I’ll come right out and say it, Thule’s new Epos is the best bike rack for mountain bikes I’ve ever tested. And at mbr we’ve tested pretty much everything going, from the Seasucker Talon and its innovative suction cups, to the Bikestow Original that guillotines your bikes into place inside a van.

It’s also the most expensive bike rack I’ve ever reviewed, coming up over £1,000 in the three bike verion. So, is it better than the Thule VeloCompact 927 it replaces, and should you buy one? Let me help you make up your mind…

The new Epos mounting head is easy to use and fits round every bike I’ve tried it on

Thule Epos bike rack need to know

• New rack from Thule folds in half for easier fitting and storage
• Features new strap bracing and support arms to hold your bikes
• Carries three bikes, with a maximum capacity of 60kg
• Comes in a two-bike option for £100 less

The VeloCompact and indeed all modern Thule towbar racks until now used a big rubbery jaw at the end of an arm to bite down onto your bike and hold it upright on the rack. It worked OK and I never failed to get a good hold of a bike, but with increasingly oversized tubes and the proliferation of chunky e-bike frames it got progressively more difficult.

The ratchet head pivots so you can angle it onto your bike’s top tube or downtube, and it’s height adjustable too

Thule’s ditched that idea and replaced it with a ratchet strap that runs round your frame and secures into itself. It’s a much simpler design, meaning there’s less to go wrong, it’s easier to use, and fits every bike I’ve tried… even e-bikes with ponderous batteries tucked into their downtubes.

The arm and head strap it’s mounted to work much better too. The arm is telescopic, the head pivots around 180°, and I could operate the whole thing one handed, leaving the other free to hold my bike steady.

These straps have a metal core making them harder to snip for any potential thief, and in theory they lock closed with the same key that secures the rack itself. But I could never get the key to turn in the lock, something that didn’t really bother me as I’d never leave five figures worth of bike unguarded and hanging off the back of my bike anyway.

The tray below does most of the heavy lifting, supporting the weight of the bike

The bikes themselves sit directly onto the rack, which takes the bulk of the weight, and the wheels are held in place with the same kind of ratchet straps as described above. They’ve been too short on some previous Thule roof mounted racks, but here they’re plenty long enough for 2.5in tyres, and the ratchet works easily to tighten or loosen as required.

The wheel trays are too small for modern bikes, they need to be at least 10cm longer

My one moan here is that the wheel tray itself just isn’t wide enough to completely support your bike, and at least half of each wheel is left hanging off the edges. It’s not a deal breaker as I found every bike I tried remained stable in transit, but it does allow the front wheel to wobble side to side slightly as you’re cornering. Thule says it’ll take bikes with a wheelbase up to 1350mm, but I’d say that’s probably pushing it.

Long wheelbase mountain bikes have been around for years now, so there’s really no excuse for Thule for not moving with the times and growing the rack’s wheelbase too. The saving grace is that this just-long-enough wheel tray makes the rack as small and as light as it’s possible to be.

How light are we talking then? The whole thing weighs 22.7kg, which is heavy but not impossibly so, particularly as the rack folds in half for storage. This is the Epos party piece and the single most important reason why it’s worth the upgrade over most of Thule’s other racks. Although it has to be said I could have bought the folding Thule EasyFold XT with conventional straps for around £900.

Snapped shut, the clamshell design is easy to carry or roll around on the supplied wheels

Each side flips up like a clamshell, meaning I could stash it in the garage without having to budge too many bikes out the way first. It’s also much easier to carry than the cumbersome Thule EuroClassic because I can hold it next to my body, rather than awkwardly at arms length. There’s also a convenient handle right where I want it and Thule has also fitted dinky little wheels underneath so I can push it around like a suitcase, which is quite useful for longer carries.

Fitting the Epos to the car is just simple, slide it on over the ball hitch and there’s a big lever to lock it off. Then I just needed to plug in the 13pin connector, flip down each side and I was good to go. I also love that you can pivot the whole contraption, bikes and all, back and away from the car, letting me get into the boot relatively unobstructed.

Two e-bikes and a regular bike is about all the Epos can manage with its 60kg weight limit

With a maximum load capacity of 60kg for all three bikes, and 30kg for each individual mtb, the Epos is going to work fine if you’re riding regular bikes. It got tricky for me though because I wanted to transport three e-bikes, each weighing in excess of 20kg. Practically, then, I’m limited to just two bikes on this three bike rack, and really I should have opted for the two-bike model, which would have saved me £100. Think carefully about the weights you’re hoping to transport, is the takehome here.

The whole rack, bikes and all, will pivot out the way of your boot

Is it really possible to justify spending nearly £1,000 on a bike rack then? That’s a personal decision for all of us, but when you watch Muldoon’s video on the best bike vans, some of which cost upwards of £60,000, it puts the Thule Epos into perspective. Most of us would probably like a swanky VW camper, but that’s not going to happen for plenty of riders, me included. The next best thing, and the easiest and safest way to transport up to three bikes, is right here.