advice roof bars or roof rack 2023 jimny

Those are nice. They blend in with the colour well too.

Roof bars every time. They are simple and practical and it's what every roof accessory is designed to work with. Big roof racks are purely an image thing, as far as I can see they offer no practical benefit and to be honest I think they look a bit naff. Don't get me started on the silly little ladders!

I'm going to disagree...

I've been running a basket style roof rack for a decade or so, not on a Jimny, but on two slightly larger vehicles, a 1998 Mitsubishi Pajero iO and a 1998 Suzuki Grand Vitara.

You can just toss whatever you need to fetch, be it a suitcase, a box, a jerrycan or two, a cooler, recovery boards, a second spare wheel, ladders, ratchet strap them down and you're good to go.

That particular rack mounts to a pair of crossbars that run left to right (as would the roof bars on the Jimny) but mount to the longitudinal roof rails that the two vehicles came with. The basket is a heck of a lot more convenient, no need for roof bar accessories for probably 90% of what I might need to carry, in fact, the only "item specific" mounts are for the second spare, and a shovel that sits outside of the rack.

With roof bars, I would need to reposition them every time I changed what I was carrying, closer together for jerry cans, further apart for a cooler.

The only reason that rack hasn't transitioned to the Jimny is the roof load limit - but I am looking for a good aluminium rack and I've seen a nice one on five door Jimny in a Suzuki South Africa brochure, I'll put a picture below.

The ladder, I'm on the fence about that - my original position was it was entirely unnecessary, the Jimny is not that tall - I've never used a ladder to access anything on the two other vehicles, just open the nearest door and stand on the floor - turns out, it's not as convenient with the Jimny - I don't think I want a ladder, but we'll see how that plays out.


 

I nearly bought an 18th scale widdle wadder for the last big jimny meet to stick on my back window but I decided it might be too provocative!

I have Thule roof bars, and an alloy roof basket I can add on if need be very versatile and the best of both worlds.

Given that we have a 30kg limit, and even the lightest roof basket will be close to half of that, you can't feasibly carry a full jerry can, cool box or suitcase on the roof of a Jimny. Luckily those are all things that will fit inside the car. The roof is only really useful for carrying long things that won't fit inside the car. Anything over 1m long can easily be attached to a pair of roof bars 

If your Jimny is so full that you can't fit a jerry can in it then there's a very good chance you're already over the gross vehicle weight anyway.