Roof bars for the born?

[tracktoy]

I recall that a Lot of Skoda owners were very upset when the new release came out and they were not approved for tow bars, when all the older ones were.
My personal experience when trying to get a tow bar fitted to a non approved type vehicle was the garage said NO, Its not approved and would cost me a fortune to get a one off approved.

 

[James_R]

Similar palaver with the mk7 Golf R estate. Never factory tested or approved for towing but people wanted them to tow their trailers, caravans etc. It was entirely doable but at the owners or insurers risk.

 

[SRGTD]

I worked with a lady who had a Honda Civic Type R (the FN model generation, built from 2007 - 2011). She wanted to tow a small camping trailer so contacted her insurance company to inform them of her intention of getting a tow bar fitted. Her insurers told her the car wasn’t type approved for towing, so her solution was to buy a large camper van!

Quite an expensive alternative to a tow bar, but she wasn’t prepared to invalidate her insurance and take the risk of towing with her Type R.

 

[Frederique Rijsdijk]

Here's a pic of how it sits on the roof. It's a bit fiddly though. The distance between the stands that sit on the roof is important, and I eventually put them a bit more to the inside (about 0.5cm on each side) and then it's really solid. My car is wrapped, and the clamps do damage the wrap so I added a bit of thin rubber padding as you can see in the pics here.

All in all I would say this isn't perfect and requires a good eye to get things right, so it might not be fore everyone.

Did a test drive yesteday (about 150km in total, mostly 100km/h, with about 30-40km of 130km/h) and no issues at all. Without an actual box on the roof tho the bars are very noisy (oscillation). With a box on the bars the wind generated oscillations disappear and it's just the usual wind noise that you might expect from something like this.

I later found this one, and I think it might be a better (fool proof) solution for the Cupra Born: https://www.anwb.nl/webwinkel/p/143645/dakdragers-cupra-born-2021