Official Audi Roofbars £300, worth it?

[dannyindevon]

Hi,

Silly question really as I don't know the alternative really, also I doubt many people have tried both. Just hopeful someone has enough experience to know. Wife bought some third party ones, fairly expensive, £120 I think, and the make was recomended by a cyclist ('cos he takes bikes on his racks which is what we want to do) colleague. BUT... they didn't come with any kind of locating lugs/pins. The A4 Avant B9 I have, it has little holes/dimples, which look for all the world like they receive a male bump on a roof rack. I presume the official OEM racks come with these. I presume 3rd party roof racks aren't falling off cars every day despite the millions in use, so I guess their design forgoes the need for locating pins, but all the pics in the instructions for the rack she bought showed the profile of the bars on the car (i.e. the bars permantly attached, whatever they are called) which was concave on both sides, so the cambered metalwork could make a very positive connection - my car is only concave on one side, its very flat the other, which didn't make for a very positive connection. I need to be able to belt down the motorway at at 60, or at 40 across potholes and not fear that the bikes are about to ping off, hit the car behind, get sued, find out I'm not insured because I ate a tuna sandwich 3 years ago and tuna is disallowed in the small print, lose my house and end up living in a ditch (this will definitely happen). 

The 3rd party ones are 80-150 it seems. maybe someone has one they can recomend and have used it for years.

Or maybe you all know that Audi deliberately made the bar's profile prohibitively not-concave to force people to buy the OEM parts to use the matching locating pins, or risk the hole thing coming off when I drive through Devon (Devon is entirely made of potholes at the moment, literally no tarmac left in the entire county).

Any advise very welcome, either way, and feel free to tell me not to be so cheap. If the £300 originals are the only sane choice I'll do it, just would rather find out for sure if really needed.

Thanks!