After a few months of use I have upgraded the rating to 4 stars. The stiff silly-looking plastic straps work well and rapidly. It is very quick to collapse the arms when the bike is not on, and it is relatively easy to take the whole thing on and off the car (5 min). The straps are not abrading the paint on my car like my last rack did. It looks a little wild but works well. There is NO NEED to tighten the screws more than very lightly. It would be 5 stars but my wife's bike will really not fit on this- check before you order.

This rack fits well on my small VW wagon. The lift gate works with the rack in place- very good. Without bikes on it is is as good as everyone says it is: clean, cool-looking, really solid. I particularly like that the metal tabs on the straps are labeled as to top, bottom and side. It is very easy to load my mountain bike, although it is hard to keep the bike from swinging front to back without bungies. My wife's women's frame bike is another kettle of fish. It can ONLY mount at a crazy 45 degree angle and really needs to be tethered to the car. The rack can actually hold both bikes at the same time but it resembles some kind of strange art installation. Have not yet had the guts to drive around with both bikes. The desire to be cool got just a little too aggressive when they designed the tie-down straps. The straps are a very stiff sharp plastic that wave around like medusa's snakes. They are in the way, make it hard to get bikes on an off, scratch your hands and you cant remove them. The plastic holders for the straps are an integral part of the rack and prevent you from putting the support arms though a narrow part of the frame. Designers gone wild. It's kinda like Apple started off with the design and someone sent it to Microsoft to finish. Some people have used a hacksaw to simplify the tiedown mess. I'm tempted. Bottom line is that it is a big improvement over the 10 year old Yakima rack that was bleeding rust on the car. It looks like it will work well with one bike. But they could have done better. Three and a half stars really.

After I retired from railroading for 30 years, I worked 10 years part time at a local Bike shop. We sold a lot of racks and Saris was always a primary recommendation. Every one in our family rides or used to ride both mountain and road bikes. I bout the Saris Bones 805 2 Bike Trunk Mount Rack for my daughter's BD so she could take her new bike to work to train for an upcoming century. Love Saris's adjustability and sturdiness.
Like the anti sway and ratcheting tie downs. When we installed it I cut a tapered piece from a 2 3/4" swimming pool noodle (solid, not hollow), stuffed the folded end of the straps into the hollow shaft and then pushed the 6" round on the back end, wedge on top of the straps. They won't come out or get weathered. I would also suggest a decent coated cable and lock to keep "Honest people honest", and your bike from running away without you.

I looked at the Bones carrier largely because it was in every bike showroom I visited, and I figured that must mean something. While choosing a bike I tried out many, and thus visited a lot of bike stores. This carrier was ubiquitous, and it fit my car. I don't have a trailer hitch. And, I can't imagine standing the bike up on the top of the car -- I'm sure to drive under something low and wreck the bike.

I've not had a bicycle or this carrier long, so I can't speak for long term use, but so far this is a truly excellent piece of engineering design. I'm not talking about aesthetic appearance, which other reviewers often praise, I'm talking about function. It's solidly made. The adjustment method is elegant. On my sedan it attaches tightly to my car and holds the bike securely. No parts are made of steel so there's nothing to rust. It's an impressive piece of design work. You need to go to their website, and enter your car in the "Get the Perfect Fit" box to see if it fits yours.

With the arms folded down it fits close to the trunk, extending barely beyond the bumper - see my picture. And, though it says somewhere not to open the trunk with it attached, I do it with little difficulty. The feet tend to keep the trunk from closing without fussing with them just a little.

Someone mentioned being difficult to tighten the hold-down straps. I find holding the buckle release open while tugging on the strap works well and is easy to get them tight.

The niggles:

After you set it up and use it once it's simple and you won't forget, but the instructions that come with it are inadequate and it's something of a puzzle at first. The chap who says he had it installed and a bike mounted in 5 minutes out of the box is a miracle worker. You can find a setup video for the three bike version on the Saris website. Go to the Bones 3 page and click on the "Installation Video" link in the list on the right. The two versions are close enough to the same this helped me a lot, but the gal doing it slurs words occasionally. Oddly, on the Bones 2 page Saris doesn't link to this useful video, so you have to stumble on it or learn about it here.

Some bikes and some cars require special accessories you buy from Saris. They don't make this clear in the ads. For example, women's bikes may need a special bar (at this writing Amazon carries this bar). The bar is explained in the video mentioned above, but who looks for the video before buying the carrier, and other accessories are not in the video. For example, the bike peddle presses against my trunk. In this case they sell a special pad for the peddle to rest on, or you can use something like a piece of rubber to put between peddle and car, or rig something yourself. Right now I'm using a piece of that rubber-like friction shelf paper held on the peddle with a rubber band.

If they happen to fall in an awkward place on the bike, the plastic straps that hold the bike to the carrier can be fussy to get undone. One of mine's like this, but after a little practice it's okay.

This seems like a lot of negatives but they are all pretty minor and the carrier works great.

Edited to add:

I've found one problem with this carrier. Occasionally I use it to carry both my bike and various friends bikes. My bike peddles and those of my friends, until recently, have rubber on the outside so this problem didn't come up. Recently, however, I've taken a friend with an old fashioned steel bike with metal on the outside of the peddles. The first time my bike was located on the inside (nearest the car). His peddles were resting against my bike and scarred it pretty seriously. It's only cosmetic but I'd managed to keep it in mint condition 'til then. So, the next time we went I put his bike on the inside and mine on the outside where his' greater weight was near the car and it was easier make sure his peddles didn't rest on my bike. This time it made a jagged cut through the paint on my car.

So, the message is, if you use this device take great care with the placement of the peddles on both bikes or make sure the outside is rubber and not metal. Sometimes that's difficult to do, so maybe put a leather sock around the peddles.

Edit 2:
I used this rack for three years. I quit using it in 2012 because health issues no longer let me ride. In those three years I probably used it 50 or so times and never quit liking it.

I purchased this rack to go on the back of my '07 G35. I do like this rack but there are some caveats. I found the fit to be a bit tricky, especially with the lower straps which must go under the trunk lid. On my car I have to open the lid and close it on the lower latches, they won't fit in otherwise. Also the side clips had to be mounted fairly low, just above the taillights and again the fit was very tight. The upper clips go on easy, but they have already scratched my paint after just a couple of uses. The instructions say you are not supposed to open the trunk with the rack attached, I think they are worried the clips could break something. I didn't care because I'm not drivin' around with the rack on all the time anyway, but you may want to and it will restrict your access to the trunk. Also note the lower "feet" have to be mounted on the bumper, not the back of the trunk lid, this also prevents lid movement. Although I had my brother try the Bones on his '07 Maxima and it fit much better. This surprised me as the two cars have a very similar profile, but the gaps in the trunk to body panels are larger on the Nissan than my Infiniti, so the clips went on very easily. Both these cars have the factory rear spoiler, and the Bones fit nicely over it.

In use proper tension on the straps is important. I had a tendency to tighten the upper straps too much, perhaps because it's the easiest to do so, but then I noticed the trunk made noise from the pulling on the straps. Looking closely i could see the upper straps were pulling the lower "feet" off the bumper, so the strap was taking the weight instead of the lower arms. The fix is to tighten the lower straps more than the upper straps, this keeps the rack weight on the bumper.

I do like the bike hold down straps, the are very secure and reinforced. There are three for each bike, which keeps it secure in all directions. The only issue I had with the straps is they must go over the bike brake and gear control cables. I tried passing them under the cables but that made getting the straps off near impossible because the "teeth" in the ratcheting strap get caught in the cables.

The most impressive feature of this rack is its adjust-ability. It is east to get the arms in the right position by a simple unlock-side-rotate-slide-lock process. It also allows you to easily lower the arms if you plan to keep the rack on the car when not in use. I found a position a little further from my trunk lid worked better than a closer position. The straps just fit better, and the strap buckles were further from the painted part of the car.

Lastly my only other beef with the rack is all that extra strap length you are left over with. Six ends have to be tied back nicely to prevent the straps from loosening and from flapping around. This is what takes more time than anything in putting it on, also to tighten a strap they must be untied and retied. The manual recommends checking and tightening after 30 miles of use.

Would I recommend it, yes but it may depend on fit of your vehicle. Oh and my brother is getting one for his car now too.

This was purchased as a gift. So far we have been told it is super handy to haul her bike.