The Rubicon EP Corral bike rack is what you get when you spare no expense building a bike rack.
It’s got one of the highest weight ratings on the market, is built entirely in the U.S., has one of the sharpest-looking designs we’ve seen and some of the coolest features. It also sports the price tag of a rack built to be the best, with an MSRP of almost $1,700 for the five bike verison.
At face value that’s a large sum for a bike rack, but it’s not that much more than some of the more premium racks hitting the market this year and next. The new Powerful Piston Pro X, for example, will run you nearly $1,400 and can only carry two bikes.
It’s all about the details: The aluminum crossbars are held on by machined brackets you can have custom painted to match your rig.
”At a certain point, we realized that to keep it U.S. made and to be competitive we needed to go to the far end of the spectrum and make something that was really, really stout, durable and long lasting,” said Andrew Clark, Rubicon EP’s director of business development.
Durability is one area where the Corral rack does seem to have a leg up on its competitors. Rubicon EP started as an overlanding accessory company, so they know how to make products built to stand up against some of the worst environments and less-than-ideal conditions. The Corral rack is made entirely of metal, with the lion’s share being constructed of aluminum to keep weight down. The baskets that secure the front wheels look like they could hold a motorcycle and the rack pivots on these huge external bearings.
The pivot mechanism is actuated via a lever near the hitch, which is fittingly spec’d with a lock-on mountain bike grip.
Loading bikes is pretty simple: You undo a trigger mechanism that allows you to lean the rack down, which allows to roll your bike on its rear wheel into the basket. Unloading the bike is just the reverse of that process. It’s much the same technique you’d use to load or unload a bike from any hanging-style bike rack.
Rubicon EP is based in Sacramento, California and you can order their racks online and have them shipped to your door. You can also choose custom colors for some of the accent pieces and opt for a protective powder coating.
Source link
