Start of Skinny Things
There are two Jimnys in the family. Both Dad and I jumped on the bandwagon back in 2020, and we haven’t looked back since.
Jimny 1 (that’s mine!) quickly became the vehicle of choice for surf missions – getting up sand dunes, over loose rocks, and away from the crowds. Dad’s Jimny was utilised as a lightweight camper – giving him access to off-the-grid campsites the bigger wagons couldn’t reach, and making for a compact home-base to build a camp around.
Life in the Jimny was good for sure, but we both had one issue. Weight.
The Jimny’s light frame is its strength, but it isn’t fit for carrying heavy cargo. Load the roof heavy or high, and things get a bit wobbly. Not ideal for off-road tracks, even less when there’s heavy wind involved.
There’s the roof load itself, but also the hardware beneath it. A chunky roof rack or awning seemed to upset the apple cart. The car didn’t look right or perform as well. So before we got to thinking about what we could or couldn’t load on the Jimny, we first started thinking about our choice of roof racks.
The Strong Boy Bars on their first mission, Auckland.
New Zealand’s native bush – a fitting first test run.
I’d love to claim more responsibility for what happened next, but here full credit must be given to the old man. By the next time I dropped into his place, there was an early rendition of some Jimny-specific roof racks on the kitchen table. Drawn on 90s CAD software, rough around the edges, but enough to get us excited.
In our minds, the Jimny equation was simple. Less = more. So we got to honing our minimally-minded roof racks, sticking with aluminium as our material of choice. Engineered strong, light and right in line with the Jimny aesthetic. The start of skinny things…
Fast forward a year or so, a couple of COVID lockdowns, at least 10 prototypes, and here you have our very first all-aluminium roof rack. The ‘Strong Boys’, as we call them. Just like that!
