Seen at SIA: Yakima
Jan 23, 2007 · 12:52 PM · permalink
At the Yakima booth this morning, I got the lowdown on several of their latest innovations. Very cool stuff.
The Yakima SkyBox is a car top box built “with the user in mind.” The lid has been designed to be opened or closed with minimal effort—the hinge does most of the work—and when they designed it, they were thinking about gloved hands, so theres a big fat lip and a one-handed latch both of which should help with fumbling. The lid can also be opened (once unlatched) or closed from anywhere thanks to the lid reinforcements and hinge.
LED lights on the inside and features like a cargo net and floor mat keep gear stowed and safe. Hopefully we’ll be testing one of these out soon.
Yakima has also released a universal mount for all its new products which will work with Yakima racks, factory racks, or other manufacturers’ racks. Wish we’d had these this summer when we were messing with racks on the girlfriend’s Subaru.
The other cool thing they showed me was a new series of vehicle-top storage bags. These bags have inner dividers to keep things organized and padded tops to reduce wind buffeting. But, I was really psyched to see that Yakima was thinking about real world use when they designed these. The FarOut bag has backpack straps for schlepping and can be checked as baggage. But the bags also have mountin loops so, when not on your car or your back, you can fill them with gear and put them on a garage ceiling hoist to get them—and your stuff—out of the way. Very cool.
Just being able to open and closed it with gloved hands makes it worth a try.
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