Review: Thule Epos Hitch Mount Bike Rack And How Sweden Restored My Faith In Humanity

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I’ve been serious about cycling, on and off, most of my life. I’ve had all sorts of bike racks. For sports cars and hatchbacks, the obvious choice was a roof rack. They hold the bike securely by the front fork and the rear tire, sometimes with an arm to the frame. Now, like most people, I drive anSUV, and getting bikes on the roof is a struggle—even at 6-foot-3. Putting the bikes on the rear of the car is the best option, and the most secure way to do that is with a bike rack that mounts on a trailer hitch receiver like the Thule Epos rack you see here.

I'm in roughly two decades of reviewing cars and consumer products. Somewhere around year 12 or 13 I was convinced I had become yet another jaded car writer. My soul was a dark cold vacuum devoid of enthusiasm for what had gotten me here. Too many years of driving supercars through the Alps before laps at the Nurburgring, all while being stuffed full of rich foods like a Christmas goose in November, had left my feelings towards cars, dead. Then I had an epiphany: it wasn’t all about me. Over those 20 years of waning enthusiasm, more and more I was driving and testing products developed by teams of people who, like dead chickens, were all out of clucks to give. The cars and products I was testing were becoming stale and boring because those designers were losing their passion and going through the motions, doing work that was, at best, adequate.

There’s a certain irony that it isn’t a car or a bicycle, two things I’ve been passionate about since I was a kid, that reawakened my enthusiasm for design. Instead, a rack that joins together two of the things I love. This is a bit of a spoiler this early in the review, but Thule, or more accurately a team of designers at the Swedish outdoor giant, makes one of the most thoughtful and well-executed products I’ve ever tested. 

Let's talk about the options for holding bikes on the back of your vehicle. The least expensive and most popular has two rods sticking out the back of the car, either off a large bracket installed on the hitch or using a lightweight frame