I used a Thule towbar mounted rack on my Scenics and it worked great, always seemed to be defying gravity but it worked great.
I got my Altea XL and as it was so new, they didn't have a towbar to fit so I bought roof bars and 4 cycle racks. I must confess I have only used it a handful of times in the 3 years I have owned it.
The Altea is quite a high car so I always took a 2-step folding stool and used the technique Humph mentioned. Obviously need to mount the 2 inner bikes first but a clean lift, put onto the rack and very easy to clamp into place.
The difficulty I had is the Altea comes with roof rails that have 2 small holes in them and I had to buy special clamps to fit these before mounting the rack. And since the rails curve slightly, the front and back brackets are not perfectly level with each other and this has resulted in some scrapes to the roof trying to lift it into position.
I suffered horrendous fuel consumption, about 10mpg down carrying the bikes.
We are shortly going on holiday, Center Parcs for a week and then either over to France or down to Cornwall for a week and we are debating whether to take the bikes or not. Would equate to 1000+ miles from Glasgow with the bikes, will we use them enough to justify taking them? You know the story, if we take them we will never use them, if we don't we will wish we had...
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