The Mondial Roof Rack is an excellent choice if you want a versitile roof mounted rack for carrying bikes, boats, skiis or snowboards. All of it is modual just like the Yakima or Thule so you can interchange parts quite easily.

The biggest advantage and key selling point to the Mondial Rack is its low profile look and no overhang. There is a lot of visual appeal with the Mondial Rack over the other competitors. Yakima and Thule both have garish poles, posts and other strange mechanical things hanging off every which way.

The mondial rack is 'svelt' and hugs the roof and roof lines very well. The addition of a Fairing to the front of the rack makes it even more appealing. No straight flat board here, just a curved plastic molding that mounts flush to the rack and adds a nice look.

Enough about looks, fit and finish is very nice complete with sturdy key-lockable mounting brackets that can be interchanged depending on what car you want to put the racks on. It comes with no less than 5 different brackets for various roof designs.

The "Hammerhead' bike mounts are also a lot more low-profile over competitors, no 'gutter' look, just a long post with mounts for the fork and a holder for the rear wheel. This slides easily into the roof mounted cross bars.

The fairing not only looks good but is almost a necessity to reduce wind noise. There is a loud howling sound without it and only a slight increase in wind noise with it which the radio easily drowns out.

One of my negative comments has to be that this brand is so unrecognized and unknown. Very few people sell their products and they themselves don't have a web presence. They were recently sold to a Canadian firm which apparently is mostly french making it even harder to find web info on them. So I kind of dove in and bought the rack with only a few pictures viewed at www.nashbar.com. The other thing there isn't a lot of info on is the warranty. I believe its 1 year but there wasnt a lot besides the instructions that came with the rack so I dont know for sure.

It takes about 3 minutes to take the rack off and put it on once you have it adjusted to fit your car. The longest process is opening up all four doors and lifting it off.

Back to the rack for a moment to mention the 'scratch-resistant' rubber feet that fit nicely right along the small gutter inset on the A4's roof. They are molded so that it doesn't block the channel from allowing water to flow under it. The 'hooks' that attach under the door frames are also protected by rubber and plastic making it difficult to scratch your car although I did manage a little chip just once because the rubber that goes over the bracket could slip if you aren't careful.

In any case I think its a good alternative to the bigger comapnies racks and definitely one to consider if you think the Yakima or Thule is unsightly. The mondial is the better visual choice by far and I don't think you will be disappointed by it. The cost for me was $375 with two fork mount Hammerhead bike holders and the fairing. A good deal. Plus Nashbar has web ordering and no-extra cost next day shipping also a good choice for purchasing other bike stuff.