prevent it from rocking. In contrast, it takes me a good two minutes to attach my bicycle to a hitch rack and secure it with various straps and bungie cords.
Perhaps a variation on the “Remove Before Flight” idea, such as your garage door opener in the glove box, is a good one, but I really like my roof rack and am not interested in a bicycle toting method that does not involve either enclosing the bike completely in the cargo area or securing it by the fork and a wheel strap.