Atera Strada DL 2

My old hanging bike rack never really gave me 100% confidence and a nagging fear that one day my mountain bike would go bouncing down the motorway plagued my MTB excursions. I lashed out on a Witter removable tow hitch for my Ford Focus and the Atera Strada 3, now all those nagging fears on bumpy country lanes or windy motorways have been banished. Although initially a bit taken aback by the weight of the carrier itself, my Focus doesn't seem to mind. The Atera has clearly been built to last - a quality bit of kit.

I bought this bike carrier to fit onto my Motorhome towbar. Not only was it cheaper than having a fixed carrier that blocked my rear window, it was so easy to use. No more trying to lift the bikes up 4-5 ft. It folds down nice and flat and it is very light making it easy to be stowed away in the garage locker or car boot. I did a lot of research on tow bar carriers and this came out by far the best on the market. There is nothing negative that I can say about it. i would recommend this carrier And give it 5*****.

Review dated 25 January 2015. The bike carrier itself is actually excellent, but instead of the 022 600 Amazon have shown a photograph of the Atera 022 601 which is a 3 bike carrier, unlike the 022 600 which only holds two.

Lovely designed piece of kit. Unfortunately it arrived with one securing arm broken. In my opinion this was caused by a previous customer and it was not checked in warehouse before despatch.Yes it only holds 2 bikes but thats clearly stated in the description, also it says you can add a 3rd rail for a third bike. Possibly the pic should have shown the model with just 2 bikes.The manual is not great but the videos are first class so no need worry about fitting and removing.I ordered the replacement arm which Amazon credited for me rather than return the whole unit.

Key and barrel missing from locking handle??!!!

I bought this with the optional 4th bike carrier and have found all the positive reviews to be correct. In short, I believe this to be the best bike carrier on the market. It's not perfect (see below) but it's very, very good. So much easier than putting bikes on the roof, more secure and easier than the boot mounted carriers, and better quality and lighter (5kg lighter than Thule G5) than other tow bar mounted carriers. The carrier is rock solid on the tow bar and doesn't move, meanwhile it holds 4 bikes very securely such that they don't wobble and can be locked in place.There are lots of Internet reviews detailing the carrier's positives and I agree with all of those, so I won't repeat them here. But I did find a few issues so will mention those.1) It is a tight fit for bikes and with the wide bars of mountain bikes we have to loosen one bike's handlebars and rotate them by 90 degrees. This is no doubt not specific to this carrier and is probably unavoidable.2) On my carrier the bolt holes on the brackets that attach the 4th bike carrier did not align with the main carrier. Both brackets were clearly slightly bent. The supplier was very helpful and we agreed that I could try to bend them to the right shape and if that didn't work they would provide replacements. I was able to fix the issue and installed the brackets. I am confident this was just an issue with my unit because other reviews haven't mentioned this.3) When fitting four bikes you will probably have to spend time working out in which order and direction to fit them. My instinct was to put the largest bike on first, but then the long metal arm to hold the third bike wouldn't pass through the first bike. Not a problem, and it just needed 20 mins to work out the best order of bikes and which way round they should go, etc. As per point (1), this is just a limitation of trying to get 4 bikes fitting close together and is probably unavoidable, but when you first use the carrier don't think that you will simply offer up all the 3 or 4 bikes and they will fit easily.4) The brackets for the 4th bike carrier limit the minimum size of bike that can be carried in the third bike position. Our son's 20" wheel bike is slightly too small to fit but we can just get away with it. I think that's a shame given that there's a good chance that 4 bikes will include 2 children's bikes. The 4th bike carrier itself (or the 3rd bike carrier when the 4th isn't installed) will take any size of bike.5) One of the bolt holes for the 4th bike carrier bracket is hidden behind the button that releases the carrier to pivot down. At first I couldn't get the bolt through this hole so I spoke to the supplier and they said to use brute force. I did and the bolt went through. Given that this bolt should never need to be undone, this isn't really an issue but I just don't expect this sort of issue on a top of the range £400+ carrier.Despite these points I highly rate this carrier and unreservedly recommend it. I suspect points 1 and 3 are common to all carriers and are just something to be aware of. Point 2 was a fault on mine and hopefully isn't common. Points 4 and 5 are design flaws with the 4th bike carrier and really should be fixed given how good the rest of the unit is, but they are minor points and are only noteworthy because the rest of the unit is so good but also expensive.Finally, I bought mine Altera Strada from [...] who are also the importers, and they were much cheaper than Amazon so I would buy there.