Best Inside Car Bike Racks

The Hollywood Racks T970 Fork Block is a Swiss Army knife of potential when it comes to keeping your bikes still and safe on a journey from one place to another.

You can use it first and foremost as an inside car rack, which is why it’s listed here. Why it takes the top spot on our list is because of everything else it can do. If you need a floor mount – Hollywood Rack it.

Wall mount? Hollywood Rack it. If you’re one of our friends with a pick-up? Mount your bikes to your truck bed. How? Well, with a Hollywood Rack, naturally.

See what we mean? Any number of potential bike safe storage and transport quandaries, for which the single, simple answer is the Hollywood Racks T970 Fork Block 1 Bicycle Fork Mount.

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The joy of the Hollywood Racks, beyond its positive determination to be useful no matter what you need, is that it’s a zero-hassle solution to all these issues. Supremely easy to install, even easier to tweak.

When it comes through your door, there’s nothing to do – no building, no swearing at manuals yelling “I can’t SEE Flange A, you useless piece of-!”. None of the hassle, in short, which you might be used to from working with other bike rigs. It arrives, you fix it to the surface, you have immoveable, safe-for-transport bikes.

Life has a habit of throwing up perfect adaptation. Alligators and sharks, for instance, have evolved to be the perfect biological machines to take you by surprise and rip your leg off, even though neither of them especially want to do so.

The Hollywood Racks T970 has been intelligently designed to be the perfect inside car bike rack, and more besides.

Now, before we sing its praises too hard or too high, let’s acknowledge a thing or two.

It’s not perfect. It’s neeeearly perfect. But not perfect.

Here’s the thing. One Hollywood Racks T970 secures just one bike.

Many more high-end racks will secure up to four bikes at a time. That’s enough to start your heart racing with calculations of how much you need to spend to equal those higher-priced units.

Thankfully, Hollywood Racks knows about the differential between its cheap-as-a-Big-Mac-fart T970 and the higher-priced four-bike racks. That’s why the company sells its product at around a quarter of the price of a high-end four-bike rack.

So financially, you’re not losing out, and in addition, if you’re using those high-end racks, you can probably only use one in the back of most cars, with some dead space. With the T970, you equally wouldn’t be likely to fit a full eight bikes in the backspace of a car.

But five or six – sure, at a push. That means by breaking things down into individual units, Hollywood Racks actually gives you more options than you thought you had.

A more serious issue with this model is also an issue with most similar racks on the market – but not an issue with external bike racks.

The T970 grabs your bike by the fork.

That means before you can transport anything anywhere, you have to detach the front wheel.

Sure, that way you get a lower profile, easier to fit in a standard car, but a) it’s extra prep work you have to do before you can move your bikes, and b) you then have to find some way to store the wheels in transit.

Sure, you can pay out extra money for a wheel mount, but at that point, it’s starting to become a Broadway show. Alternatively, you can simply lay the wheels on the floor in the back of the car.

Top tip: if you’re laying the wheels on the floor – maybe put some newspaper or a ratty old blanket down, because if you’ve ridden the bikes worth a damn, you can be guaranteed the wheels will have some staining material in every groove of their tires. Save your car’s carpet: think ahead and lay down some protection.

For all the additional preparation and hassle though, there’s no getting away from the multi-functional neatness, not to mention the cheapness, of the Hollywood Racks T970.

As an all-singing, all-dancing, all-problem-solving tool to get your bikes from A-B in the back of your car, it’s pretty much in a league of its own.

Got your pick-up ready?

First and foremost among those bike racks which work best on the bed of a truck is the MBP Alloy Quick Release Fork Mount Bike Block.

Fairly obviously, it lacks one critical element or versatility which the Hollywood Racks T970 brings to your bike-moving party – namely the ability to be used in the back of a standard car.

Nevertheless, the MBP deserves consideration by truck owners all over the nation as an ‘inside the overall space of the truck’ solution, which doesn’t involve you adding to the side, the rear of the roof of your vehicle. 

Beyond the Hollywood Racks element, the MBP brings a lot of its own versatility to the table. Aside from its use to transport bikes from place to place safely and securely in the back of a pick-up, it has several static functions too.

You can mount it in your garage, your den at home, in a shed – you name it, anywhere it can be warm and safe and protected from the elements. That means you can always know where it is when you get the urge to transport your bike by truck or van.  

When that need overwhelms you, you can use the MBP to mount your bike securely on a truck bed, in your van – another popular vehicle across America, and one that would fulfill the letter of the ‘inside car’ criterion – or even on a trailer to take your bike across town, across the state, or even across the country if you want.

You want to go further than that? Talk to your shipping company.

The MBP is build of lightweight alloys, so it’s not as though it’s like dragging a medieval torture device with you, however much it looks like some cunning tool for cutting off a miscreant’s thumbs.

Weight-wise, it’s more like an executive hole punch, which means the MBP puts safe bike transportation in the palm of your hands. And if you realize you need your bike in a hurry – no sweat.

The skewer that secures bikes to the MBP is quick release, so yank, boom, you’re out of there. Though admittedly, re-attaching your front wheel is going to take more time than you’d like if you suddenly need to make a quick getaway.

The MBP bike block is both sturdy and lightweight. Shouldn’t be possible, but that’s alloys for you – destroying the narrative expectations of people everywhere through chemistry. That’s why the company includes a 1-year warranty against any defects in the bike block, guaranteeing bike-transportation satisfaction.

While we’ve no wish to alienate drivers of regular cars, if you’ve ever had a pick-up driving pal who’s told you they were infinitely better as vehicles than your car could dream of being…well, now you know why.

The Saris Traps Single and Triple Track Bike Rack for Trucks and Vans (and you have to give credit to the marketing intern who probably came up with that ungodly tongue-twister of a name) brings the regular car in from the cold of MBP’s disdain.

It can be used on pick-up trucks itself, but it also allows owners of the likes of SUVs, station wagons, and even hatchbacks, to safely transport their bikes across any decent driving distance.

It’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world – you need to measure the height and length of the trunk and the bike.

If the second figure is bigger than the first one…no, we won’t spoiler it for you. But you have fun now, y’hear? And remember, the universe loves a trier.

What you’re dealing with in the STSaTTBRfTaV47 is an aluminum frame, 47 inches long, two inches wide, and as many tall.

But compared to some of the other racks on our list, it’s on the more accommodating side – you can secure four bikes to the…to the…to the Saris Traps rack with no hassle once you’re sure it will fit in the back of your car, van, SUV or truck.

It will hold your bikes upright, though as with the Hollywood Racks device, you’re going to need to take off the front wheels before you lock the bikes onto the fork with the fork-mount traps.

Also, like the Hollywood Racks device, you need to pay for the wheel mounts separately.

But as a rack in its own right, the Saris Traps rack is a great, straightforward, cost-effective solution for those with a handful of bikes to transport from place to place.

Add a lifetime warranty into the bargain, and you have a compelling reason to go for Saris. 

No, you’re not going nuts. No, you didn’t just read the same listing twice, and we didn’t post it for you, either.

If 12 inches is an insignificant difference to you, we have questions about your life that you’re under no obligation to answer.

Like the 47-inch version, the Saris Traps Triple Track (35-Inch) is made of powder-coated aluminum.

It’s compatible with other Saris traps and wheel mounts – and yes, they’re still sold separately, which still leaves a slightly odd taste in the mouth.

The joy of the 35-inch version is pretty self-explanatory – you still get to transport four bikes at a time, but you don’t need anything like as much width in the back of your car or truck to get the job done.

That means that the range of vehicles in which you can use the 35-inch version is broader than it is with the 47-inch.

Four bikes, aluminum racking, just 35 inches of necessary space, with the option to bolt down the rack permanently if you’re going to be transporting your bikes all over the place regularly. Where’s the bad?

Oh right, with the whole “wheel mounts sold separately” thing.

Fine, but for an otherwise enormously convenient boil-down of a wide four-bike rack you can use in your car time after time, that’s a small price to pay.

Let’s get a little technological The Minoura VERGO TF3 brings lightweight alloys to the back of your car, allows you to transport three bikes at a time, and with durable anti-slip soft urethane rubber feet, requires precisely no drilling.

Put the drill away, you won’t need it here.

Three bikes are of course fewer than four bikes, so the Minoura won’t be of any use to you if you’re a family of four cycle-fans, driving around the country with a mission to ride every possible trail.

If three slots are enough for you, the Minoura’s minimal-hassle approach to the job will win it fans, and make it worth checking out.

While it supports three bikes at a time, the Minoura is more flexible in some other ways – it can cope with up to six different handlebar positions, for instance, which means less hassle than some other racks we’ve seen.

With fork mounts fully adjustable to the length of the bar, the sleek-looking Minoura rack makes a play for buyers on the grounds of ultimate convenience.

It’s a play that might well be worth taking a look at, though the Minoura remains pretty expensive for a three-bike rack.