One of our customers came to us looking for used VW Polo roof bars for a VW Polo with no roof rails. Here’s what we found out together, and why the fitting kit turned out to matter more than the bars themselves.
A customer got in touch looking for used roof bars for their 2020 Polo. They thought it would be straightforward: find bars that look right, check the price, done. It turned into a proper little research project, and it’s a good example of exactly the kind of confusion we hear about most.
The first issue was the Polo itself. Theirs doesn’t have roof rails: no little channels running down the side of the roof. That’s fine for everyday driving, but it meant they couldn’t just pick up any set of bars and bolt them on. What they needed is called a clamping kit, bars that attach using clamps that grip around the roof, usually fastening to the door frame.
They’d started hunting on Facebook Marketplace and eBay for used Thule bars, assuming they’d be fairly interchangeable between cars. They found a promising listing: a pair of Thule WingBar Evo bars, looked barely used, £70. Then, looking closer at the photos, the seller had included a Thule Evo Clamp 7105 foot pack, but no mention of a fitting kit. That’s when they came to us, unsure what actually made bars compatible with different cars.
The parts they didn’t know to look for
This is the bit that trips a lot of people up, so it’s worth being clear about it.
A roof bar system has four separate parts. The bars themselves are the horizontal bits that run across the roof. Thule makes them in different widths and materials, and a WingBar Evo 127cm is roughly the same bar whether it’s destined for a Polo, a Golf, or an Audi A1. Length varies a bit depending on roof width, but that’s about it.
The foot pack is the connector that holds the bars at each end. It’s the bit that clamps to roof rails if the car has them, or wraps around the roof via the door frame if it hasn’t. Different cars need different foot packs because the attachment points sit in different places and at different angles.
Then there’s the vehicle-specific fitting kit, which is the bit that catches most people out. This is the custom brackets and adapters that connect a specific car’s roof structure to the foot pack. A Polo and a Golf have different roof shapes. A Polo with no rails and an Audi A1 with flush rails need completely different hardware, even though the bars sitting on top might look identical in a photo.
Finally, if a roof is completely plain with no rails or fixed points, proper clamps are needed that grip the roof firmly without scratching it or straining the door frame.
This is why that Facebook Marketplace listing was basically useless. The seller had included a foot pack, but there was no way of knowing if they also had the Polo-specific fitting kit. Almost certainly they didn’t.
What turned up on the secondhand market
Over a few days of working through listings together, the pattern became pretty clear once we knew what to look for.
There was a complete Audi A1 setup going for £80. Flush roof rails, WingBar Evo 127cm bars, all the bits included. On paper the bars themselves were fine. But the A1 has flush roof rails built into the roof, and the foot pack and fitting kit were engineered around that. The Polo has no rails at all, so there was no chance of that setup fitting without buying an entirely separate fitting kit, which costs £30 to £50 anyway. At that point you’re back to near-new prices.
There was a Golf setup for £95. The Golf Mk8 does have roof rails, raised ones this time, so again the fitting kit was Golf-specific and wouldn’t transfer. The bars and foot pack could potentially have been reused with a new Polo fitting kit bought separately, but by then the total was £125 to £150 anyway, against £155 for a brand new WingBar Evo kit with a guarantee attached.
A couple of listings were for “universal” bars, designed in theory to fit almost any car. The trade-off is they’re heavier, noisier on the motorway, and honestly looked a bit cheap in the photos. For the money on offer, we weren’t convinced.
What actually worked in the end was splitting the search in two rather than holding out for one perfect all-in-one listing. A seller in Oxford had a Thule WingBar Evo 127cm with the Thule Evo Clamp 7105 foot pack already attached, no fitting kit included, for £130. Close enough to collect in person rather than paying for postage. Separately, a seller near Sheffield had the Fitting Kit 145101 on its own for £10, spotted through a bit more patient searching once we knew exactly which part number to look for. A friend heading that way picked it up, and the customer collected it from him on a trip to the Peak District not long after.
Why the fitting kit is the fiddly bit
Here’s the thing that surprises most people going into this. The bars and foot packs are genuinely pretty modular. Thule’s whole system is designed around mixing and matching components, and you can use Thule bike racks or ski carriers across most Thule bar setups without much fuss.
The fitting kit is what ties everything to a specific car. It accounts for where the roof rails sit if the car has them, how wide they are, what the roof shape is like, where the safest clamping points are if there aren’t rails, and the weight distribution and load limits for that particular model.
Buy the right fitting kit and everything bolts together properly. Get it wrong and you end up either straining the roof, hearing the bars rattle at speed, or finding they simply won’t clamp securely. That’s why the larger dealers don’t just sell a generic “roof bar kit.” They ask for your registration so they can confirm the correct fitting kit before you order.
For the Polo Mk6 specifically, the WingBar Evo paired with the Clamp 7105 foot pack and Fitting Kit 145101 is the combination that’s been engineered to work with the Polo’s roof. Move to a later Ford Focus or a different generation Polo, and the fitting kit changes again.
What they found and how they made it work
In the end the customer put together a complete kit from two separate secondhand sellers: the WingBar Evo and Clamp 7105 foot pack from Oxford for £130, and the Fitting Kit 145101 from near Sheffield for £10. Total came to £140, with no postage costs at all since both were collected in person.
There was no guarantee attached to either purchase, which is the honest trade-off of buying used. What made it work instead was knowing exactly which three part numbers had to match before handing over any money, and being patient enough to wait for the right listings rather than settling for the first “close enough” one. The Oxford seller could confirm the bars and foot pack were the correct clamp version for a car with no rails, and the Sheffield listing was specifically for Fitting Kit 145101, the exact Polo-specific part, not a generic “roof bar fitting kit” description that could have meant anything.
The WingBar Evo itself has turned out to be a solid choice regardless of buying used. It’s quiet when empty, the aerodynamic profile helps there, and it’s strong enough to carry a roof box plus some luggage without any drama. The bars are aluminium, so rust isn’t a concern, and if the customer ever moves to a car with roof rails, the bars themselves should be reusable with a new foot pack and fitting kit.
The maths that made it worth the effort
Here’s the thing that made splitting the search across two sellers worth the extra patience. The customer rents out the roof box that sits on these bars through RentMyRoofbox, and the investment paid back almost immediately once you run the numbers.
A decent roof box rents for somewhere between £25 and £40 a night depending on size. At six rentals a month averaging £30 a night, that’s £180 a month in gross revenue. Their share after the platform fee works out to roughly £153 a month, comfortably more than the £140 spent putting the whole kit together. The bars paid for themselves inside the first month, with margin to spare from day one.
That calculation is what made the extra legwork of finding two correctly matched listings worth it rather than settling for a single “good enough” all-in-one kit. £140 once, spread across two careful purchases, for years of use afterwards.
So what would we suggest?
If you’re in a similar position, an older Polo or a similar car with no roof rails, looking to add a roof box, start by working out exactly which fitting kit you need. Don’t rely on a Facebook seller’s word for it. Look your car up by registration on a proper dealer site and see what the system actually recommends for your specific model and year, then use those part numbers to judge every listing you come across.
If you do find used bars and the seller can’t confirm they have the correct vehicle-specific fitting kit included, it’s not necessarily a dead end. As this search showed, it can work out well to buy the bars and foot pack from one seller and the fitting kit from another, provided you’re confident about the exact part numbers on both. What matters is knowing precisely what you need before you start looking, rather than hoping a single listing will have everything.
If you’re only planning to use bars for one trip, renting the whole setup through a platform like RentMyRoofbox is worth considering instead of buying at all. But if you’re looking at more than a couple of trips a year, a carefully assembled secondhand kit like this one will likely pay for itself faster than you’d expect.
For the fuller technical picture on why this happens across different cars, our roof bar compatibility explained guide covers the four-part system in more depth, and our roof bars buying guide runs through new versus second hand for every budget. If you’re weighing up a Skoda Octavia instead of a Polo, we’ve mapped out that compatibility maze too.
What did you go for?
Have you wrestled with the fitting kit question yourself? Found a bargain secondhand setup that actually worked out, or a near-miss that nearly caught you out? Drop us a line and let us know. We’d genuinely like to hear what other Polo owners have discovered.